212 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY OP 



natural shape, so that the majority of grown persons hardly manifest the ex- 

 istence of the practice. One effect, however, seemed to be permanently dis- 

 tinguishable, in the unusual breadth of face."* Mr. Hale also says: "In 

 after years the skull, as it increases, returns in some degree to its natural 

 shape, and the deformity, though always sufficiently remarkable, is less shock- 

 ing than at first. "f Dr. Pickering declares "that slaves may in general be 

 distinguished by the head not being flattened, though they are careful to per- 

 form this process on their children. "J Mr. Hale, on the contrary, states that 

 " the children of slaves are not considered of sufficient importance to undergo 

 this operation, and their heads, therefore, retain their natural form." Mr. 

 George Gibbs, who dwelt for several years among the coast tribes iu the capa- 

 city of Indian agent, likewise declares that " the children of slaves are not 

 allowed to flatten the skull. " In another place he says, "among some of 

 the Pacific tribes, compression of the head is confined to females, or is, at any 

 rate, only carried to any considerable extent among them. Slaves are some- 

 times of the same tribe with their owners, but they are more frequently pur- 

 chased from others ; and it should be noted that on the Pacific the course of 

 the trade has been from south to north. "|| This gentleman, in an interesting 

 letter to the writer, dated July 8th, 1850, suggests that " as slaves very rarely 

 if ever spring from the tribes in which they are held, and as the course of the 

 slave trade is almost always from the south to the north," the two skulls 

 above referred to, Nos. 457 and 578 most probably come from southern Oregon 

 or California. The Klamath and Shaste tribes of California, he thinks, fur- 

 nish many slaves to the region about Fort Vancouver, while captives from 

 this region are taken still further northward from Puget's Sound as far north 

 even as the Russian possessions. In opposition to these statements of 

 Mr. Gibbs, we are informed by Mr. Townsend that among the Chinooks 

 those individuals whose skulls were not flattened during infancy, on ac- 

 count of sickness, "never attain to any influence, nor rise to any digni- 

 ty in their tribe, and are not unfrequently sold as slaves." Mr. Jas. G. 

 Swan, in his account of the coast tribes between the Straits of Fuca and the 

 Columbia River, says, "their slaves are purchased from the northern Indians, 

 and are either stolen or captives of war, and were regularly brought down and 

 sold to the southern tribes. "H" My friend Dr. Thos. J. Turner, U. S. N., who 

 spent some time at Puget's Sound, in 1856, and whom I therefore interrogated 

 upon this subject, informs me that there is a marked distinction between the 

 Indian tribes on Vancouver's Island and to the north of the Straits of Fuca, 

 and those on the southern side. The northern tribes known as Stikanes, or 

 Cowitchins, are taller, more war-like, and of a lighter color than the southern 

 Indians, and what is very remarkable, have been seen by him to blush.** In- 

 stead of compressing their heads into a disc-like shape, as the Chinooks do, 

 they give to them, by means of bandages, a conical or sugar-loaf form. Fur- 

 ther north this custom is discontinued by the men, and is confined altogether 

 to females. Dr. Turner also informs me that unaltered heads, found among 

 tribes addicted to this practice to a great degree, may safely be assumed to be 

 those of slaves, and are probably of foreign origin, either directly or ancestrally. 

 The direction of the slave trade is northward. On this account the southern 

 tribes are always in fear of their more aggressive northern neighbors. As the 



The Races of Man; and their Geographical Distribution. By Charles Pickering, M. D., Lon- 

 don. 1851, p. 19. 



t Transactions of the American Ethnological Society, vol. 2, p. 16. 



X Op. cit. p. 20. 



| Indigenous Kaces of the Earth, p. 336. 



|| Instructions for research relative to the Ethnology and Philology of America. Prepared for 

 the Smithsonian Institution, by George Gibbs, Washington, 1863. p. 3. 



<f The North West Coast ; or Three Years residence in Washington Territory. By Jas. G. Swan, 

 New York, 1857. p. 166. 



**Accoiding to Von Spix and Mariius, "the Indians, properly speaking, cannot blush, and the 

 ' Erub^scit, salva res est,' cannot be applied to this unpolished race." See Prichard's Researches, 

 vol. 1, p. 271. 



[May, 



