160 CRANIA AMERICANA. 



pointed upwards, owing to a custom of artificially compressing them from the 

 period of the child's birth, until it attains the age of nine or ten years."* The 

 people thus described are said to inhabit the province of Tula ; and it is curious 

 to observe, that this name was also that of the Toltecan capital of Anahuac, and 

 signified a place of reeds. The same name is found in Texas and Guatemala, 

 indicating the migrations of the Toltecan nation. It is, therefore, a reasonable 

 presumption, that the Natchez were a colony of the old Toltecan stock.f 



The Natchez lived very much excluded from intercourse with the adjacent 

 nations, excepting the Chetimaches. They inhabited the banks of the Mississippi 

 in three principal villages near the city which now bears their name ; but the last 

 remnant of the nation not long since occupied a small village on the Talipoosa 

 river, in Alabama. During the late war between the United States and the Creek 

 Indians, these Natchez joined the army of General Jackson, but since that period 

 their name appears to exist only in history.J 



PLATES XX AND XXI. 



NATCHEZ. 



The extraordinary cranium of which two views are given on the annexed 

 plates, was obtained from a mound near the city of Vicksburg, state of Mississippi, 

 by Dr. W, Byrd Powell, of New Orleans, who has furnished me with the following 

 brief memorandum. 



" This skull is a fac-simile of another obtained at Natchez, but in a better 

 state of preservation. It was obtained from a mound which was full of bones for 

 the most part in a decomposed state. The drawings I send you are remarkably 

 accurate ; and the following are a few of the most remarkable phrenological 

 measurements, derived from the skull itself: 



" From individuality to occipital spine 5^ inches, 



'' From destructiveness to destructiveness 51 inches. 



"From cautiousness to cautiousness 6 A- inches. 



* Garcilaso de la Vega, Hist, de la Florida, Lib. IV, cap. 13. — Instead of nine or ten years, 

 (nueve a diez anos,) the time employed in the process was probably that number of months. 



t M'CuLLOH, Researches, p. 271. — Mr. Nuttall thinks that the place called Quigalia in De Soto's 

 narrative, and the place where that brigand expired, was within the Natchez territory. — TravJn 

 t^r leans as, p. 263. 



X Nuttall, Trav. p. 234. 



