174 



REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1887. 



In the process of flattening the head there is another form of crib 

 or cradle into which the child is placed, much in the form of a small 

 canoe, dug out of a log of wood, with a cavity just large enough 

 to admit the body of the child and the head also, giving it room to 

 expand in width, while from the head of the cradle there is a sort of 

 lever, with an elastic spring, that comes down on the forehead of the 

 child and produces the same effect as the one I have described. The 

 child is wrapped in rabbit-skins and placed in this little coffin like 

 cradle, from which it is not in some instances taken out for several 

 weeks. 



The bandages over and about the lower limbs are loose and repeatedly 

 taken off in the same day, as the child may require cleansing. But the 

 head and shoulders are kept strictly in the same position, and the breast 



Fig. 8a. 

 The Chinuk method oe Flattening the Head. 



( Plate 210j£, Vol. n, CatlirTs Eight Years. ) 



given to the child by holding it up in the cradle, loosing the outer end 

 0£ the lever that comes over the nose and raising it up or turning it 

 aside so as to allow the child to come at the breast without moving its 

 head. The length of time that the infants are carried in these cradles 

 is three, five, or eight weeks, until the bones are so formed as to keep 

 their shape. 



This cradle has a strap that passes over the woman's forehead whilst 

 the cradle rides upon her back, and if the child dies during its subjection 

 to this rigid mode its cradle becomes its coffin, forming a little canoe, in 

 which it lies floating on the water in some sacred pool. (Gatlin, vol. 

 II, p. 110.) 



