324 FORMS OF THE SKULL. 



This custom has prevailed as much in North as in South 

 America, and in the islands. Adair says, that the northern 

 savages " flatten their heads in divers forms ; but it is chiefly 

 the crown of tlie head they depress, in order to beautify 

 themselves, as their wild fancy terms it ; for they call us 

 Long-heads, by way of contempt. They fix the tender 

 infant on a kind of cradle, where his feet are tilted above a 

 foot higher than a horizontal position ; his head bends 

 back into a hole made on purpose to receive it ; when he 

 bears the chief part of his weight on the crown of the head, 

 upon a small bag of sand, without being in the least able 

 to move himself*." 



Lastly, the very interesting narrative of the journey to 

 the source of the Missouri, performed by Messrs. Levtis 

 and Clarke, informs us that the attempts at beautifying 

 the head, by flattening its fore-part, have been and are very 

 extensively practised among nearly all the tribes situated on 

 the west of that great range of mountains, running nearly 

 parallel to the west coast of America, from which the wa- 

 ters flow on one side the Pacific, and on the other into the 

 Mississippi and its various tributary streams. 



*' The most distinguishing part of their physiognomy is 

 the peculiar flatness and width of their forehead ; a peculi- 

 arity which they owe to one of those customs by which na- 

 ture is sacrificed to fantastic ideas of beauty. The custom, 

 indeed, of flattening the head by artificial pressure during 

 infancy, prevails among all the nations we have seen west 

 of the Rocky Mountains. To the east of that barrier the 

 fashion is so perfectly unknown, that there the western In- 

 dians, with the exception of the Alliatan or Snake Nation, 

 are designated by the common name of Flat-heads. — 

 Wherever it may have begun, the practice is now universal 

 among these nations. Soon after the birth of the child, 

 the mother, anxious to procure for her infant the recom- 

 mendation of a broad forehead, places it in the compressing 



* History of the North American Indians, p. 8. See also Lavvson's Jlis- 

 tory of Carolina, p. 33 ; and Charlevoix, History de la Nouvelle France, 

 t.iii. pp. 187, 323. 



