The custom of artificially flattening the head has, upon investigation, been shown not to be peculiar alone to the aborigines of America, but to have been practised by many of the semi-civilized peoples of antiquity in different parts of Europe and Asia. Hippocrates, in his treatise De Aëre, Aquis, et Locis, has described this savage practice among a people whom he calls Machrocephali, supposed to have inhabited the region near the Palus Mæotis, in the vicinity of the Caucasus. He says, “The custom stood thus: as soon as the child was born, they immediately fashioned its soft and tender head with their hands, and by the use of bandages and proper arts, forced it to grow lengthwise, by which the spherical figure of the head was prevented and the length increased.” Strabo refers to a people occupying a portion of Western Asia, who were addicted to the same custom and had foreheads projecting beyond their beards.[252] Pliny places them in Asia Minor,[253] while Pomponius Mela places the Machrocephali on the Bosphorus.[254] Blumenbach has figured in his first decade, a compressed skull obtained by him from Russia and probably originally from one of the tumuli of the Crimean Bosphorus, where it is supposed to have been exhumed during the Russian occupation. In 1843, Rathke figured and described in Müller’s Archiv für Anatomie, another example of the compressed human crania, obtained from an ancient grave near Kertsch in the Crimea. In 1820, Count August von Brenner obtained on his estate at Fuersbrunn near Grafenegg in Austria, a skull of similar characteristics. This was, upon examination, decided to have belonged to an Avarian Hun. Prof. Retzius described it in the Proceedings of the Royal Academy of Sciences of Stockholm in 1844, adducing arguments to strengthen that supposition. Dr. Tschudi, however, conceived the idea that it might have been a Peruvian skull which had been brought to Europe as a curiosity during the reign of Charles V. and afterwards thrown aside. His communication appeared in Müller’s Archiv für Anatomie. The opinion of the learned traveller was, however, subsequently reversed by the discovery at Atzgersdorf, near Vienna, of another and similar cranium. More recently others have come to light at the Village of St. Roman in Savoy, and in the Valley of the Doubs near Mandense. Dr. Fitzinger has probably investigated this subject with more thoroughness than any other writer, and has shown in his articles in the Transactions of the Imperial Academy of Vienna, that this custom was native to the Scythian region in the vicinity of the Mœtian Moor, and prevailed in the Caucasus and along the shores of the Black and Caspian seas and the Bosphorus. Among the most interesting relics cited as sustaining his views is an ancient medal struck in commemoration of the destruction of Aquileia by Attila the Hun in A.D. 452, and bearing the bust of that “Scourge of God.” The head represented in profile is of precisely the same shape as those of the other Avir skulls, having a flattened form in a vertical and oblique direction. Thierry in his Attila has traced the origin of the custom of flattening the skull, to the Huns, who, descending from their home upon the steppes of Northern Asia, left their remains upon many a field in Europe. One of these deformed skulls was discovered in 1856 by J. Hudson Barclay, in a large cavern near the Damascus Gate at Jerusalem. The skeleton was of unusually large size and decayed, but the skull, which was pretty well-preserved, was brought to this country and is preserved in the collection of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia.[255] Dr. J. Atkinson Meigs concluded, upon careful examination, that its occiput had been flattened by pressure during childhood. The testimony of Dr. Tschudi, rendered undesignedly, amounts to the best of evidence of the transition of this custom from the eastern shores of Asia to Peru, and this isolated instance has been strengthened beyond question or doubt by the abundant proof which has been brought to light since attention was directed to the subject.[256]
In referring to the methods by which artificial compression was brought about in America, Prof. Wilson remarks: “Trifling as it may appear, it is not without interest to have the fact brought under our notice by the disclosures of ancient barrows and cysts, that the same practice of nursing the child and carrying it about, bound to a flat cradle-board, prevailed in Britain and the North of Europe long before the first notices of written history reveal the presence of man beyond the Baltic or the English Channel, and that in all probability the same custom prevailed continuously from the shores of the German Ocean to Behring Straits.”[257] Dr. L. A. Gosse testifies to the prevalence of the same custom among the Caledonians and Scandinavians of the earliest times,[258] and Dr. Thurman has treated the same peculiarity of the early Anglo-Saxon.[259] It is a matter of no little surprise to the inquirer in this field to learn that this system of skull distortion introduced into Southern Europe by the Asiatic hordes which overran it in the fifth century has been perpetuated, though somewhat modified, and at present is in vogue in the south of France.