The Rise of Primitive Tribes Farming

Chapter 35 Pottery

At a bend in the Lobster River, Chen Bei and his men were digging clay.

The clay is gray in color, and the soil is very fine, with very few impurities in it, even very little sand.

"Dig a little more. If it goes well, I guarantee that each of you will get at least one piece of pottery."

Chen Bei's words made the people of the Mang tribe feel as if they had been beaten into chicken blood, and they worked harder to dig. The dug clay was directly put into rattan baskets, and would not be placed on the ground to prevent sand and stone from sticking.

Lie was next to Chenbei, and he asked while digging: "Boss, I want a pottery basin, as big as the one brought by the Diao tribe, is it okay?"

After finishing speaking, Lie You felt a little embarrassed, because in the eyes of the tribal people, the bigger the thing, the more valuable it must be. Isn't his request a bit too much?

Lie explained again: "My son was just born, and from now on, there will only be three people in our family eating. I'm afraid that the previous basin was not big enough to hold the food for three people."

However, Chen Bei agreed without even thinking about it: "Okay, I will make you a big clay pot later, bigger than the one from the Diao tribe."

"Really? Thank you leader, thank you leader."

Lie was overjoyed and dug harder. After becoming a father, he is not only working for himself, but more for his son.

"Boss, boss, look, I dug out a snake!"

Suddenly, Fang yelled loudly, attracting everyone's attention.

It turned out that his place had been dug deeper and deeper, and it was already below the water level. A hole happened to be dug, and a creature like a "snake" came out of the hole in a panic, and his head was pressed down by Tooth with a stick, pinched. Grab it with your head.

Chen Bei walked over and took a look, and was immediately amused. It turned out to be a rice field eel, and it was not too small. It was as thick as two fingers, and it really looked like a snake.

"It's called rice field eel, not a snake. Take it back and kill it, remove the internal organs, add some spices, and fry it with fish oil."

Since the Mang tribe started fishing, the main edible oil is fish oil.

Some of the fish in the river are very fat, with a lot of fish oil in their stomachs, unlike the beasts on the mountain, which are all lean meat and basically have no oil.

"Okay, chief."

Ya packed the big rice field eel with a carry-on animal skin bag, and then continued to dig the soil, hoping to dig a few more rice field eels.

Everyone else smiled kindly, and everyone envied Ya's luck.

An hour later, the excavated clay was completely enough, and it was almost piled up into a hill. Chen Bei ordered to stop digging and move all the clay back.

Everyone moved all the baskets of clay back to a shed built next to the vegetable field. This shed is used by the breeding team to raise colorful pheasants, and it is very spacious inside.

The colorful pheasant will not be moved to this new shed until next year, and it is now being used as a small workshop for making pottery.

"Boom!"

Chen Bei put a large basket of clay on the ground, and said to the hunting captain Yun: "Yun, go to the stone tool master to find some flat stone slabs, wash them and move them here."

"Yes, chief, I'll go right away."

Yun found some strong members of the hunting team and called them to move the stone slabs together.

"Lie, go get some buckets of water over here."

"Yes!"

Lie also took a few people to fill the water.

The Mang tribe has buckets, and they use a huge bamboo, which is tens of meters high and has roots as thick as a bucket.

After cutting it down, you only need to cut two holes on both sides of a bamboo joint, and tie a rope as a handle to make a bucket, which is very convenient.

Not long after, Yun led people to bring over the cleaned large stone slabs, and Lie also brought several buckets of water over.

Chen Bei grabbed a large ball of clay from the basket, put it on a large stone slab, added a little water, and then began to knead and beat it repeatedly, just like kneading dough.

"Everyone do it like I do."

After Chen Bei's demonstration, others also raised their hands one after another.

Tribal people are no strangers to playing with mud, because there are very few recreational activities in the tribe. When they were young, everyone played with mud and squeezed mud into various shapes.

After kneading and beating, the clay will become more viscous, and if there are impurities in it, they can be picked out in time.

Under Chen Bei's continuous rubbing and beating, a large ball of clay turned into a large rectangular mud ball.

