xx HEAD 339 



question naturally arises, whether the important functions 

 belonging to this organ are in any way impaired or affected 

 by its change of form. All observations upon the living 

 Indians who have been subjected to it concur in showing that 

 if any modification in mental power is produced, it must be of 

 a very inconsiderable kind, as no marked difference has been 

 detected between them and the people of neighbouring tribes 

 which have not adopted the fashion. Men whose heads have 

 been deformed to an extraordinary extent, as Concomly, a 

 Chinook chief, whose skull is preserved in the museum at 

 Haslar Hospital, have often risen by their own abilities to 

 considerable local eminence ; and the fact that the relative 

 social position of the chiefs, in whose families the heads are 

 always deformed, and the slaves on whom it is never permitted, 

 is constantly maintained, proves that the former evince no 

 decided inferiority in intelligence or energy. 



Of the Newatees, mentioned above, Wilson says, " The 

 process seems neither to affect the intellect nor the courage of 

 the people, who are remarkable for cunning, as well as fierce 

 daring, and are the terror of surrounding tribes." 



Of the Mallicollese it is expressly stated by George Forster 

 that " they are the most intelligent people we have ever met 

 with in the South Seas ; they understood our signs and 

 gestures as if they had been long acquainted with them, and 

 in a few minutes taught us a great number of words. . . . 

 Thus what they wanted in personal attraction they made up 

 in acuteness of understanding." Cook gives some remarkable 

 instances of the honesty of the " ape-like nation," as he calls 

 them. 



Although the American Indians, living a healthy life in 

 their native wilds, and under physical conditions which cause 

 all bodily injuries to occasion far less constitutional or local 

 disturbance than is the case with people living under the 

 artificial conditions and the accumulated predisposition to 

 disease which civilisation entails, thus appear to suffer little, 

 if at all, from this unnatural treatment, it seems to be other- 

 wise with the French, on whom its effects have been watched 

 by medical observers more closely than it can have been on 

 the savages in America. " Dr. Foville proves, by positive and 



