In the spirit of Dan Mouer's interesting Barbados article I submit the
following transcription of the introduction to South Carolina novelist
William Gilmore Simms' 1847  Caloya'. This is discussed at some length in my
latest report, "Further excavations at John de la Howe's Lethe Farm"
(Shameless self-promotion, or encouragement of scholarly discourse?). Carl
Steen
 
 
 
Caloya; or, The Loves of the Driver
 
Chapter I.
 
        When I was a boy, it was the custom of the Catawba Indians- then reduced to
a pitiful remnant of some four hundred persons, all told- to come down, at
certain seasons, from their far homes in the interior, to the seaboard,
bringing to Charleston a little stock of earthen pots and pans, skins and
other small matters, which they bartered n the city for such commodities as
were craved by their tastes, or needed by their condition.  They did not,
however, bring their pots and pans from the nation, but descending to the
Lowcountry empty handed, in groups or families, thy squatted down on the rich
clay lands along the Edisto, raised their poles, erected their sylvan tents,
and there established themselves in a temporary abiding place, until their
simple potteries had yielded them a sufficient supply of wares with which to
throw themselves into the market.  Their productions had their value to the
citizens, and, for many purposes, were considered by most of the worthy
housewives of the past generation, to be far superior to any other.  I
remember, for example, that it was a confident faith among the old ladies,
that okra soup was always inferior if cooked in any but an Indian pot; and my
own impressions make me not unwilling to take sides with the old ladies on
this particular tenet.  Certainly, an iron vessel is one of the last which
should be employed in the preparation of this truly southern dish.  But this
aside.  The wares if the Indians were not ill made, nor unseemly to the eye.
 They wrought with much cleaner hands that they usually carried; and if their
vases were sometimes unequal in their proportions, and uncouth in their
forms, these defects were more than compensated by their freedom from flaws
and their general capaciousness and strength.  Wanting, perhaps, in the
loveliness and perfect symmetry of Etruscan art, still they were not entirely
without pretensions of their own.  The ornamental enters largely into an
Indian's idea of the useful, and his taste pours itself out lavishly in the
peculiar decorations which he bestows upon his wares.  Among his first
purchases when he goes to the great city, are vermilion, umber, and other
ochres, together with sealing wax of all colors, green, red, blue and yellow.
 With these he stains his pots and pans until the eye becomes sated with a
liberal distribution of flowers, leaves, vines and stars, which skirt their
edges, traverse their sides, and completely illuminate their externals.  He
gives them the same ornament which he judiciously distributes over his own
face, and the price of the article is necessarily enhanced to the citizen, by
the employment of materials which the latter would much rather not have at
all upon his purchases.  This truth, however, an  Indian never will learn,
and as long as I can remember, he has still continued to paint his vessels,
though he cannot but see that the least decorated are those which are always
the first disposed of.  Still, as his stock is usually much smaller than the
demand for it, and as he soon gets rid of it, there is no good reason which
he can perceive why he should change the tastes which preside over his
potteries.
 
        Things are greatly altered now-a-days, in these as in a thousand other
particulars.  The Catawbas seldom now descend to the seaboard.  They have
lost he remarkable elasticity of character which peculiarly distinguished
them among the aboriginal nations, and, in declining years and numbers, not
to speak of the changing circumstances of the neighboring country, the
ancient potteries are almost entirely abandoned.  A change has taken place
among the whites, scarcely less melancholy than that which has befallen the
savages.  Our grandmothers of the present day no longer fancy the simple and
rude vessels in which the old dames took delight.  We are for Sevre's
Porcelain, and foreign goods wholly, and I am saddened by the reflection hat
I have seen the last of the Indian pots.  I am afraid, henceforward, that my
okra soup will only be made in vessels from Brummagem; nay, even now, as it
comes upon the table, dark, dingy, and discolored to my eye, I think I see
unequivocal tokens of metallic influence upon the mucilaginous compound, and
remember wit a sigh, the glorious days of Catawba pottery.  New fashions, as
usual, and conceited refinements, have deprived us of old pleasures and solid
friend.  A generation hence, and the fragment of an Indian pot will be a
relic, a treasure, which the lover of an antique will place carefully away
upon  the upper shelf of the sanctum, secure from the assaults of noisy
children and very tidy housekeepers, and honored in the eyes of all
worthy-minded persons, as the sole remaining trophy of a time when there was
perfection in one, at least, of the achievements of the culinary art.  I am
afraid that I have seen the last of Indian pots!
 
        But let me avoid this melancholy reflection.  Fortunately, my narrative
enables me to do so.  It relates to a period when this valuable manufacture
was in full exercise, and, if not encouraged by the interference of
government, nor sought after by a foreign people, was yet in possession of a
patronage quite as large as it desired.  To arrive at this important period
we have only to go back twenty years- a lapse made with little difficulty by
most persons, and yet one which involves many and more trying changes and
vicissitudes than any of us can contemplate with equanimity.  The spring
season had set with the sweetest of countenances, and the Catawbas, in little
squads and detachments, were soon under way with al their simple equipments
on their backs for the lower country.  They came down, scattering themselves
along the Edisto, in small bodies which pursued their operations
independently of each other.  In this distribution they were probably
governed by the well known policy of the European Gipseys, who find it much
easier, in this way, to assess the several neighborhoods which they honor,
and obtain their supplies without provoking apprehensions and suspicion, than
if they were, en masse to concentrate themselves on any one plantation.
 Their camps might be found in famed loam-spots, from the Eutaws down to
Parker's Ferry, on the Edisto, and among the numerous swamps that lie at the
head of Ashley River, and skirt the Wassamasaw country.  Harmless usually,
and perfectly inoffensive, they were seldom repelled or resisted, even when
they made their camp contiguously to a planter's settlements; though, at such
periods, the proprietor had his misgivings that his poultry yard suffered
from other enemies than the Wild-cat, and his hogs form the assailant as
unsparing as the Alligator.  The overseer, in such cases, simply kept a
sharper lookout than ever, though it was not often that any decisive
consequences followed his increased vigilance.  If the Indians were at any
time guilty of appropriation, it was not often that they suffered themselves
 to be brought to conviction.  Of all people, they, probably, are the most
solicitous to obey the scripture injunction, an keep the right hand from any
unnecessary knowledge of the doings of the left.