Ang was a mighty hunter and also a priest of Odin, but Oma was a famous housewife or cave-wife, and not only Suta, the wife of Wang, came to take lessons of her, but many other women who had heard of her wonderful skill in cooking old food in new ways and discovering new foods which the magic of the fire made palatable. She had learned not merely how to cook the meat which Ang brought, but to dry it so that it would keep for a long time. She discovered how to make a coarse flour from nuts and acorns and to bake cakes on flat stones. At the fire feast the cooking of Oma made as great an impression as the wisdom and strength of Ang.

But her greatest discovery was the art of making pottery dishes out of clay and baking them before the fire. For a long time women had made baskets of reeds and willow twigs in which they could carry dry foods, but the problem was to get something in which they could carry liquids. Sometimes they used skin bottles, but they soon leaked and the water rotted them out. Then some clever woman smeared the inside of a closely woven basket with resinous pitch. Another lined her baskets with clay and baked them in the sun, but water would soon soften the clay. Then came Oma and the fire and the art of baking clay. This is the way it happened. Oma had been lining some baskets with clay, and little Om tried to imitate her. Since it was cold he sat as near to the fire as he could, and after he had finished one, he would put it on a stone near the fire until he had a row of them. Then the wind changed suddenly and blew the fire towards him, and he had to move quickly, leaving his clay baskets on the rock. He called to his mother to get them, but she had no notion of getting burned for so small a cause and she was too busy to bother, as mothers often are.

That night after Om had gone to sleep she sat by the fire with Ang, and her eyes spied the little row of clay baskets. She picked one up to show the father what a clever boy his son was getting to be. As she touched the clay, she found it dry and hard as no clay she had ever touched before. Some of the baskets were dry and crumbly, but two or three in the center were hard as stone. A thought came to her. She ran to the brook and filled the hardest with water and brought them back to the fire. They did not soften or leak. Then she put them on a flat stone and pushed them almost into the fire. Soon the water in them began to bubble and steam.

"Look!" cried Oma. "At the touch of the Red One a little Cloud Spirit goes up to the great Cloud Spirits that fly in the blue above us."

Then Ang knew that Odin had given a new gift. "This time the Red One has spoken to you; what has he said?"

Oma carefully drew the little clay pots from the fire, and after they had cooled she examined them. Two of them were cracked, but one was firm and solid as if it had been cut from stone. She held it up before Ang in triumph. "This is what we have been waiting for since the beginning of time. The Red One has worked magic on the clay, and its old enemy, the water, cannot eat through it."

The next day Oma made baskets lined with clay, and then, putting them on flat stones, pushed them into the heat of the fire. Some of them crumbled, but others baked hard and firm. As the heat burned off the inclosing basket, the pattern was left molded on the clay.

After many experiments Oma learned just what clay to use and how to bake it. And she made pots of all sizes and arranged them on ledges of her cave and filled them with nuts and seeds. Then she learned how to use the clay pots for cooking. In the old days she had placed scraps of meat and bone and roots in a pitch-lined basket and then added water and hot stones from the fire. Of course the pitch softened and gave an unpleasant taste to the stew, and often the hot water softened it so much that the basket became like a sieve. But now Oma could mix her stews and brews and boil them until they were soft and delicious, and the clay dish was just as good as before.

And Suta and other women came to look; and they wondered and tasted, and smacked their lips, and asked how it was done, then went home to do likewise. And the fame of Ang and Oma grew in the north land, and men said, "They are loved by the Great One".

But if Oma made the first pottery and the most useful, Suta, wife of Wang, made the most beautiful. After she had learned to bake the clay so that neither fire nor water would harm it, she amused herself by making dishes of queer shapes. Then she discovered it was not necessary to make the basket molds, and that if she made marks on the clay they would be baked in. She began by making a little row of nail prints about the rim—((((((((((. Then she made rough pictures of animals and men with a sharpened stick. And the fame of Suta went out also through the north land, and they came from far away to see the wonderful things which she had done. Others tried, but no one could make such beautiful dishes as Suta.