Chen Bei beat it almost enough, and divided the mud ball into cylindrical mud strips, kneading again.

The clay has become very smooth and much more viscous than before, and it is no longer easy to break.

Then, start pinching the shape.

Chen Bei rolled up the strips of mud to form a round cake, then pinched and pressed them continuously to form a whole, and added a circle of mud strips under the round cake-shaped mud, which is a clay pot of the base.

Afterwards, Chen Bei kneaded the mud strips end-to-end on the round cake-shaped mud, and began to make the main body of the clay pot.

Time passed little by little, and the prototype of a clay pot gradually appeared in Chen Bei's hands.

When kneading, every place must be tightly seamed, otherwise, the place with flaws during firing is likely to crack, and a piece of pottery will be useless.

After Chen Bei finished pinching the mouth on the top of the clay pot, he first checked the inside and outside of the pot to see if there was any place that was not pinched properly, and then used relatively moist clay to evenly spread a layer of mud on the outside of the pot. Let the whole clay pot form a whole.

At this point, the mud of a clay pot is ready!

"It's a bit unrounded, but that's okay, it has an air of handmade art."

Chen Bei expressed his satisfaction with his work. After looking at it again and again, he felt that this clay pot could definitely be fired completely.

Others also began to knead mud one after another. For example, Lie, under the guidance of Chen Bei, made two large clay pots with his own hands. For the sake of his son, a stout man seemed very patient at this time, repeatedly inspecting the pots. , I'm afraid I didn't pinch it well.

After Lie finished pinching, Chen Bei said: "You pinched these two pots yourself. You can engrave your son's name on them. When he grows up, it will also be a meaningful souvenir."

"Is it really possible?"

Lie's voice trembled a little. Obviously, engraving his son's name on the clay basin was a very important thing for him.

"Of course, you can go to Wu, write down your son's name, and then engrave it on the clay basin with your own hands."

"I... I'll go find Wu right away!"

Lie ran to look for the witch in excitement. At this moment, the fact that he personally carved letters on the pottery pot moved many people.

Chen Bei looked at the crowd and said with a smile: "If you also want to engrave characters on your own pottery, you can also go to Wu, but it's best to go together and let Wu finish it all at once. Don't bother Wu too much."

"Yes, chief!"

A few more people excitedly followed Lie to find Wu. Although some of them had no children, they could prepare in advance!

Although he has lived in this world for several years, Chen Bei was not literate before, and no one taught him.

He is not like Qing Zhu, after receiving the inheritance of the witch, he doesn't need to learn at all, he knows everything.

Literacy is very important, even in wild primitive tribes.

So now that Chenbei has time, he will go to Qingzhu to learn how to recognize characters, and try to spend a year or two to recognize all the commonly used characters and be able to write.

Soon, Lie and the others came back again, with the words written on their hands with witch paint.

Lie's son was named Yu, because he was the captain of the fishing team, so he took such a name.

The characters on Lie's hands are like a fish, which is a kind of hieroglyph.

When Lie was carving letters on the pottery basin, his hands trembled because he was too excited.

If it was normal, Lie would definitely ask Chen Bei to help engrave the lettering, but this time has a special meaning, it is a gift for his son, so even though he was nervous and his hands were shaking, he still insisted on finishing it by himself.

"Huh, it's finally finished."

Lie wiped the sweat from his forehead and put down the small stone knife used for engraving.

In front of him, a crooked "fish" character was engraved on a rough rough clay pot. Although this character was ugly, it carried Lie's affection for his son.

Others also completed the engraving, but for those without engraving, such as teeth, he chose to engrave a tooth on the kneaded mud, which can also represent the things he made.

Chen Bei kneaded a lot of pottery clay, and checked the clay made by other people. After everything was completed, two or three days had passed.

"Next, let the mud dries naturally in the shade."

Chen Bei looked at all kinds of pottery mud in the shed with satisfaction, which would be the first batch of pottery of the Mang tribe.

While the pottery was drying in the shade, Chen Bei wanted to do another thing, which was to build a small clay kiln for firing pottery.

(End of this chapter)