470 



Bibliographical Notices. 



tiousness and vigilance, in regard to every action, to be the mental 

 characteristics of the American race. 



Dr. Morton commences his Cranioscopy with the Peruvian head, 

 and after describing and representing the naturally and often artifi- 

 cially flattened and retreating forehead, and the extraordinary elon- 

 gation backwards of the occiput in this race, refers to the very na- 

 tural question, — how a people, with crania so small and so badly 

 formed, could have arrived at the degree of civilization which archi- 

 tectural remains and historical evidence prove them to have done ? 

 He holds that the country was civilized before the advent of the 

 Incas, and that these anciently civilized people constituted the iden- 

 tical nation whose extraordinary skulls he has represented. With- 

 out fully assenting to this opinion, it must be admitted, that there 

 is no further evidence of the existence of a race anterior to that 

 which preceded the Incas, except the mere suspicion that it would 

 require better- formed heads than those in question to erect the Cy- 

 clopean monuments of Peru. 



We are next conducted by Dr. Morton to the crania of the Pata- 

 gonian in the south ; to those of the nations on the Orinoco, and of 

 the tribes of Brazil ; to the Mexican head, with its large and massive 

 developments, its full, broad, but retreating forehead, and great in- 

 terparietal breadth ; and to the singular artificially- elevated heads of 

 the Natchez. 



He then proceeds to the tribes of eastern North America, and to 

 the nations of the west and the Colombia district, representing and 

 describing the artificially- depressed crania of the Flatheads. 



An inquiry into the geographical distribution of the mounds, and 

 an examination of the skulls from these tumuli, leads the Doctor to 

 consider the people who reared them to have belonged to the great 

 Toltecan race. 



Lastly, the examination of the skulls of the Esquimaux, the Mon- 

 gul American of the North, conducts us to the only example of 

 Asiatic configuration in the western hemisphere. 



From his extensive inquiries and opportunities for observation, 

 Dr. Morton concludes, 1. That the American race differs essentially 

 from all others, not excepting the Mongolian ; and that the feeble 

 analogies of language, and the obvious ones of civil and religious 

 institutions, do not prove at the most anything beyond casual or co- 

 lonial communication with the Asiatic nations, and that even these 

 analogies may be accounted for in the mere coincidence arising from 

 similar wants and impulses in nations inhabiting similar localities ; 

 2. that the American nations, with the exception of the Polar 

 tribes, are of one race and one species, but of two great families, 

 which resembled each other in physical, but differed in intellectual 

 characters ; and, 3 . that the cranial remains discovered in the 

 mounds from Peru to Wisconsin belong to the same race, and pro- 

 bably to the Toltecan family. 



These conclusions contain much that must still remain doubtful in 

 the present state of the question ; but Dr. Morton has effected a most 

 important service in the cause of natural science in contributing a 



