ARTIFICIAL DEFORMATION OF CHILDREN. 223 



Las Casas (Apologdtica Historia. Madrid, 1875, chap. 34) remarks that in Peru 

 head distortion was distinctive of the Inca family and of the highest nobility. 

 "Privilegio grande concedian los del Peru a" alguhos seriores y que ellos querian fa- 

 vorecer" (p. 396, vide Marcot, notes). 



Major, R. H. (Select Letters of Christopher Columbus, etc. Loudon, 1870. Second 

 edition, Hakluyt So. Pub.) Dr. Chanca, fleet surgeon on Columbus's second voyage, 

 says, of the native and Carib -women in the West Indies, that the latter wore "on 

 each leg two bands of woven cotton, the one fastened round the knee, the other 

 round the ankle; by this means they make the calves of their legs large, and the 

 abo re-mentioned parts very small. * * * By this peculiarity we distinguished 

 them" (p. 30). 



Dr. Chanca supposed this custom to depend upon an idea that the distortion was 

 becoming — ''que esto me parece que tienen ellos por cosa gentil" (p. 30). 



De Rochefort, C. (Histoire Naturelle, etc., des lies Antilles. Rotterdam, 1658. 

 4to.) Notice of head and nose flattening among the Caribs (p. 382). 



Humboldt and Bonpland. (Voyage, etc. Paris, 1819. 4to, seconde partie, p. 11. 

 Relation Historique.) Distortions practiced by the Caribs on the Orinoco (p. 235). 



Squier, E. G. (Nicaragua, etc. New York, 1852. 8vo, Vol. n.) Head-flattening 

 among aborigines. Process aud local origin of custom (p. 345). Vide Relacion of 

 Fray Bobadilla on the same points. (Archivo de Iudias.) ? 



Heriot, G.. (Travels Through the Can adas. London, 1807. 4to.) "The Caraibs 

 have their foreheads flattened. * * * The head of the infant is compressed into 

 this shape by placing on its brow a piece of board tied with a bandage, which is al- 

 lowed to remain until the bones have acquired consistence" (p. 348). 



Heriot, G. (Travels Through the Canadas. London, 1807. 4to.) Carib girls have 

 a cotton sock woven to the leg, and "so closely * * * that the calf thereby ac- 

 quires more thickness and solidity than it would naturally possess" (p. 307). 



Armas, Juan I. de. (Les Cranes dits DeTorrne's. Havana, 1885. ) This is a paper read 

 before the Anthropological Society of Havana, November, 1885, to prove that mechani- 

 cal deformation of the head was never practiced in the West Indies or on the continent. 



Graells, Vilanova and Areas. (Rapport pr^sente a Madrid, le 24 Mars, 1871.) This 

 was to the effect that certain crania from Cuba, taken to be flattened Carib skulls, 

 could not be identified as artificially deformed, but were probably natural heads. 

 The text is, " having noticed that in the front and back part of the head the depres T 

 sion is not uniform, the commission is inclined to consider the flattening as natural, 

 etc." These skulls seem to have been found by Dou R. Ferrer, who very truly says 

 that they can not be regarded as specimens of head-flattening among the Caribs, be- 

 cause there were never any Caribs in Cuba. (De Armas, Cranes dits D6forme's, p. 7.) 



De Armas (Les Cranes dits De"forru6s) says that no such practice could have been 

 general in America for various reasons, viz, it was difficult, tedious, and painful, and 

 would have been destructive to the intellect (?) ; also that the Indians, though sav- 

 ages, were men with natural feelings toward their offspring which would have pre- 

 vented them from perpetrating a custom so destructive as distortion of the head (p. 

 14 et seq.). Having given this illustration of his knowledge of the literature of an- 

 thropology, he declares that neither among the Peruvian mummies nor in the exist- 

 ing race could von Tchudi and Rivero discover a justification of the theory of me- 

 chanical deformation. A fact, and a singular one, but no more decisive than Robert- 

 son's statement that the mound skulls of North America are all normal (pp. 14, 15). 

 In conclusion he remarks that " there is no basis, scientific, historical, or rational, 

 on which to rest the affirmation that there were * * * and are * * * parts 

 of America in which the natural formation of the head was (or is) modified by me- 

 chanical means." And more particularly is this a self-evident truth with regard to 

 the Caribs of the Lesser Antilles: first, because none of the earliest chroniclers 

 speak of the custom ; and second, because the crania of tins people have not the form 

 attributed to them. Of course it was not possible for de Annas to deny the unsym- 



