364 Morton's Crania Americana. 



developed laterally, or backwards, and still preserve its iden- 

 tity and uses. This, indeed, is Dr. Morton's own conclusion, in 

 regard to the brain in the flat-headed Indians. He gives an 

 interesting and authentic description of the instrument and pro- 

 cess by means of which the fiat-head tribes of Columbia River 

 compress the skull, and remarks that " besides the depression 

 of the head, the face is widened and projected forward by the 

 process, so as materially to diminish the facial angle ; the breadth 

 between the parietal bones is greatly augmented, and a striking 

 irregularity of the two sides of the cranium almost invariably 

 follows ; yet the absolute internal capacity of the skull is not 

 diminished, and, strange as it may seem, the intellectual facul- 

 ties suffer nothing. The latter fact is proved by the concurrent 

 testimony of all travellers who have written on the subject." 

 Dr. Morton adds, that in January, 1839, he was gratified with a 

 personal interview with a full blood Chenouk, in Philadelphia. 

 He is named William Brooks, was 20 years of age, had been 

 three years in charge of some Christian missionaries, and had ac- 

 quired great proficiency in the English language, which he un- 

 derstood and spoke with a good accent and general grammatical 

 accuracy. His head was as much distorted by mechanical com- 

 pression, as any skull of his tribe in Dr. Morton's possession. 

 " He appeared to me," he adds, " to possess more mental acute- 

 ness than any Indian I had seen, was communicative, cheerful, 

 and well mannered." The measurements of his head were 

 these : longitudinal diameter, 7.5 inches ; parietal diameter, 6.9 

 inches ; frontal diameter, 6.1 inches ; breadth between the cheek 

 bones, 6.1 inches; facial angle, about 73 degrees. Dr. Morton 

 considers it certain that the forms of the skull produced by com- 

 pression, never become congenital, even in successive generations, 

 but that the characteristic form is always preserved, unless art 

 has directly interfered to distort it. pp. 206, 207.* 



* Mr. George Combe, in his late lectures in New Haven, mentioned, that in May, 

 1839, he had been introduced, in New York, to the Rev. Jason Lee, who had been 

 a missionary among the Indians, 2000 miles beyond the Rocky Mountains, and 

 who had with him Thomas Adams, a young Indian of about 20 years of age, of 

 the Cloughewallah tribe, located about 25 miles from the Columbia River. This 

 young man's head had been compressed by means of a board and cushions, in in- 

 fancy. Mr. C. examined his head, and found that the parietal was actually greater 

 than the frontal and occipital diameter. The organs in the superciliary ridge of 

 the forehead were fully developed ; the upper part of the forehead was flat and 



