IN RELATION TO THE FORM OF THE HUMAN SKULL. 2G9 



ter them on the banks of the Lower Mississippi, (the Natchez.) in 

 Louisiana, (the Chetimachees, ) in Georgia, Alabama, and Florida, 

 (the Muskogees or Creeks, and the Uchees or Seminoles of Florida,) 

 in Wisconsin, (the Menomonees and Ottigamies,) in Arkansas, (the 

 Osages.) Morton has, besides, described and drawn skulls of a like 

 form from tombs in the States of Virginia, Ohio, and Tennessee. 

 Two skulls of the Mongol type of the United States were presented 

 by him to the Carolinska Institute, the one a Sac Indian of Missouri, 

 the other a Menomonee of Michigan. As regards the dolichocephalic 

 family, I have previously traced its progress as far as Peru; but since 

 the occupation of America by Europeans, no considerable change in 

 their place of residence has occurred in the case of any of the tribes. 



It would not seem out of place, before terminating this rapid esti- 

 mate of the influence which the study of the human skull has exer- 

 cised on the development of ethnology, to say something respecting 

 the artificial deformation of the skull. This pagan custom, which had 

 been mentioned by different writers. Oriental, Greek, or Roman, was 

 long totally forgotten by the civilized world till it was discovered, as 

 an unheard-of wonder, to be the usage among several Indian tribes 

 in America. Blumenbach, in describing a Carib skull from St. Vincents, 

 notices that the possibility of such artificial deformation had been de- 

 nied by Sabatier, Camper, and Artaud, but himself completely refutes 

 their opinion. Even after this, for a long interval, the subject ceased 

 to attract attention, till Pentland brought from Peru the singular 

 skulls described by Tieclmann, (Zeitschrift fur Physiologie, Band V, 

 p. 107,) moulds of which in plaster are to be found in many collec- 

 tions, public and private. Many other heads, artificially deformed in 

 different ways, were subsequently procured from the same part of the 

 world, and at last the publication of the Crania Americana of Morton 

 placed before us a complete history of this custom and of the manner 

 in which these deformations are produced by the Indians of different 

 tribes. The accounts thus received from America had the effect of 

 causing this absurd and pagan custom to be generally regarded as of 

 essentially American origin. Still the real existence of these artifi- 

 cial deformations continued to be called in doubt; the celebrated 

 anatomist, Tiedmann, himself declared for the natural oiigin of these 

 strange forms, and the Swiss traveller and naturalist, Tschudi, shared 

 his opinion. In 1849 appeared a remarkable memoir by M. Rathke, 

 showing that similar skulls had been found near Kertsch, in the 

 Crimea, and calling attention to the book of Hippocrates De Acre, 

 Aguis et Locis, Lib. IV, and a passage of Strabo, which speak of the 

 practice of modifying the shape of the head by means of bandages as 

 being in -use among the microcephalic Scythians. Many similar skulls 

 from the country of Kertsch have since been described by Dr. Carl 

 Meyer. 



In 1854 Dr. Fitzinger published a learned memoir on the skulls of 

 the Avars, a branch of the Uralian race of Turks. . He pointed out 

 that the practice of compressing the skull had been signalized by 

 ancient authors as existing in several parts of the Empire of the East, 

 and at the same time described an ancient skull greatly distorted by 



