Gathering Clay

When gathering the clay, walk down the beach, find a stream flowing into a lake, and when you feel the sand starting to sink, it might be clay. It is clay when the water turns a brown-ish red-ish fog. Stream beds just before it enters the lake and after it enters the lake, are a few places where you can find the most purest clay.

You have a few people walking along the shore lines and then you have a canoe beside you so you can get most of the clay. Sometimes you will find a clay hole and sink up past your hips.

When are ancestors are gathered clay they would just go and gather, but now we have to have a gathering permit to get clay. You get the permit from the U.S. Department of agriculture forest service. The permit came from the 1836 treaty but got it was taken away from them, until they asked the people since they have been there for long time gathering clay if they could just have to get a permit every year.

After you get your clay, mead it to remove all the rocks and twigs out. Your objective is to make your clay workable, have some sifted clay if its too wet, some clean sand so its able to maintain its shape without sticking to your hands, and be able to work with. Make the clay into a flattened circle and mark it in half, then in half again, where you can then add sand to 1/4 of it. You can tell when it is just right when you are kneading it with your hands and if it doesn’t stick to your hands.

To shape the clay into a pinch pot (which is a very simple type of a pot), you roll it into a ball and then with your thumb you push in the middle of ball and just push to the sides and shape it, you keep on moving it in a circle until it is the way you want it. If you want your pottery to not knock over in the fire you would make the bottom of the pot rounded.

Native Americans used to use a paddle (which is covered at the tip with a round-braided string) to make the shape of the bowl. The string allows the clay not to attach itself to the paddle. When you are done shaping the clay you need to wait till it is leather hard. From there, you may finish carving into it, or making it smooth and shiny.