NATURAL SCIENCES OP PHILADELPHIA. 225 



In the south-western part of the North American continent lies an extensive 

 tract of country designated by Prichard, Latham and other systematic 

 ethnologists as the Paduca area. This ethnological region extends, according 

 to Latham, from the Pacific ocean, in a south-eastwardly direction, to the 

 Gulf of Mexico; from the water-system of the river Columbia to that of 

 the Sabine river, and from north of 45 N. L., to south of 25 S. L. It is 

 occupied by numerous, imperfectly known and unclassified tribes to whom the 

 term Paduca has been applied provisionally. The tribes of this group repre- 

 sented in the collection are the Shoshonis or Diggers, Utahs, Moquis, Apaches, 

 Navajos, Lipans, Camanches, and that race of people which, though seem- 

 ingly now extinct, once formed the numerous population of the large towns, 

 long since in ruins, such as Quivira, Abo, Guarra, Pecos. &c. 



The Shoshoni, or Root-Digger skulls, three in number, vary in form. No. 1446, 

 obtained on the Trucky river, in the California mountains, belongs to a peculiar 

 form or type of which examples have already been pointed out in thePocasset, 

 Narragansett and other tribes. It is, however, a broader skull. The crown ap- 

 proaches the triangular form ; the forehead is rather broad and flat. The whole 

 crown rises up to a sort of eminence situated between the parietal bosses. The 

 occipital region is broad and rather flat, the basis cranii broad and rounded. Nos. 

 1447 and 1449 are long heads. They differ in the form of the crown, which in 

 No. 1449 is a long, regular oval, but in No. 1447 is flat and broad posteriorly 

 between the parietal tubers. No. 1449 resembles somewhat the Arickaree form 

 in both the occipital region and the basis cranii. No. 1447, in consequence of a 

 greater projection of the occiput, exhibits the supero-occipital flatness of the 

 Swedish form. 



Of this group Dr. Morton thus wrote: "Two of these skulls are so small, 

 so receding in the forehead, and so depressed over the whole coronal region, 

 that they could not, by intrinsic evidence alone, # have been identified with any 

 branch of the aboriginal American race. They want the vertical occiput and 

 general rounded form of the Indiau head, and have a narrowness of the face 

 unusual wiih these people."* 



No. 1448, from the Eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada, and recorded in the 

 catalogue as pertaining to none of the Shosboni tribes, is a large, massive, 

 heavy head, rudely developed. In the median line the crown runs back to an 

 elevation similar to that seen in the Potawatomie skull (No. 657) figured by 

 Morton; from this prominence descends a broad and almost perpendicularly 

 flat occipital region. Hence, when viewed in profile, the skull has a quad- 

 rangular appearance. This ponderous head, which Dr. Morton termed " the 

 very type of Indian conformation," differs decidedly from Nos. 1447 and 1449, 

 and resembles No. 1446. 



In November, 1855, Dr. Thomas J. Turner, while at Mare Island, California, 

 dug up two skulls which he supposed to be those of Digger Indians. They 

 were buried under a mass of calcined shells, some seven feet below the sur- 

 face. One of these crania, No. 1027, is that of a female in all probability, 

 and is the facsimile of the Shoshoni skull No. 1449. It is a long, narrow head 

 with an oval occiput. The other skull, No. 943, is a long, high head, differ- 

 ing considerably from No. 1027 and all the specimens grouped in the catalogue 

 as Shoshonees. Nos. 1446 and 1448 should evidently be classed together as 

 belonging to one tribe, while Nos. 1447, 1449 and 1027 clearly belong to an- 

 other group. 



The skull of a young Utah girl (No. 140) is dolichocephalic, with prominent 

 occipital and parietal protuberances, and a rhomboidal crown. 



Two Moqui crania, Nos. 138 and 139, are small, non-symmetrical heads. 

 Both have the posterior region flattened ; the one slightly, the other decidedly. 

 No. 138 exhibits the shelving, parieto-occipital flatness; the other, No. 139, 

 has the back of the head almost vertically flattened. No. 139 is brachycepbalic; 



* Proceed. Acad. Nat. Sci., vol. iv. p. 75. 



1866.] 15 