[260] The distinguished Dr. Foville, in charge of the Asylum for Insane in the Department Seine-Inférieure and Charenton, has figured this process in his work on the Anatomy of the Nervous System, as well as a number of skulls which have striking Peruvian resemblances. The artificial form in this case is produced by the use of peculiar head-dresses or bandages.[261] The Egyptians placed a pillow under the neck and not for the head; hence the elongated crania characteristic of the race, and it is not a little remarkable that the Feejee Islanders have the same custom at the present day. The Kankas of the Sandwich Islands produce the flattened occiput by supporting the infant’s head always in the palm of the hand.[262] The South Sea Islanders have a flattened occiput, as Pickering describes it, projecting but slightly beyond the line of the neck.[263] Prof. Wilson comments upon this fact as follows: “Traces of purposed deformation of the head among the islanders of the Pacific, have an additional interest in their relation to one possible source of the South American population by Oceanic migration, suggested by philological and other independent evidence. But for our present purpose the peculiar value of these modified skulls lies in the disclosures of influences operating alike undesignedly, and with a well-defined purpose, in producing the very same cranial conformation among races occupying the British Islands in ages long anterior to earliest history, and among the savage tribes of America and the simple islanders of the Pacific in the present day.”[264] It is a well-known fact that flattening the skull has prevailed from the earliest times in most parts of the American Continent, especially on the Pacific coast. From the extreme north to Southern Peru, flattening the skulls was regarded as an artistic improvement on nature and was practised with a maternal solicitude, if we judge from the customs of the modern Chinooks, deserving of a higher aim. More centrally and toward the Atlantic border the custom was not so carefully and generally practised, unless we may except the case of the Natchez, who carried it to almost the extreme reached at present by the Columbia River tribes. The object of this strange transformation is believed to have been twofold, “to give,” as Torquemada supposes, in referring to the Peruvians, “a fierce appearance in war,” and to obtain the mark of a royal and dominant race, a fashion which seems to have been transmitted without a variation, from its Mongol source. The Chinooks consider it the mark of superiority, and will not permit the tribes subject to them to practise it. Mr. Paul Cane, has illustrated this subject with drawings made during his visit to the Columbia and Vancouver’s Island, while Dr. Pickering, Mr. Hale and others, have described the hideous and beastly aspect of the singular people practising the deformation. Skull flattening among the American tribes may be classified as intentional and unintentional. To the class of intentionally flattened skulls we may assign those of the twenty or more tribes of the North-west coast, the Natchez, the ancient Mayas, the Peruvians, and some of the more central and eastern South American tribes. The North-western flatheads subject the head of a child during the first eight or ten months of its life to pressure produced by means of a cradle or cradle-board, provided with a board which rests upon the forehead and tied down upon it by means of cords extending to the foot of the cradle, while the other end is connected to the head of the cradle with a hingelike attachment.
Chinooks (Flat-Heads), after Catlin.
The Natchez produced the artificial form by bandaging the infant’s head to a well-cushioned cradle-board by means of strips of deer-skin.[265] The Caribs bandaged the head with pieces of wool, and gave it a very quadrangular shape. The Choctaws produced artificial compression by means of a bag of sand.[266] The unintentional flattening of the skull arose from the quite general use of the cradle-board without any board for pressure, or the custom common among many American tribes of the mother suckling the child over her shoulder, a practice widely prevalent in Africa and among savage nations. In the former instance it is but reasonable to suppose that the form of a tender and pliable skull would be modified more or less by the shape of the hard cradle-board, and by the position in which it was placed upon its rest. This fact accounts for the slight occipital compression of the mound skulls and also for the irregularity of the flattening in many cases. The latter process, that of nursing the child from its position on the shoulder or back would no doubt subject the head to a slight pressure, perhaps in most cases in a lateral direction.
The general prevalence of the unnatural custom of flattening the skull on the eastern border-land of Europe and among the numerous tribes of the western coast of America, together with its presence in Polynesia as a connecting link, we think justifies us in concluding that it originated among the wild hordes of the northern steppes of Asia, from which centre it spread in lines of radiation until it reached the remote localities in which recent research has found it.[267] This fact is suggestive of a remote intercourse between peoples separated by seas and mountains, if it does not serve as an argument for the unity and common origin of the human family.
