Mixed among the shards are
another ceramic not so well documented , and it is dubbed Colonoware. Colonoware is a hand coiled and
pit fired pottery long produced as an inexpensive trade item by American Indians and sold or bartered in the city. It is never found stashed in the back of barns, or at estate sales. It is never found passed down as precious family heirlooms. It is commonly found at dig sites of 18th century pioneer settlements and at 18th and 19th century plantation communities. Normally found as broken shards, intact specimens are recovered from riverbeds. Since trade goods were transported by water, the occasional overturned boat provides intact specimens. The example below was recovered from the Savannah River.(see Figure 1 below).  |
| Colonoware vessel, Georgia ca 1750 |
Ceramics are often the
primary find at archaeological digs. They are important in determining the economic status, food ways and eating habits of those that lived there.
In colonial digs here in Charleston, early porcelain shards from Germany and England are
common, reflecting Charleston's status as the major seaport on the eastern seaboard. Late
colonial and antebellum digs reveal the Chinese Export porcelain so cherished
and displayed today in the china cabinets of many an Old Charleston family.
Occasionally, the alkaline glazed stoneware
produced in the upstate of South Carolina is to be found in post -1820
sites. These ceramics are thoroughly documented.
As Native Americans dispersed from the southeast, it appears that Colonoware production was taken up by plantation blacks to provide cooking and eating vessels. This is a practice most likely encouraged by plantation owners. It was, after all, an inexpensive source of cooking and eating ware that put elderly or substantially disabled individuals back to work.
Typically, plantation slaves would have prepared food in a common pot. The food would have been transferred from the pot to a large wooden trough for serving and eating where it would be shared by all, or the food would be transferred into small bowls or pots, such as the colonoware bowl here illustrated.
Figure 1.Colonoware Vessel
 |
| Classic cooking bowl form |
Some scholars suggest that Colonoware was folk craft handed
down from Africa. There are certainly precedents. Similar coiled and low fired
ware was produced in Africa, as it was in virtually all cultures. Indeed, more
sophisticated high fired wares were produced in Africa and all over the world. Whatever its origin, we know that the Catawba Tribe was trading in Colonoware well into the nineteenth century, wares that were used on the plantation by
slaves. Colonoware shards from the earliest sites reflect the aboriginal styles of the native Americans, but it was not long before the ware produced for sale took on the look of European vessels such as the one pictured above.
Note that by this time , (1850s) exceptional high fired utilitarian stoneware was being produced and sold in the Winnsboro area. The stoneware, with a glassy alkaline glaze, was both durable and easy to clean. It was used for food production but also for serving as well, although fancy ware from Charleston was preferred at the dining table by country housewives who could afford it. By this time tinsmiths were producing plates and cups in the upcountry and rail was bringing goods inland from the coast. Apparently, the use of these items were reserved for the white population, and colonoware use was reserved for the slave population.
Below are examples of contemporary Catawba Pottery. This is a highly collectible product that is different than the Colonoware produced for trade
.
Figure 2. Contemporary Catawba Ware
Because Colonoware was a low fired product it was delicate,
not unlike porcelain. But unlike porcelain,
this porous and unglazed product stained
easily and would have retained flavors from previous use. It
would not have been uniformly sanitary after cleaning and would have
been a breeding ground for microbes. It seems that its major advantage was low
cost. I suspect that, in its own way,it
was a symbol of repression. Colonoware
was an inferior product, a fact perhaps not noted by the 18th
century enslaved population , but certainly by nineteenth century enslaved, observing the expansion of ceramic and tin options. As food preparation and serving vessels improved with the introduction of tin and stoneware, colonoware continued as
the Master's choice for the slave street.
In the short story “Loves
of the Driver”, author William Gilmore Simms notes that during his boyhood in
the 1810s that
It was the custom of the Catawba Indians …to come down, at certain seasons, from their far homes in the interior, to the seaboard, bringing to Charleston a little stock of earthen pots and pans….which they bartered in the city. They did not, however, bring their pots and pans from the Nation, but descending to the Lowcountry empty handed, in groups or families, they squatted down on the rich clay lands of the Edisto and and there established themselves in a temporary abiding place, until their simple potteries had yielded them a sufficient supply of wares with which to throw themselves into the market.”That colonoware was produced for the slave population can be inferred by the statement of Phillip Porcher, a St Stephens SC resident , recounting that :
“….the Catawba Indians ….traveled down from the upcountry to
Charleston, making clay ware for the negroes along the way. They would camp until a section was supplied and then move until finally Charleston was reached.”
Finally, Charley Watson, a former slave from Winnsboro, SC, in a WPA
interview in 1935 recalling plantation days of the 1850s said:
“De Indians fetch their pots and jars to sell”Note that by this time , (1850s) exceptional high fired utilitarian stoneware was being produced and sold in the Winnsboro area. The stoneware, with a glassy alkaline glaze, was both durable and easy to clean. It was used for food production but also for serving as well, although fancy ware from Charleston was preferred at the dining table by country housewives who could afford it. By this time tinsmiths were producing plates and cups in the upcountry and rail was bringing goods inland from the coast. Apparently, the use of these items were reserved for the white population, and colonoware use was reserved for the slave population.
Below are examples of contemporary Catawba Pottery. This is a highly collectible product that is different than the Colonoware produced for trade
.
Figure 2. Contemporary Catawba Ware
 |
| Contemporary Catawba Pottery |
This premise is proven by the distribution of Colonoware
shards at dig sites all throughout the southeast from Florida to Alabama to
Virginia. Shards are commonly found interspersed among other shards in
archaeological digs. Present in both eighteenth and nineteenth century digs, it
is far more predominant in earlier sites than later. It is interesting to note
that it is virtually nonexistent at post civil war sites.
It would seem that freed African Americans in post civil war
society left colonoware behind when allowed to choose their own vessels.
