Classic Carolina Road Trips from Columbia by Poland Tom;

Author:Poland, Tom;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing Inc.
Published: 2014-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

CATAWBA POTTERY

Catawba women still make pottery using traditional methods, thereby maintaining a link with their past. Catawba pottery is highly prized. Down Charleston way, some cooks feel that okra soup and other dishes can’t be prepared properly without a Catawba pot’s slow, steady cooking.

Approximately sixty miles away at 119 South Main Street, you’ll find the Native American Studies Center, part of the University of South Carolina–Lancaster. There you’ll see beautiful pottery. Established in August 2012, this comprehensive center for the study of South Carolina’s Native American peoples offers you the chance to view the single largest collection of Catawba Indian pottery in existence; learn about Native Americans in the Southeast, participate in educational classes and programs in which you can learn about archaeology, language and folklore; and hear oral history in labs.

This area is rich in history. Lancaster and its environs have long been home to the Catawba Indian Nation. They have a reservation here. And they have something else, something special, something the Catawba have kept secret for hundreds of years: sacred clay holes.

Caroleen Sanders is the center’s artist in residence. A talented potter, Caroleen’s mission is to restore purity to how the Catawba make pottery. (Catawba, as you probably know, means “people of the river,” and that river, of course, is the Catawba.) According to Caroleen, finding a good seam of clay provides a rush like finding a vein of gold. “Pure clay is blue and won’t dissolve,” she adds, holding a lump of clay that’s soft and satiny smooth.

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