Meet the young Catawbas ensuring SC tribe’s pottery doesn’t skip a generation

Four students gathered in a small out-building converted into a classroom and began rolling clay. It took them less than a half-hour to mold the clay into a bowl depicting a snake coiling itself around a vessel.

Former Catawba Nation Chief Bill Harris was teaching the students his love for his grandmother’s craft. She told Harris years ago that she would teach him Catawba pottery — but he would have to teach the art form to others. So, the work is Harris following through on what his grandmother, Georgia Harris, predicted.

Since leaving office as chief, Bill Harris has been a full-time clay artist and teacher and has advocated for Catawba pottery across South Carolina. He has been an artist in residence at the University of South Carolina at Lancaster’s Native American Studies Center and in May, was awarded an honorary doctorate of humane letters at Davidson College.

This summer, Bill Harris also has been a teacher and mentor to the four students hunkered down in that small classroom— Kenneth Harris, Sierra Cauthen, Elizabeth Harris and Maddison Totherow this summer through a community project that grew from a TapRoot Fellowship he was awarded alongside 25 other traditional artists.

With funding he received, Bill Harris created the Summer Youth Pottery Training Program, a 7-week course that teaches young Catawbas interested in pottery the process and techniques. The students were paid, and the course concluded last month. Bill Harris also created The Georgia Harris Foundation to find money to continue the program.

Bill Harris said what started as fundamental to daily life, pottery, has turned into art. He prefers to call his students clay artists instead of potters because he believes the latter diminishes their talents. But the Catawbas traditionally crafted bowls, vases, pipes and other vessels from clay on the shore of the Catawba River for their survival.

Elizabeth Harris, a former tribal administrator, is proof the tribe can’t skip generations when it comes to teaching pottery. While her grandmother and great-grandmother were artists, she was never taught by them. Her dad and siblings never learned.

“It kind of skipped a generation,” she said. “I didn’t have anyone in my family line to teach me anymore, so that’s why classes like these are so important.”

Bill Harris’ goal is to teach new generations how to continue the tradition.

“If we do not create teachers, this will be the generation that stops,” he said. “And currently, 4,000-plus years, there has not been a generational stop that they can track us not doing pottery.”

One of the ways Bill Harris taught his students is by taking them to the clay hole the Catawbas have used for nearly 500 years.

“When Georgia was a young woman, they literally paddled across the river, dug the clay and then paddled back,” he said. “Today we get in vehicles and drive across. So there was a huge respect for the amount of work that went into getting the clay to create the pieces.”

After teaching the students, Bill Harris said he’s even more keenly aware of what young people are exposed to. It’s hard, he says, for slow-drying clay to compete with video games.

Catawba Nation pottery students

Student Maddison Totherow said she didn’t like the first piece of pottery she did in Harris’ class. It had lots of technically challenging pieces like feet and handles.

But she persisted — perhaps because she has several master potters in her family.

Student Sierra Cauthen is a recent Winthrop University graduate who earned a bachelor of fine arts with a focus in painting.

She said she didn’t know much about Catawba pottery because none of her family currently practices, but her grandfather was a clay artist and her great-grandmother was a master potter.

“I never got to meet them, so I wanted to explore this tradition and feel more connected to them in a way,” she said.

Cauthen said she likes adding nature elements to her pieces. She added two doves to a small pitcher and shaped a snake onto a pot. She engraved one piece.

Kenneth Harris said he believes more Catawbas should be doing pottery. He likes sculpting bear pipes. But his first piece was not as he wished it would be. He intends to keep it, anyway.

Bill Harris said he doesn’t want the students to feel they have to be perfect.

“You can’t get perfection. It’s hand built. You do the best you can. And I’ll use my grandmother’s philosophy, and her philosophy was, you do what is pleasing to the eye,” he said.

This story was originally published August 11, 2025 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Meet the young Catawbas ensuring SC tribe’s pottery doesn’t skip a generation."