Before the great fire feast an idea came to Suta like a dream in the night, she knew not from where. She would make a great bowl for Odin and she would mold on it pictures of his gifts, so that all who saw would remember from whom the good things came. With great care she shaped a bowl as high as a five-year-old child and so large that a grown man could not circle it with his arms. On it she pictured the man who shot the first deer with a stone-tipped arrow, the man who made the first snare for the wild birds, the man who first crossed the deep water in a hollowed log, Ang striking fire from the flints, Oma baking the clay dishes. Then she hesitated. These and many things more the Great One had given; what would He give next? What did she want most?

The First Potter

Now Suta was not like Ang or Wang or even like Oma. Wang had thought sometimes that she was not so good a cook as Oma, and that she spent too much time listening to the song of the birds and watching the play of the light on the water and the woods and the far-off hills. She did these things sometimes when he thought she ought to get wood for the fire or cook something for him, and he grumbled a little. But now that she made dishes of clay which no one else could make and all men said, "What a fortunate man Wang is to have a woman that can make such things!" Wang began to be very proud of her. He even went so far as to get wood for the fire, which he did not think man's work.

And what did Suta the dreamer want? She did not want more food or more clothes or a bigger cave; she wanted the power to mold in clay the things she saw and loved. So she put on the great bowl for the All-Father a picture of a woman, with her back turned on the lookers and a sharpened stick in her hand, just ready to work the soft clay, but waiting for the power to draw on clay the picture in her mind. It was the first expression of the unsatisfied yearning of the artist for beauty and the power to express it. For Suta was the mother of those who love the beautiful and long to give it permanent form.

When the bowl for the Giver was finished, it was placed on a stone foundation in front of the stone altar, which Ang and Wang had made. At the feast it was filled with sparkling water from a spring near by, and as the men danced about the fire they dipped their hands in it as they passed by and sprinkled the water on the fire and on themselves and sang:

All who saw the great bowl which Suta had made were filled with wonder, and they wanted her to make something for them. Then the great idea came to Wang. Now Wang was not so strong as Ang or so good a hunter, but he wanted just as much to eat and just as warm furs to wear. He liked better to sit talking with some crony in the shade in summer or by the fire in winter. Talking and sitting were the two things of which he never tired. Now when the world was young, such men went hungry and cold, and Wang had done so often, and, more's the pity, Suta and little Sut; but then came the idea. Every one wanted Suta's clay dishes; he wanted deer's meat and bear's, and furs, and the choicest seeds and nuts. He would barter the things which Suta made for the things he wanted. Suta would do the work; others would bring food and furs and fruits; he would sit in front of the cave and give as little of the first for as much of the second as possible. And the idea worked. Suta loved to mold the plastic clay and decorate it. Many wanted the things which she had made, and Wang's wily tongue multiplied the number of those who were willing to pay for what they wanted.

So Wang became the father of a long line of traders, and the Wang family had more food than they could eat and more furs than they could wear. Wang grew thick in the belly and thin in the calf, but it suited him, and Suta was too busy with her clay to care. And Wang the trader became almost as great a man as Ang the priest.

And Oma, wife of Ang, grew envious of Suta, wife of Wang. And she grumbled to Ang: "Did not you find the Red One and bring Wang and Suta so that they should not perish from the cold? Have you not fed them with meat of your own hunting? Did not I learn from the Red One how to harden and mold the clay? Did I not show Suta? Do I not work harder than she? Am I not a better cook? Can I not make better coats of fur? But see, little Sut has finer furs than Om and is fatter. And all who come now pass by our cave, except at the great feasts, or when they are sick and in trouble, and go to talk with Wang and look at Suta. Is she so much better to look at than Oma?"

But Ang comforted her with wisdom that had come from long broodings under the shadow of the Keeper of Secrets. "The Giver has differing gifts. To the fire he gives one, to the water another, to the earth another. To Suta he gave the love of beauty; to you he gave the love of doing and making; and the joy of doing is greater than the joy of having. To each her gifts as the Great One wills. And I would rather be the man of Oma than of Suta." So Oma was comforted, though she often sighed wistfully as she saw men and women go by to the cave of Wang or watched Suta deftly mold some new thought into the yielding clay.