288 PHYSICAL ETHNOLOGY. 



tlie case, that they are described by traders and voyagers as acute and intelli- 

 gent. They are, moreover, an object of dread to neighboring tribes who retain 

 the normal form of head, and they look on them with contempt as thus bearing 

 the hereditary badge of slaves. 



Tilt; child born to such strange honors is laid, soon after its birth, upon the cradle- 

 board, an oblong piece of wood, sometimes slightly holloAved, and with a cross- 

 board projecting beyond the head to protect it from injury. A small pad of 

 leather, stuffed with moss or frayed cedar-bark, is placed on the forehead and 

 tightly fastened on either side to the board ; and this is rarely loosened until 

 its final removal before the end of the first year. The skull has then received 

 a form which is only slightly modified during the subsequent growth of the 

 brain. But the very same kind of cradle is in use among all the Indian tribes. 

 It is, indeed, varied as to its ornamental adjuncts and non-essential details, but 

 practically it resolves itself, in every case, into a straight board to which the 

 infant is bound ; and as it is retained in a recumbent position, the pressure 

 of its own weight during the period when, as has been shown, the occipital and 

 parietal bones are peculiarly soft and compressible, is thus made to act constantly 

 in one direction. This I assume to have been the cause of the vertical or other- 

 wise flattened occiput in the ancient British brachycephalic crania. The same 

 cause must tend to increase the characteristic shortness in the longitudinal 

 diameter, to produce the premature ossification of certain sutures, and to shorten 

 the zygoma, with probably, also, some tendency to make the arch bulge out in 

 its effort at subsequent full growth, and so to widen the face. 



Fashion regulates to some extent the special form of head aimed at among 

 the, various Flathead tribes. Some compress the whole brain into a flattened disc 

 which presents an enormous forehead in full face; others run to the opposite 

 extreme, and force it into an abrupt slope immediately above the eyebrows, so 

 as to give an idiotic look to the seemingly brainless face. Individual caprice, 

 and probably, also, clumsy manipulation, combine frequently to produce a 

 shapeless deformity of skull, in which the opposite sides present no trace of 

 correspondence, and every vestige of ethnical character is effaced. Among the 

 Newatees, a tribe on the north end of Vancouver's island, the head is forced 

 into a conical shape, by means of a cord of deer's-skin padded with the inner 

 bark of the cedar tree, frayed into the consistency of soft tow. This forms a 

 cord about the thickness of a man's thumb, which is wound round the infant's 

 head, and gradually compresses it into a tapering cone. Commander Mayne, 

 in his narrative of his visit to Columbia and Vancouver island, gives a sketch 

 of an Indian girl, and adds in reference to it : " Those who have only seen cer- 

 tain tribes may be inclined to think the sketch exaggerated, but it was really 

 drawn from measurement, and she was found to have eighteen inches of flesh 

 from her eyes to the top of her head." From the extraordinary amount of de- 

 formity which I have seen produced by such means, it would be unwise to 

 reject any narrative of an intelligent eye-witness relative to extreme examples 

 of such abnormal heads. I should be inclined, however, to suspect that in 

 the case of the girl drawn by Commander Mayne, he was deceived by her 

 mode of dressing her hair. I have eng^i-aved in my " Prehistoric Man"* the 

 head of a Newatee chief of the same conical form, and with the hair gathered 

 into a knot on the top of the head. The latter practice is in constant use for 

 increasing the apparent elevation of the favorite conoid head-form. In all such 

 cases the volume of brain appears to remain little, if at all, affected, and the 

 extreme proportions in length, breadth, or height of the skull must bo limited 

 by the capacity of the brain, whatever be th(; fantastic shape it is made to 

 assume, in the case of the girl from Vancouver's island, part of the extreme 



Prehistoric Mau, Vol. I, p. 317. 



