Page:Researches in the Central Portion of the Usumatsintla Valley.djvu/35

Rh dwellings, which were surrounded by several small huts, which served for kitchens, sleeping-rooms, and shelters for small domestic animals. All were made entirely of poles roofed over with palmleaves. The two main houses and the adjacent huts were filled with household implements of every description, and gave a very complete idea of what the present Maya-Lacantun industry can produce in the way of articles for household use. Such an opportunity of examining all at once the entire domestic establishment, even to the slightest details, of this remarkable people, seemed to me not likely to occur again. I therefore at once set to work to examine everything, even the smallest object, directing my attention particularly to finding utensils that should display drawings which might be regarded as writing, since my many friends in Europe and America are especially interested in this particular question. Many cooking-utensils and water-jars, cazuelas y cántaros, lay scattered around on the floor of the huts and also on the ground outside. Everything was in great disorder, as if the inhabitants had suddenly forsaken their possessions. The cooking-vessels and pots resembled in shape those of the Indians of Yucatan and Tabasco, and were of dark gray-brown clay. The water-jars, cántaros, were of superior workmanship and were made of lighter, whitish-gray clay, and, strange to say, all were of the strongly bulging shape, which is generally considered peculiar to Spanish-African jars. Many had two handles near the neck, but some had only one handle and a small projecting animal head served the purpose of the other. Aside from the animal heads, none of this pottery had any designs whatever. There was a large grinding-stone, metlatl, on a platform which rested on pegs, and several smaller ones stood near by. Several large nets, which were filled with calabaza bowls, xicalli (Fig. 5), for drinking potzol and balché, hung on the rafters of the main houses; some of these were adorned with pretty incised designs (Figs. 6, 7), but there was nothing of a hieroglyphic