270 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 1 33 



FONTANELS, HEAD SHAPING, BEAUTIFYING THE FACE 



The closing of the fontanels is considered a normal development, 

 but it was noted that those of a healthy child close earlier than do those 

 of a sickly one. They are expected to have closed by the time the 

 child begins to walk. The mother takes notice whether the fontanels 

 are closing, but no one looks upon it as an event worth celebrating. 



My informants knew of no custom of skull formation; the face, 

 however, was molded, at times. Araucanians were not able to identify 

 adults' skulls ( flattened in the inion region and in the temporal regions, 

 back of the ears) in the collection of Parque Nacional de Lanin, which 

 were found in interments in the Araucanian country. A 70-year-old 

 man examined the skulls and remarked, 'Tf our people ever did any- 

 thing to flatten the head, I never heard them tell about it. Nor did 

 we ever tie boards to the baby's face, as you say some Mapuche in 

 Chile do." 



In all probability, however, it was institutional to mold the child's 

 face so that the nose conformed to one recognized as an Araucanian 

 nose, and one that was thought to beautify the face. Such a nose, not 

 unlike a Roman nose with its tip dipping downward, was seen on many 

 older men and women. (PI. 60.) Since younger persons seldom 

 possessed such a nose, one is led to believe the custom no longer pre- 

 vails. A 60-year-old woman was not interested in the custom. Her 

 father had told her that formerly every child's nose was stroked so 

 as to bring the nose forward and that its chin and cheeks were formed 

 also. "But I do not believe in it. The way one is born, that is the 

 way one is expected to be." According to a man in his seventies, only 

 an occasional child had its face molded : "If one of our children has 

 a face so fat that its nose does not show up very well, its mother will 

 stroke its cheeks backward like this [stroking with palms of both 

 hands, simultaneously, toward ears]. We do not want our people to 

 have ugly faces. I am glad to hear that some of those Mapuche in 

 Chile are doing something to the faces of their children to do away 

 with those flattened noses that some of them have when they grow 

 up. Some have ugly faces. We call such faces chap dsyiiu [flat- 

 nosed] ; ® the Argentines call them chatos." 



6 All Araucanian words were checked against Felix Jose de Augusta's Dic- 

 cionario (1916), if found there. Before using the Diccionario for the pronuncia- 

 tion of words, the reader is advised to consult Appendix A, Phonetic key to the 

 Araucanian language. 



