54 [86] TRANS. ST. LOUIS ACAD. SCIENCE. 



tion less conspicuous to visiting strangers than if their foreheads- 

 had been flattened. De Soto and his soldiers witnessed the flat- 

 tening of children's heads in one of the southern tribes, and Gar- 

 cilaso de la Vega (Florida iv. ch. 13) describes this deformity as 

 consisting in an upward elongation of the cranium until it termi- 

 nated in a point or ledge.* Le Page du Pratz (History, p, 323) 

 describes the process. The na'iie of the Caddo tribe of the Na- 

 tachc^ mentioned by L. d'lberville in 1699 on Middle Red river.f 

 seems derived from the Cha'hta term natasse, to fress^ sqzieeze. 

 The Koroa also observed this custom. The ^hetimasha on 

 Grand Lake, Louisiana, flattened their infants' heads so as ta 

 shape the occiput round, the forehead flat.| 



The Chahta practice is described by Adair and W. Bartram, 

 and to the traders this people was generally known as Flatheads, 

 or Flats, all the males (as among the Aimara) having the fore and 

 hind part of their skulh artificially flattened. The latter author 

 describes the process as follows (Travels, p. 515) : 



As soon as the child is born, the nurse provides a cradle or wooden, 

 case, hollowed and fashioned to receive the infant lying prostrate on its 

 back, that part of the case where the head reposes being fashioned like a 

 brick-mould. In this portable machine the little boy is fixed, a bag of 

 sand being laid on his forehead, which, by continual gentle compression, 

 gives the head somewhat the form of a brick from the temples upwards ; 

 and by these means they have high and lofty foreheads, sloping off back- 

 wards. These men are not so neat in the trim of their heads as the Mus- 

 cogulges are, and they are remarkably slovenly and negligent in every 

 part of their dress, etc. 



Concerning the head-compressing of the Waxsaws in South 

 Carolina, Lawson (Hist, of Carolina, p. 33, 1701) states that 



they use a roll, which is placed on the babe's forehead, it being laid with 

 its back on a flat board, and swaddled down hard thereon from one end of 

 this engine to the other. The instrument is a sort of press that is let out 

 and in, more or less, according to the discretion of the nurse, in which 

 they make the child's head flat. It makes the eyes stand a prodigious way 

 asunder, and the hair hangs over the forehead like the eaves of a house, 

 which seems very frightful. 



Da Pratz says that the term Flatheads is generally understood 



* Cf. Schoolcraft, Indians, ii. 324 . 



t L. d'lberville. in Margry, iv. 17S. 



X Cf. Transactions of Anthropol. Soc'y of Washington, vol. ii. p. 153- 



