PHYSICAL ETHNOLOGY. 287 



* 



results here ascribed to it is proved by the premature ossification of sutures in 

 many of the artificially deformed American crania. 



Among the numerous objects of ethnological interest brought home by the 

 United States Exploring Expedition, and now in the possession of the Smith- 

 sonian Institution, is a collection of thirty-four Flathead skulls. These I have 

 examined wifilx minute care. Some of them exhibit the most diverse forms of 

 distortion, with the forehead sloping away at an abrupt angle from the eye- 

 brow, or flattened into a disc, so as to present in front the appearance of a hydro- 

 cephalous head, and in profile the side of a narrow wedge. ]\Iany of them are 

 also characterized by Avormian bones and other abnormal formations at the 

 sutures, and the distinct definition of a true supra-occipital bone is repeatedly 

 apparent. In the majority of them the premature ossification, and the occa- 

 sional entire obliteration of sutures, the gaping of others, and even traces of 

 fracture, or false sutures, may be observed. 



It is marvellous to see the extraordinary amount of distortion to which th« 

 skull and brain may be subjected without seemingly affecting either health or 

 intellect. The coveted deformity is produced partly by actual compression, and 

 partly by the growth of the brain and skull being thereby limited to certain 

 directions'. Hale, the ethnographer of the Exploring Expedition, after de- 

 scribing the process as practiced among the Chinooks, remarks : " The appear- 

 ance of the child when just released from this confinement is truly hideous. 

 The transverse diameter of the head above the ears is nearly twice as great as 

 the longitudinal, from the forehead to the occiput. The eyes, which are natu- 

 rally deep-set, become protruding and appear as if s(][ueezed partially out of the 

 head."* Mr. Paul Kane, in describing to me the same appearance, as witnessed 

 by him on the Columbia river, compared the eyes to those of a mouse strangled 

 in a trap. Tlio appearance is little less singular for some time after the child 

 has been freed from the constricting bandages, as shown in an engraving from 

 one of Mr. Kane's sketches of a Chinook child seen by him at Fort Astoria.! 



In after years the brain, as it increases, partially recovers its shape; and in 

 some of the deformed adult skulls one suture gapes, while all the rest are ossi- 

 fied ; and occasionally a fracture or false suture remains open. An adult skull 

 of the same extremely deformed shape, among those brought home by the Ex- 

 ploring Expedition, illustrates the great extent to which the brain may be sub- 

 jected to compression and malformation Avithout affecting the intellect. It is 

 that of a Nisqually chief, procured from his canoe-bier in Washington Terri- 

 tory. (No. 4549.) The internal capacity, and consequent volume of brain, is 

 95 cubic inches. The head is compressed into a flattened disc, with the fore- 

 head receding in a straight line from the nasal suture to the crown of the head, 

 Avhile the lambdoidal suture is on the same plane with the foramen magnum. 

 The sutures are nearly all completely ossified, and the teeth ground quite flat, 

 as is common with many of the tribes in the same region, and especially Avith 

 the Walla- Walla Indians on the Columbia river, Avho live chiefly on salmon, 

 dried in the sun, and invariably impregnated with the sand Avhich abounds in 

 the barren AVaste they occupy. I assume the urumpaired intellect of the Nis- 

 qually chief from his rank. The Flathead tribes are in the constant habit of 

 making slaves of the Roundheaded Indians ; but no slave is allowed to flatten 

 or otherwise modify the form of her child's head, that being the badge of Flat- 

 head aristocracy. As this has been systematically pursued ever since the tribes 

 of the Pacific coast Avere brought under the notice of Europeans, it is obvious 

 that if such superinduced deformity developed any general tendency to cerebral 

 disease, or materially affected the intellect, the result would be apparent in the 

 degeneracy or extirpation of the Flathead tribes. But so far is this from being 



* Ethnography of the U. S. Exploring Expedition, p. 21G. 

 t Prohistoiic Muu, Vol. II, p. 320. 



