THROUGHOUT THE AMERICAN ABORIGINES. 421 



Ontonagon, La Point, the Apostle Islands, and the St. Louis 

 River, on Lake Superior ; as well as such chance opportunities as 

 occur in the nighbourhood of Niagara Falls, and on the streets of 

 our Canadian towns and villages. Physiognouiically they present the 

 wide and prominent mouth, high cheek-bones, and broad face, so 

 universally characteristic of the American Indian ; but they by no 

 means present in a remarkable degree the wide and massive lower 

 jaw, which has been noted as of universal occurrence among the Red 

 Indians. Still more noticeable is the absence of the aquiline nose, 

 so characteristic generally of the true Indian in contradistinction to 

 the Esquimaux. The eye may be fully depended on for physiog- 

 nomical characteristics ; it is of much less value in testing varia- 

 tions from any assumed cranial type, especially in reference to 

 comparatively minute divergencies of measurement. Nevertheless, 

 their heads appear to me, to be of short longitudinal diameter, as com- 

 pared with those of other tribes in part displaced by them ; but — in 

 so far as may be judged from the observation of the living head 

 covered with the thickly matted and long coarse hair of the Indian, 

 —they are not remarkable for vertical elevation. 



It is by no means an easy thing to obtain actual measurements of 

 Indans' heads. I have found an Indian not only resist every attempt 

 that could be ventured on, backed by arguments of the most practi- 

 cal kind ; but on the solicitation being pressed too urgently, he trem- 

 bled, and manifested the strongest signs of fear, not unaccompanied 

 with anger, such as made a retreat prudent. In other cases where 

 the Indian has been induced to submit his head to examination, his 

 Squaw has interfered and vehemently protested against the danger- 

 ous operation. The chief object of dread seems to be lest thereby 

 the secrets of the owner should be revealed to the manipulator ; but 

 this rather marks the more definite form of apprehension in the mind 

 of the christianized Indian. "With others it is simply a vague dread 

 of power being thereby acquired over them ; such as Mr. Paul Kane 

 informs me frequently interfered to prevent his taking the portraits 

 of the Indians of the North-west, unless by stealth. 



The following table presents the results of an examination of six 

 pure-breed Chippeways, at the Indian reserve on Lake Couchiching ; 

 with the addition of two others, the only examples of the same nation, 

 given by Morton, in the Crania Americana. Prom these it will be 

 seen that, while in the majority of them a certain approximation of 

 the longitudinal to the parietal diameter is discernible, it is of a very 

 partial nature, except in one instance (No. 5) where a manifest 



