THE INC A PERUVIANS. 117 



most barbarous and demoralised condition. " Both the men and the women cut 

 their cheeks with pointed flints ; they also deform the heads of their children by 

 placing, at birth, a small board on the forehead and another on the occiput, and 

 drawing them tighter day by day until the child has attained the age of four or 

 five years. By this process the head becomes broad from side to side, and narrow 

 from back to front. Not satisfied with this deformity they shave the hair from 

 the top of the head, and the nape of the neck, letting it grow on the sides only ; 

 and this not being combed or otherwise arranged, but rude and entangled, adds 

 to the hideousness of their physiognomy."* The historian then gives the names 

 of six nations or tribes to whom the above description is applicable. 



It thus appears that the custom of moulding the cranium into artificial forms 

 is of great antiquity and prevalence in Peru. We have seen that it existed among 

 what we have termed the civilised primitive Peruvians, that it was common 

 among many barbarous tribes at the invasion of the Incas, and that it continued to 

 be a popular fantasy when the Spaniards took possession of the country. Professor 

 Blumenbach quotes from Aguirre, part of a decree of the Ecclesiastical Court of 

 Lima in the year 1585, forbidding parents, under certain specified penalties, to 

 compress or distort the heads of their children in the various modes which were 

 in vogue even at that late period ;t and that the custom was not extinct a very 

 few years ago, is evident from the statement of Mr. Skinner, an English traveller. 

 Speaking of the Connivos of Peru, he remarks, " that all their attention is bestowed 

 on preserving a firm texture of the body, and on flattening the forehead and hinder 

 part of the head [in the upward direction] with a view of resembling, as they say, 

 the full moon, and of becoming the strongest and most valiant people in the world. 

 To attain the former of these aims, they bind the waist, and all the joints, of their 

 male offspring, from their tender infancy, with hempen bands. With a view to 

 the latter, they wrap the forehead in cotton, and lay on it a small square board^ 

 applying another similar board to the occiput, and adjusting them with cords until 

 the intention has been answered. Thus the head is elongated above, and flattened 

 both before and behind. "J 



The Omaguas, who, towards the middle of the last century, inhabited the 



* Comment. Reales, Lib. IX, Cap. VIII. 



t"Cupientes penitus extirpare abiisum, et siiperstitionem, quibus Indi passim infantum capita 

 formis exprimunt, qnos ipsi vocant Caito, Oma, Opalla," &c. Vide Blumenbach, De Gen. Humani 

 Var. Nat, p. 220. — Laurence, Led, on ZooL p. 377. 



X Present State of Peru, p. 2C9. 

 30 



