Despite the remarkable progress manifest in the archaeology of the Southeast, there remains an appreciable gap in our historical perspective between ethnological horizons and late period archaeological material. Pottery is one highly important time-indicator that persisted into historic times, yet for one of the major Southeastern tribes— the Creeks—pottery in ethnological museum collections is rare. For this reason, the authors here describe the single Creek pot in the Southeastern ethnological collection of the Chicago Natural History Museum. To our knowledge, this piece of pottery has not been described in print before.

The specimen shown in Figures 82 and 83 was received by the museum from the Department of Ethnology, World's Columbian Exposition in 1893. I t forms part of a small accession of ethnological material collected among the Creeks in 1892 by George T. Shurtleff in, or in the immediate vicinity of, Muskogee, Creek Nation, Indian Territory. Although the documentation is scanty, the writers believe that the pot is of bona fide Creek manufacture.