NATURAL SCIENCES OE PHILADELPHIA. 203 



the Alleghany Mountains, together with the cognate tribes, have the head 

 more elongated than any other Americans. This remark applies especially 

 to the great Lenape stock, the Iroquois and the Cherokees. To the west of 

 the Mississippi, we again meet with the elongated head in the Mandans, Ri- 

 caras, Assinaboins, and some other tribes. Yet even in these instances, the 

 characteristic truncation of the occiput is more or less obvious, while many 

 nations east of the Rocky Mountains have the rounded head so characteristic 

 of the race, as the Osages, Ottoes, Missouris, Dacotas and numerous others. 

 The same conformation is common in Florida ; but some of these nations are 

 evidently of the Toltecan family, as both their characters and traditions tes- 

 tify. The head of the Charibs, as well of the Antilles as of Terra Firma, are 

 also naturally rounded ; and we trace this character, so far as we have had 

 opportunity for examination, through the nations east of the Andes, the Pa- 

 tagonians and the tribes of Chili. In fact, the flatness of the occipital portion 

 of the cranium will probably be found to characterize a greater or less num- 

 ber of individuals in every existing tribe, from Terra del Fuego to the Cana- 

 das."* 



At a meeting of the Academy of Natural Sciences held June 1st, 1841, Dr. 

 Morton, in the course of some remarks upon the ancient Peruvians, again 

 speaks of "the squared or spheroidal form as characteristic of the American 

 race and especially of the Peruvians."! At another sitting of the Academy, 

 which took place on the 6th of July in the same year, he made some obser- 

 vations on eight Mexican skulls, and directed attention to the "high vertex, 

 flat occiput, great lateral diameter and broad faces" of these crania as char- 

 acteristic features of the aboriginal Americans. "Whoever will beat the 

 pains," he said on that occasion, " to compare this series of skulls with those 

 from the barbarous tribes, will, I think, agree that the facts thus derived from 

 organic characters, corroborate the position I have long maintained, that all 

 the American nations, excepting the polar tribes, are of one race and one spe- 

 cies, but of two great families, which resemble each other in physical, but 

 differ in intellectual characters. "J 



These opinions Dr. Morton continued to reiterate, from time to time, at va- 

 rious meetings of the Academy. \ On the 27th of April, 1842, he read at the 

 Annual Meeting of the Boston Society of Natural History, An Inquiry into the 

 Distinctive Charateristics of the Aboriginal Race of America. In this paper he 

 contends still more emphatically for his favorite doctrine of the unity of the 

 American nations. After alluding to the color and stature of these people, he 

 says, " The same conformity of organization is not less obvious in their osteo- 

 logical structure, as seen in the squared or rounded head, the flattened or 

 vertical occiput, the high cheek bones, the ponderous maxillae, the large 

 quadrangular orbits, and the low, receding forehead. I have had opportunity 

 to compare nearly four hundred crania derived from tribes inhabiting almost 

 every region of both Americas, and have been astonished to find how the 

 preceding characters, in greater or less degree, pervade them all. This re- 

 mark is equally applicable to the ancient and modern nations of our conti- 

 nent ; for the oldest skulls from the Peruvian cemeteries, the tombs of Mexico 

 and the mounds of our own country, are of the same type as the heads of the 

 most savage existing tribes. Their physical organization proves the origin 

 of one to have been equally the origin of all." 



In this paper Dr. Morton objects to the observations of Molina and Hum- 

 boldt, above referred to, in disproof of this pervading uniformity of physical 

 characters, by saying that the different people mentioned by these writers are 

 really of one and the same race, and readily recognized as such, notwithstand- 



*Crania Americana, pp. 64, 65. 



\ Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci., vol. 1, p. 36. 



t Ibid 1, p. 52. 



\ See Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci., vol. 1, pp. 126, 203; vol. 3, pp. 212, 213. 



1866.] 



