f18 THE PRACTICE OF HEAD-MOULDING. 



the savage tribes of Oregon. Among the Natchez the deform- 

 ity is described by the historian of De Soto's expedition as 

 consisting of an upward elongation of the cranium, until it 

 terminated in a point or edge. The Choctaws, though enemies 

 of the Natchez, "improved" their heads in the same way. 

 Their children were placed upon a board, and a bag of sand 

 was laid upon the forehead, " which, by continual gentle corn- 

 pressure, gives the forehead somewhat the form of a brick 

 from the temples upwards, and by these means they have high 

 and lofty foreheads sloping off backwards." * The Waxsaws, 

 Muscogees or Creehs, Catawbas, and Altacapas, are described 

 as having had a similar custom. It was, however, only the 

 male infants which were treated in this manner. Among the 

 Nootka-Columbians the practice of flattening the head was 

 universal. The child was placed in a box or cradle lined 

 with moss. The occiput rested on a board at the upper part 

 of the box, and another board was brought over the forehead, 

 and tied firmly down on the head of the infant. The process 

 continued until the child was able to walk, at which time it 

 is described as presenting a most hideous appearance. The 

 eyes " stand a prodigious way asunder ;" the eyeballs project 

 very much, and are directed upwards ; the head is very wide, 

 and has almost the form of a wedge. The Newatees, a tribe 

 residing on the north end of Vancouver's Island, forced the 

 head into a conical shape by means of a cord of deer-skin 

 padded with the inner bark of the cedar-tree. This cord, 

 which is about as thick as a man's thumb, is wound round 

 the infant's head, and gradually forces it to take the shape of 

 a tapering cone.-f- Among the Peruvians the forehead was 

 pressed downwards and backwards by tight bandages, of 

 which there seem to have been generally two, leaving a space 

 between them, and thus producing a well-marked ridge run- 



* Schoolcraft, 1. c. vol. ii. p. 324. 



t Wilson on Physical Ethnology, Smithsonian Report, 1862, p. 288. 



