294 American Association. 



INDIAN PAINTINGS AND ANTIQUITIES. 



" Professor Wiison read soine remarks on the collection of Mr. 

 Paul Kane of Indian paintings and curiosities. He stated that 

 Mr. Kane had had opportunities of seeing Indian customs to an 

 extent possessed by very few^ inasmuch as he had travelled for 

 five years through the north-west territory as far as the Russian 

 boundary. The paintings exhibited by Mr. Kane related to the 

 half-breed tribes round the Red River ; the Chippewas ; the 

 Assineboines ; the Blackfeet ; and the Crees. He had also por- 

 traits of the Wallah-Wallah Indians, and Flat-heads. Among 

 these vpas the picture of a woman whose head was reduced 

 almost to a disc with the edge presented to the spectator, toge- 

 ther with a child belonging to the same woman, going through 

 the process of head flattening. There was also among the curio- 

 sities exhibited, a skull of a Flathead, illustrating a subject of 

 very great importance, as bearing on the theories of Dr. Morton 

 as to the type of the American head. There was another portrait 

 of a distinguished Esquimaux, taken from that country where the 

 Esquimaux and the Red Indians meet together, and seemed to 

 blend, instead of showing that marked physical difference which 

 Dr. Morton supposed he had discovered between the Americans 

 and the Esquimaux. There was also a piece of carved ivory from 

 the extreme North- Western region, which struck him as having 

 a close conformity to Mexican sculptures. If there were really 

 this conformity, it would have a great effect in establishing facts 

 with respect to race and migration from north to south. Other 

 objects consisted of pieces of slate cut into a double bas-relief, 

 having that singidar admixture of natural objects, with grotesque 

 fancies, such as were seen in Gothic art of the fourteenth century. 

 These objects were Babine pipes. In one of them the artist 

 showed that the had observed the ships, &c., of the Europeans, 

 and had reproduced these objects on his native pipe. This was 

 interesting, as showing how slight were the grounds upon which 

 some generahzations in archaeology were made. There were 

 found in the Ohio mounds many pipes, deposited upon what were 

 considered by Squier and Davis as altars, and the sculptures on 

 these pipes were considered as establishing a certain degree of 

 civilization among the people who built tlie mounds. Yet these 

 Babine pipes proved that such objects might be produced by races 

 still remaining in a state little removed from the lowest barbarism. 

 He had been induced to make particular inquiries respecting 



