484 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1023 



American or European; the upper incisors of the Indian present 

 throughout, with infrequent individual exceptions, an especially im- 

 portant feature: They are on the inside, or lingually, characteris- 

 tically shovel-shaped, that is, deeply and peculiarly concave, with a 

 marked border surrounding the concavity. 2 The ears are rather large. 



7. The neck, as a rule, is of only medium length and never thin in 

 health ; the chest is mostly somewhat deeper than in average whites ; 

 the breasts of the women are of medium size to somewhat above 

 medium, and often more or less conical in form, the true hemispheri- 

 cal type being a rarity. In the females, the disproportion between 

 the pelvic region and the shoulders is less marked than in American 

 whites. There is an absence of steatopygy; the lumbar curve is 

 moderate. The lower limbs are somewhat less shapely and generally 

 less full than in whites; the calf in the majority is rather slender, 

 more so than in the average whites or negroes. 



8. The hands and feet, as a rule, are of relatively moderate di- 

 mensions, and what is among the most important distinguishing fea- 

 tures of the Indian, the relative proportions of his forearms to arms 

 and those of the distal parts of the lower limbs to the proximal 

 (or, in the skeleton, the radio-humeral and tibio-femoral indices), 

 are in general throughout the two parts of the continent of similar 

 average value, which differs from that of both the whites and the 

 negroes, standing again more or less in an intermediary position. 



9. In the Indian skeleton, from Canada to Tierra del Fuego, be- 

 sides the characteristics hitherto mentioned, point after point of 

 important resemblance or identity are met with which mark une- 

 quivocally the many distinct tribes as descendants of one and the 

 same older group of humanity or ancestral stock, and serve to dis- 

 tinguish them from other peoples except those with which they have 

 a common prehistoric origin. Such features include, besides those 

 relating to the skull, such highly distinctive traits as general platy- 

 brachy in the humerus, frequent platymery in the femur, and fre- 

 quent platycnaemy in the tibia; high frequency of perforation of 

 the septum in the humerus; great rarity of the supracondyloid 

 process in any form; and many other conditions. There are tribal 

 or local differences in these respects, but on the whole the similarity 

 of the skeletal parts throughout the continent is such that a classifica- 

 tion of the Indians into more than one original race is quite im- 

 possible. 



Taking all the above facts into consideration, and remembering 

 that whatever differences are observable in the Indians in any di- 

 rection are equaled if not exceeded in other large fundamental 



2 See " Shovel-Shaped Teeth." Am. Jour. Phys. Anthrop., Washington, 1020, III, No. 4. 



