Skull of the North American Indians. 305 



wild imagination could suggest. The custom of tattooing is not uncommon ; 

 the septum of the nose is so perforated as to admit of shells and feathers; 

 at Queen Charlotte's Island the women make a large incision into the lower 

 lip, so as to contain an oval piece of wood, two inches in length, and from 

 six to eight lines in breadth ; but the most interesting process in respect 

 to Natural History is the compression of the childrens' heads, which it is 

 the object of this paper to describe. The existence of this practice has 

 long been known, and the effects produced by it on the form of the 

 cranium have been noticed by various anatomists ; yet I trust that the 

 following observations will not prove entirely unacceptable, furnished as 

 they are by one whose repeated and personal enquiries, during a residence 

 among the Indians, have rendered the subject practically familiar to him. 

 This custom, although far from being universal, is still pretty widely 

 disseminated over the American continent. Adair, in his History of the 

 American Indians, relates that the tribes about Carolina and New Mexico, 

 flatten the heads of their children by placing small bags of sand over the 

 forehead. In some parts of Brazil and in Peru this custom appears to 

 have been so frequent' as to require the interference of the Spanish ec- 

 clesiastics to prevent it. Among the Caribs of the West Indies its pre- 

 valence is sufficiently well known, and the inhabitants of an extensive 

 district on the north-west coast of America are a nation of flat-heads. 

 This strange custom appears to be altogether unknown to the savage tribes 

 of the Old World, and to be the exclusive privilege of the Aborigines of 

 the New.* 



It is difficult to account for the origin of this strange taste among the 

 Americans ; but there is probably much truth in the remark of Cuvier 

 concerning this subject. He says, " the skull of the American is natu- 

 " rally compressed, and receding, hence a desire to improve what they 

 " considered the beau ideal of their structure, led them to an artificial 

 " means to depress their foreheads still further. The Mexicans, who 



* It would appear, however, that some traces of this deformity formerly 

 were observable among the tribes bordering on the Crimea Genuensis, " cum a 

 Mauris progenitoribus accepissent olim morem, ut infantibus recens natis tem- 

 pera comprimentur, nunc absque ullo compresso Thersitio capite omnino nas- 

 cuntur." Scaliger in Commentar. sup. Theophrast. de causis plant., Lib. V, 

 p. 287. 



