The Chinook Sign of Freedom: 
A Study of the Skull of the Famous Chief 
Comcomly 
By T. D. STEwarT 
Curator, Division of Physical Anthropology 
United States National Museum 
Smithsonian Institution 
[With 6 plates] 
November Vth [1805]. ... We had not gone far from this village [Wahkia- 
cums] when the fog cleared off, and we enjoyed the delightful prospect of the 
ocean—that ocean, the object of all our labors, the reward of all our 
anxieties .... 
November 20th. ...AS we went along the beach we were overtaken by 
several Indians, who gave us dried sturgeon and wappatoo-roots, and soon met 
several parties of Chinnooks returning from the camp. When we arrived 
there we found many Chinnooks; two of them being chiefs, we went through 
the ceremony of giving to each a medal, and to the most distinguished a flag. 
Their names were Comcommoly and Chillahlawil.—From History of the Ea- 
pedition under the Command of Lewis and Clark, by Elliott Coues (1893). 
. . . The process by which [head] deformity [among the Chinooks] is effected 
commences immediately after birth. The infant is laid in a wooden trough, 
by way of cradle. The end on which the head reposes is higher than the rest. 
A padding is placed on the forehead of the infant, with a piece of bark above 
it, and is pressed down by cords, which pass through holes on each side of the 
trough. As the tightening of the padding and the pressing of the head to the 
board is gradual, the process is said not to be attended with much pain. The 
appearance of the infant, however, while in this state of compression, is whim- 
sically hideous, and “its little black eyes,” we are told, “being forced out by 
the tightness of the bandages, resemble those of a mouse choked in a trap.” 
About a year’s pressure is sufficient to produce the desired effect, at the end 
of which time the child emerges from its bandages a complete flathead, and 
continues so through life. It must be noted, however, that this flattening of 
the head has something in it of aristocratical significancy, like the crippling 
of the feet among Chinese ladies of quality. At any rate, it is a sign of free- 
dom. No slave is permitted to bestow this enviable deformity upon his child; 
all the slaves, therefore, are roundheads.—From Astoria; or, Anecdotes of an 
Enterprise Beyond the Rocky Mountains, by Washington Irving (1849). 
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