286 ■ OBSERVATIONS ON CRANIA 



that the typical or average skull of this collection is small and low and 

 of medium length as compared with its breadth ; that it has a retreat- 

 ing forehead, a prominent occiput, and is slightly scaphocephaly or roof- 

 shaped along the sagittal suture. Its chief development is in the occipital 

 region ; so much so, indeed, that a plane perpendicular to the horizon 

 drawn through the auricular openings would divide the skull into two 

 unequal parts, of which the posterior portion would be much the larger. 

 The face is small and narrow, even as compared with the Peruvians. It 

 is more prognathic than the white man, though it by no means reaches 

 the extreme in that respect. The nasal opening is of medium size, while 

 the orbit is large The malar bones are broad and slope back from the 

 median line of the face, differing widely in this respect as also in the 

 prominence of the nasal bones from the Greenland Eskimo, whose face 

 is flat. 



Tried by any craniometrical standard, this cannot be said to be a high 

 order of skull ; but if judged by the contents of their graves, this people, 

 except in their ignorance of the manufacture of pottery, had reached a 

 phase of development equal to anything found on the eastern slope of the 

 continent. Certainly their work in chipped and polished stone and in shell 

 is not surpassed by anything yet revealed by the mounds ; while their large 

 stone mortars (portable mills), and their steatite ollas and comalis used for 

 cooking purposes, indicate an advance in the domestic arts that, so far as is 

 yet known, is peculiarly their own.* 



Compared with the other collections of crania in Table II, it will be 

 found that in the indices of breadth and height this skull approaches some- 

 what closely the Pah Ute and what Dr. Wilson calls the Algonquin (Canada) 

 type, though smaller than the latter in every way, when its measurements 

 of length, breadth, and height are considered absolutely and not relatively. 

 From the broad, high, square head of the Moundbuilder, with its rounded, 

 dome-like crest, it is separated by an impassable barrier. Between the Es- 

 kimo of the Northwest coast and those from Greenland, considered solely 

 with reference to the index of breadth, it occupies a medium position, though 



* See introductory chapter by Mr. Putnam, pages 17, 18, for the reasons for placing the Califor- 

 nians in the "lower status of barbarism," notwithstanding their want of knowledge of the potter's art. 

 Also, pages 14 and 273 in relation to the absence of pottery. 



