RELIGION. SOCIAL POSITION OF WOMEN. 519 



ning transversely across the skull. Thus, while the forehead 

 was prevented from rising, and the sides of the head from 

 expanding, the occipital region was allowed full freedom of 

 growth, and the development of the brain was forced to take 

 an unnatural direction. So great was the change produced, so 

 extraordinary is the shape of these abnormal skulls, that many 

 ethnologists have been disposed to regard them as belonging 

 to a peculiar race. This theory, however, has been clearly 

 proved to be erroneous, and is now universally abandoned. 

 It is very remarkable that this unnatural process does not 

 appear to have any prejudicial effect on the minds of the 

 sufferers.* 



Hearne states that the Northern Indians had no religion ; 

 even the celebrated "five nations" of Canada, according to 

 Golden, had no religion, nor any word for God. Burnet'f' 

 never found any semblance of worship among the Comanches. 

 In the central parts of North America, however, the Indian 

 tribes generally believed in the existence of a Great Spirit, and 

 the survival of the soul ; but they seem to have had scarcely 

 any religious observances, still less any edifices for sacred 

 purposes. The Dacotahs never pray to the Creator ; if they 

 wish for fine weather, they pray to the weather itself. They 

 believe that the Great Spirit made all things except thunder 

 and rice, but we are not told the reason for these two curious 

 exceptions. 



The social position of the women seems to have been very 

 degraded among the aboriginal tribes of North America. 

 " Their wives, or dogs, as some of the Indians term them," 

 are indeed well treated as long as they do all the work, and 

 there is plenty to eat ; but throughout the continent, as indeed 

 among all savages, the domestic drudgery falls to their lot, 



* Beecher's Voyage round the f Schoolcraft, vol. i. p. 237. See 

 "World, vol. i. p. 308 ; Wilson, also Richardson's Arctic Expedi- 

 Smithsonian Report, 1862, p. 287. tion, vol. ii. p. 21. 



