414 THE PRACTICE OF HEAD-MOULDING. 



different in the west. The Sachet Indians of De Fuca's 

 Straits wear pieces of bone or wood passed through the 

 cartilage of the nose ; the Classet Indians cut their noses 

 when they capture a whale ; among the Babines, who live 

 north of Columbia River, the size of the underlip is the 

 standard of female beauty.* A hole is made in the underlip 

 of the infant, in which a small bone is inserted ; from time 

 to time the bone is replaced by a larger one, until at last a 

 piece of wood, three inches long and an inch and a half 

 wide, is inserted in the orifice, which makes the lip pro- 

 trude to a frightful extent. The process appears to be very 

 painful. 



Owing to the almost universal custom of fastening babies 

 to a cradle-board, the American skulls are characterised by a 

 flattened occiput. This peculiarity does not now occur in 

 European heads, but it is found in many ancient skulls from 

 various parts of the old continents, and indicates, as pointed 

 out by Vesalius, Grosse, and Wilson, that the cradle-board, 

 though long abandoned, was at one time used in Western 

 Europe, as it is even now among the Indians of North 

 America. The extraordinary practice of moulding the form 

 of the head was also common to several of the Indian tribes. 

 It prevailed in Mexico and Peru, in the Carib Islands, and 

 among the savage tribes of Oregon. Among the Natchez the 

 deformity is described by the historian of De Soto's expedition 

 as consisting of an upward elongation of the cranium, until 

 it terminated in a point or edge. The Choctaws, though 

 enemies of the Natchez, " improved " their heads in the same 

 way. Their children were placed upon a board, and a bag 

 of sand was laid upon the forehead, " which, by continual 

 gentle compressure, gives the forehead somewhat the form of 

 a brick from the temples upwards, and by these means they 



* Kane's Indians of North America, p. 242 ; Vancouver, I.e. vol. ii., pp. 280, 

 408. 



