204 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY OF [Feb., 



Dr. Rivet,^ following Lubbock and other writers, gives the fol- 

 lowing procedure. After the extraction of the cranium through 

 the posterior incision, the skin with adherent flesh is boiled in an 

 herb/lecoction. Withdrawn from this, it is placed around a spherical 

 stone, superheated, and, after shrinkage, upon a smaller stone, and 

 then upon a third yet smaller. Meanwhile, another hot stone is 

 passed back and forth over the surface, thus facilitating the shrinking 

 and drying of the tissue. The lips, and sometimes the eyelids also, 

 had previously been carefully sewed to prevent the retraction in 

 desiccation, causing them to gape. 



According to the engineer Von Hassel,^ after the substitution of 

 the hot stone for the cranium, the head is hung in the smoke of a 

 palm-root fire, but there is no mention of boiling. The lips are 

 "deformed — by means of a cord and a little piece of chonta" (wood). 



The third description of the method pursued, which was given 

 Lieut. Safford by Sefior Tirado^'' — an eye-witness — is an interesting 

 blending of the two preceding. According to this statement, imme- 

 diately after the extraction of the skull, the scalp is sewed up, and the 

 hole in the vertex pierced and supplied with its cord. Afterwards 

 the head is dipped in the hot infusion of herbs, "care being taken 

 not to allow the roots of the hair to enter," though how this latter 

 precaution is possible is not readily conceivable. Dried by the 

 introduction of hot stones, it is then smoked over the cooking-fire, 

 the hair being wrapped in leaves for protection. After three or 

 four months of curing in the smoke, the lips are pierced and the 

 decorations added. 



None of these descriptions makes mention of any lashing or means 

 of holding the cranial envelope in position during the curing process. 

 Yet the Murato tsantsa of Colini,^^ which is evidently a head obtained 

 before the finishing touches had been added, shows a slender spike 

 of wood passed backward through the nostrils and out through the 

 perforation at the vertex. A cord is lashed around the ends of this 

 stick and over the forehead, thus forcing the nostrils forward and 



^Dr. Rivet, Joum. cilii, t. XIX, p. 71; also Sir, John Lubbock, Note on the 

 Macas Indians. Journal of the Anthropologicol Inatitule of Great Britain nttd 

 Ireland, vol. Ill, p. 30. Sir John, however, states that the bones were removed 

 through the neck after the boiling. 



3 Jorge M. von Hassel, Las Tribus salvajes de la regi6n amaz6nica del Peru. 

 Boletin de la Sociedad (ieogrdfica de Lima, XVII, 1905, i)p. 56-57. 



'" Dr. Walter Hough, Prepared Human Head. American Anthropologist, 

 vol. XIV, p. 406. 



'1 Dr. G. A. Colmi, opera citu, p. 3Q2et seq.,itiv. 1, fig. 1; also Dr. Rivet, Jo»)V(. 

 citii, t. XIX, p. 82, PI. 1, fig. 3. 



