NO. II MELANESIANS AND AUSTRALIANS HRDLICKA 45 



one word in the reports of any of these that would suggest the pres- 

 ence in these regions of any people but Indians. Diguet's portraits 

 (1899) of the few survivors of the Lower Calif ornians, except where 

 the individual is plainly a mixblood, show characteristic Indian physi- 

 ognomies, without trace of anything extraneous. 



SKELETAL REMAINS (lOVVER CALIFORNIA) 



The American studies of the skulls and bones of the Californian, 

 southwestern, and Mexican Indians have shown nothing that does not 

 fall within the range of variation of the Indian."' 



The United States National Museum has seven adult skulls from 

 the east coast of Lower California, several of which show red paint. 

 One, U.S.N.M. no 61398, from the vicinity of La Paz, collected by 

 L. Belding — one of the original Ten Kate specimens — is painted red 

 but is distinctly Negroid (African). It shows, moreover, a marked 

 scaphocephaly due to premature union of the sagittal suture, a fre- 

 quent and highly characteristic feature of the African Negro. The 

 skeletal parts, also stained red, show a marked case of rickets, a disease 

 absent in the Indians and so far as known also in the Melanesians, 

 but common in the American colored people. The bones show marks 

 of no great age and may well be late post-Columbian. The skeleton 

 seems to be unquestionably that of an African Negro, who, judging 

 from the rickets, was probably born in America. 



Of the remaining six skulls, five are plainly enough Indian, though 

 not of the common Indian types. One alone, U.S.N.M. no. 148213, 

 from Espiritu Santo Island, is in its vault rather strongly remi- 

 niscent of some Melanesian types, but it differs from these in the teeth, 

 the glabella, the nasion-orbital region, the malars, the alveolar pro- 

 trusion, and other particulars. One can readily see how, without 

 sufficient American material for comparison, the opinion that such 

 a specimen was Melanesian might be formed by reputable men of 

 science. Such opinion, however, would fail to take into consideration 

 the fact that the vaults of skulls of the same cranial indices, par- 

 ticularly in the very long, narrow, and high, as in the short, broad, 

 and low skulls, resemble each other considerably all over the earth, 

 regardless of race; and it would fail to realize the possibilities in 

 American as well as other skulls, under related conditions, of related 

 developments. 



""Hrdlicka (1906, 1927, 1931).. See also report on crania measured by 

 Kroeber, Loud, Gifford, and Hooton in Gifford, E. W. (1926). 



