PAPERS RELATING TO ANTHROPOLOGY. 705 



accident, belong to the brachyceplialic type, while the skulls of the 

 tribe may be equally divided between that form and the dolichocephalic. 

 With these facts before us examine any table of measurements yet made 

 of American crania and calculate the chances of error. There are not 

 in all the public and private collections fifty undoubted mound-builder 

 skulls, assuming that the builders of the great mounds and earth- works 

 were a different race from the modern Indian. With a view of ascer- 

 taining the probable number of such skulls in the country, in January, 

 1880, the author mailed a circular letter to a large number of private 

 individuals and public institutions, about seventy in all, requesting an- 

 swers to two questions : 



1st. How many genuine mound-builder skulls are in your collection ? 



2d. How many that are supposed to be mound-builder skulls? 



In a very large majority of the cases the answer to even the second 

 question was " not one 1" while the exception was rare, indeed, where 

 persons claimed to be in possession of skulls of the first character. 

 The four greatest public collections are the Academy of Science, Phila- 

 delphia; the Smithwnian Institution, at Washington ; the Peuhody Insti- 

 tute, Cambridge ; and the Davenport Academy of Science, in Iowa. 

 In these public collections are many labeled mound-skulls, simply 

 from the fact that they came from the base of a mound, without any 

 reference to its size or other articles taken from it. In estimating 

 the number of undoubted mound-skulls, those of this character are ex- 

 cluded. Assuming a diflPerence in the race who built the great mounds 

 and earth- works of the Mississippi Valley and the modern Indian, a 

 skull taken from a mound of this character may belong to the one or 

 the other. Applying the test suggested in the circular above alluded 

 to, which is the best the nature of the subject will admit of, that is, "to 

 only class as genuine those that are found in connection with other ob- 

 jects that unquestionably belonged to the mound-builders," the number 

 of genuine mound-builder skulls is reduced by two-thirds.* 



Dr. Foster fell into a grave error when he classed as " authentic skulls 

 of the mound-builders" those obtained fix)m low mounds on the banks 

 of the Des Plaines River, of Illinois. These mounds were elevated only 

 about "2 J feet above the surrounding plain," and no objects were found 

 in the mounds which are looked upon as peculiar to the mound-builders. 

 Yet he classes these skulls as genuine mound-builder remains, figures 

 some of them in his work ; and in the winter of 1869-1870 i^resented to 



*Dr. J. F. Snyder, a gentleman who has devoted a great deal of thonght to this 

 subject, suggests that "this test appears very unsatisfactory, for the difQcnlty of dis- 

 tinguishing 'objects that unquestionably belongetl to the so-called mound-bnilders' 

 is necessarily as great as to distinguish their crania." The force of this criticism is 

 admitted ; yet if -we find a ekull at the base of a great mound, and with it copper 

 axes, pipes with the peculiar curved base, and such articles as were found by Squier 

 and Davis in the mounds of Ohio, we may safely assume that the mound was built by 

 the same race that erected those of similar character in which similar articles were 

 found. 



H. Mis. 26 45 



