6o 



NATURE 



\_May 20, 1880 



into contact, an undue impression has been created as to 

 the extent of the mingling of the races. At all events, 

 little countenance is given by these facts to the view, 

 which rests chiefly in the interpretation of some ancient 

 legends, that at a former time the Tongan influence 

 was much greater in the Fiji Islands than it is at 

 present. 



Races of America. — Two extreme views have been held 

 as to the unity or diversity of the races of man inhabiting 

 the American continent. It has been said on the one 

 hand that "when you have seen one Indian you have 

 seen all," and on the other, that as much difference can 

 be found in the native Americans, as among the in- 

 habitants of the Old World. Both statements are 

 exaggerations, the truth lying between the two. A source 

 of difficulty in studying the cranial conformation of 

 the Americans lies in the wide-spread practice of 

 deforming the head artificially in infancy. This habit 

 prevailed extensively but not uniformly throughout all the 

 western parts of the continent, from Vancouver's Island 

 down to the southern parts of Peru. It also occurred, 

 though less generally, in the southern part of what is now 

 the United States, and in the West India Islands. It 

 was forbidden to the Peruvians in 15S5 by the synod of 

 Lima, and again with severe penalties in 1752. In 

 British Columbia it has only recently fallen into disuse. 

 The custom is, or perhaps we may almost say was, not 

 confined to America. Hippocrates and various other 

 writers of his age, speak of the Macrocepliali, people who 

 dwelt on the eastern shores of the Black Sea, who 

 purposely altered the form of their children's heads. 

 Skulls thus deformed have been found in ancient tombs 

 in the Caucasus (especially near Tiflis) in the Crimea, 

 and, though less numerously, at various places, along the 

 course of the Danube, and extending as far as the south 

 of France. These have been assigned to Avars, Huns, 

 or Tartars, but more probably belong to the Cimmerians, 

 who originally inhabited the region where they are now 

 found most abundantly, and spread westward over 

 Europe some centuries before the Christian era. The 

 custom, though in a modified degree, is scarcely yet 

 extinct in the south of France. Cranial deformation, 

 though usually only of the simple occipital form, is also 

 practised in many parts of Asia and Polynesia, though 

 quite unknown in Africa or Australia. 



Many attempts have been made to classify the various 

 kinds of cranial deformation, but as they pass insensibly 

 into one another, it is not very easy to do so. They may, 

 however, for convenience of description be grouped thus : 

 I. Simple occipital flattening, often probably undesigned, 

 being occasioned by the pressure of the board or hard 

 pillow upon which the child is laid ; this is very common 

 among the ancient Peruvians and also among some 

 Mongol tribes and Polynesians. 2. Simple frontal 

 flattening, also common in Peru, though less so than 

 some of the foUov.'ing forms ; also among the Caribs and in 

 the island of Mallicollo, in the new Hebrides. 3. Fronto- 

 occipital flattening, with lateral (compensatory) expansion, 

 usually unsymmetrical. This, which may be depressed 

 or elevated according to the point at which the greatest 

 occipital pressure is applied, is the commonest form 

 among the Indians of British Columbia and Vancouver's 

 Island, and is also met with in Peru. The head is com- 

 pressed between pads of birch bark and moss from birth 

 to the age of twelve months. During subsequent growth 

 it recovers somewhat from the extremely flattened form 

 that it usually presents at that age. 4. Elongation by 

 lateral as well as frontal and occipital pressure. In this 

 lorm the head is symmetrical, and the sides compressed. 

 It is p/oduced by bandages passing round the forehead, 

 verte.x, and occiput, and is variously modified, according 

 to the mode in which these arc disposed. The Aymara 

 Indians of the neighbourhood of Lake Titicaca, in Peru, 

 some of the tribes in Vancouver's Island, and the Macro- 



cephali of the shores of the Euxine, present examples of 

 this form. 



As far as can be ascertained by observations upon the 

 North American Indians, no impairment of the intellect 

 is produced by these strange alterations of the form of 

 the cranium, and consequently of the brain. The famihes 

 of the chiefs, in which alone it is practised in many tribes, 

 maintain their ascendancy over the lower orders and 

 slaves with undeformed heads. Foville, however, appears 

 to have traced numerous cerebral lesions among the 

 peasant population of France to the custom of tightly 

 bandaging the heads of infants. 



No motive can be alleged for this singular and wide- 

 spread practice, except blind obedience to custom or 

 fashion, precisely as in many analogous cases of barbarous 

 distortions or mutilations of parts of the body, the origin 

 of which is lost in the depths of antiquity. Without look- 

 ing as far off as China, very few men or women in England 

 can boast of feet which are not quite as much altered 

 by artificial compression in youth from the form given by 

 nature as are the heads of the Chinook Indians. The 

 far more injurious constriction of the waist, so commonly 

 practised by women of nations which occupy the highest 

 rank of civilisation yet attained by mankind, is only 

 another example of the same strange propensity to 

 tamper with a form -ivhich good sense as well as good 

 taste ought to teach was the most perfect that could be 

 designed. 



The natural history of the population of the great Ameri- 

 can continent, as it existed before the changes wrought by 

 the European conquest, which followed the adventurous 

 voyage of Columbus, offers an interesting but difficult 

 problem to the anthropologist. Do all the various tribes 

 (1,700 are enumerated by Keane, and these must be but a 

 small portion of those formerly existing), extending from 

 the Polar Sea to Cape Horn, through such various climates, 

 and inhabiting regions so diverse in their physical charac- 

 ters, belong, as many writers have averred, to one primary- 

 division of the human species, or are they capable of being 

 divided into groups, having as strongly-pronounced dis- 

 tinctive characters as are to be found among the inhabi- 

 tants of the old world, as has been stated by others ? 

 Again, if we find difficulty in dividing them into well- 

 marked groups, do we find such uniformity of characters 

 as to lead to the belief that they are all of common 

 origin, or have we reason to think that they are the result 

 of the mingling together in various proportions in different 

 districts of two or more distinct sources of population ? 

 Furthermore, inquiry will naturally be directed to their 

 relation with other people. Whether we consider them 

 as one or as several people, we shall have to ask with 

 which of the races of other parts of the world are they 

 most nearly allied. 



The views till lately held as to the peopling of America, 

 though perhaps under various modifications and disguises, 

 may be grouped under two heads: — (i) That the in- 

 habitants of that continent were a distinct auctothonous 

 or indigenous people, created in the country in which they 

 were found, and therefore not related to those of any 

 other land. This is the theory of the polygenistic school, 

 but is probably not held by many scientific men of the 

 present day. 2. The monogcnists mostly believed that 

 they are descended from an Asiatic people, who in com- 

 paratively recent times passed into America by way of 

 Behrings Straits, and thence spread gradually over the 

 whole continent, as far as Cape Horn, and that their 

 nearest allies must therefore be looked for in the north- 

 eastern regions of Asia. It has also been thought by 

 those who have held the same general views, that at all 

 events a partial peopling of the American continent may 

 have occurred from Southern Asia, by way of the Poly- 

 nesian Islands, or from North Africa, across the Atlantic. 

 The discovery of the great antiquity of the human race in 

 America, as well as in the Old World, has led to an 



