PHYSIOLOGICAL RESEARCHES. 77 



is not merely national, and one that can be yielded only to advantages and talents 

 that are shown to be superior. 1 



Dr. Morton undertook to furnish for Mr. Schoolcraft's national work an article 

 on the Physical Type of the American Indians ; but his death occurring before the 

 paper was completed, it was brought to a conclusion by his friend, John S. Phillips, 

 Esq., to whom the Crania Americana was dedicated. 2 



The Inquiry into the Distinctive Characteristics of the Aboriginal Race contains a 

 compendious view of the author's deductions in reference to the arcb geological points 

 of which we are treating; and from that our condensed summary will be mainly, 

 but not exclusively drawn. 



Dr. Morton adopts the general divisions of mankind assumed by Blumenbach, 

 simply substituting the word race for the term " variety" of the German author. 

 While he admits the unity of the human species, he conceives that "each race was 

 adapted from the beginning (by an all-wise Providence) to its peculiar local desti- 

 nation ;" in other words, that " the physical characters which distinguish different 

 races are independent of external causes." He regards the American race as pos- 

 sessing certain physical traits that serve to identify it in localities the most remote 

 from each other. He divides the race into the " Toltecan family," or demi-civilized 

 nations, and the "American family," which embraces all the barbarous tribes of the 

 New World, excepting the Polar tribes, or Mongol Americans. The Eskimaux, 

 and especially the Greenlanders, are held to be a partially mixed race, among 

 whom the physical character of the Mongolian predominates, while their language 

 presents obvious analogies to that of the Chippewas who border them on the south. 

 The two " families" above mentioned are regarded as similar in physical, but less 

 alike in intellectual attributes. 



He says it is an adage among travellers that he who has seen one tribe of Indians 

 has seen all, so much do individuals of this race resemble one another. All possess 

 alike the long, black, lank hair, the brown skin, the heavy brow, the dull, sleepy 

 eye, the full, compressed lips, and the salient, but dilated nose. Although physical 

 diversities do occur, they are mere exceptions to a general rule, and do not alter 

 the peculiar physiognomy of the Indian, which is as undeviatingly characteristic 

 as that of the negro, and cannot be mistaken for that of any other race. This 

 remark, he maintains, is equally applicable to the ancient and modern nations of 

 our continent; for the oldest skulls from the Peruvian cemeteries, the tombs of 

 Mexico, and the mounds of the United States, are of the same type as the heads 

 of the most savage existing tribes. Their physical organization proves the origin 

 of one to have been equally the origin of all. The various civilized nations are to 

 this day represented by their lineal descendants, who inhabit their ancestral seats, 

 and differ in no respect from the wild and uncultivated Indian. He had been of 

 opinion that the ancient Peruvians who inhabited the confines of Lake Titicaca 



1 " The magnificent publication of Dr. Morton, which far exceeds in its comprehensiveness, and in 

 the number and beauty of its engravings, any European work that has yet appeared on national varieties 

 of the skull, comprises nearly the sum of our information on the distinctive characters of the head and 

 skeleton in the several tribes of the New World." — Prichard, Nat. Hist, of Man, 4th ed. II, 502. 



a Hist, and Prosp. of the Indian Tribes, II, 315. 



