Findings in the jar......

I owned a property on Lake Pokegama near Grand Rapids, Minnesota when I was young.  It was a modest dwelling but it was on land that had the largest natural beach area on the entire lake.  While on the beach with some concentration one can find evidence of the Indians that lived along that beach.  These pieces of pottery show the decoration on the outside areas of the pottery. They were made from different types of clay but all were fired in a bonfire to give them their hardness.  The bigger the fire and they longer they were allowed to heat the stronger the pots would become.

One oddity of these is this piece.  It has a surface as if it is glazed.  No it is not an early settler pottery shard as it has a rough hand made finish on the back of it.  I know that highly polished, rubbing a stone on the surface creates a glazed like surface.  Maria Martinez the famous pueblo potter, polished all of her pottery to a high sheen and never used glaze on her blackware pottery.  I know that this is how this was done, and it looks like it was done on the inside of the pot, which means you see an advancement in the technology for the Indians.  The Chippewa Reservation is in the area but the Indians of the whole area are called Ojibwa.

These are some of the rocks that I collected along the way. Most of them are agates and a couple are what is call chert.  Chert is the rock with the yellow color and is agatized, but not a desirable rock for polishing.

Older type things work up on the beach also as you can see this stone with an indent of a sea shell.

I know that it is not a human tooth, but I really haven't researched the kind of animal that these teeth  are but they also seem agatized.

This rock was not found on the beach. It is one of the agates that belonged to my dad. He actually bought this one. It was rough cut when he bought it and my dad polished it out to it's present condition.