A careful examination of the remains of the pre-historic races other than the measurement of crania has contributed largely to our fund of information concerning their life and habits. Science has rendered us pretty familiar with some of the diseases to which they were subject. Dr. Farquharson has described a singular manifestation of disease of the cervical vertebræ, shown in a peculiar roughening of the articular surfaces, and also by a true or bony anchylosis of these points. He concludes that the people of the mounds must have been possessed of a considerable degree of civilization and facilities for the care of the sick during a long period, in order to have effected the cure which the condition of the bones indicate had taken place.[268] One of the most alarming discoveries, however, is that which apparently shows the general prevalence of syphilis. That this loathsome disease was common among the various tribes of Equinoctial America is attested to by the discoverers and their successors, and has been much commented upon, and held by some authors to have been of American origin. The most recent supporter of this view is Professor Jones, to whom we have already referred.[269] He found in most of the mounds which he explored in Tennessee bones bearing syphilitic nodes, and believes them to be the oldest traces of the disease in existence. Dr. Farquharson made similar discoveries in the Iowa and Illinois mounds. Prof. Putnam, however, attributes the nodes to other diseases. That flattening of the leg-bone or tibia, peculiar to pre-historic man in Europe, and perhaps the result of rugged exertion in climbing mountains and traversing the country with that rapidity which the chase required where the horse is wanting, is more noticeable in the remains of some of the Mound-builders than in any other people. This peculiarity of the tibia called platycnemism, is probably a provision of nature, securing a firmer and better defined process upon which the muscles of the leg could fasten themselves, and its prominence among the people of the mounds indicates the possession of great pedestrian powers.[270]
The singular custom of perforating the skull after death (and possibly during life) is shown to have been in vogue by the discovery of a number of crania at the River Rouge Mound in Michigan with artificial apertures. No light as yet has been thrown upon the significance of this strange practice.[271] The nearest approach to the natural condition and characteristic physiognomy of the pre-historic inhabitants of this continent, is observable in the Peruvian mummies collected in latitude 18° 30´ S., on the shore of the Bay of Chacota, near Arica, by Mr. Blake, and transferred by him to Boston. Many others have since been exhumed, and though embalmed and buried in a climate which preserves the brightest colors of the garments with which they were enshrouded, still the shrivelled condition of the corpses furnishes us the assurance that their type of features can never be truly recovered from nature. Dr. Morton has figured the head of one of these mummies in Plate I of the Crania Americana, from which the physiognomy may be partially restored by the aid of a vivid imagination. Notwithstanding the temptation which presents itself, and one which has been sufficiently indulged already, it would certainly be idle to speculate as to what that type might have been. However, one feature of the Peruvian mummies has been preserved true to life, and is of the greatest value in determining ethnic relations. The silicious sand and marl of the plain southward of Arica, where the most remarkable cemeteries are situated, is slightly impregnated with common salt as well as nitrate and sulphate of soda. These conditions, together with the dry atmosphere rivalling that of Egypt, and in which fleshy matter dries without putrefaction, the human hair has been perfectly preserved, and comes to us as one of the best evidences of the diversity of the American races yet produced. In general it is a lightish brown, and of a fineness of texture which equals that of the Anglo-Saxon race.[272] Straight, coarse, black hair is universally characteristic of the Red Indians, and is known to be one of the last marks of race to disappear in intermarriage with Europeans. The ancient Peruvians appear, from numerous examples of hair found in their tombs, to have been an auburn-haired race. Garcilasso, who had an opportunity of seeing the body of the king Viracocha, describes the hair of that monarch as snow-white.[273] Haywood has described the discovery at the beginning of this century of three mummies in a cave on the south side of the Cumberland River, near the dividing line of Smith and Wilson Counties in Tennessee. They were buried in baskets, as Humboldt has described some of the Peruvians to bury, and the color of their skin was said to be fair and white, and their hair auburn and of a fine texture.[274] The same author refers to several instances of the discovery of mummies in the limestone and saltpetre caves of Tennessee with light yellowish hair.[275] Prof. Jones supposes that the light color of these so-called mummies of Tennessee and Kentucky was due to the action of lime and saltpetre.[276]
We have every reason to believe that the men of the mounds were capable of executing in sculptures reliable representations of animate objects. The perfection of the stone carvings, as well as the terra-cotta moulded figures of animals and birds obtained from the mounds, have excited the wonder and admiration of their discoverers. It was evidently a favorite pastime for those primitive artists to reproduce the human features, for effigies and masks have often been exhumed together with other sculptures. The perfection of the animal representations furnish us the assurance that their sculptures of the human face were equally true to nature.[277] The accompanying figures of sculpture and masks together with those found in the sculpture of the Mayas and Nahuas, shown in a future chapter, furnish us with a twofold argument: first, that an American type of physiognomy as such did not exist; that, upon the contrary, it was as variable and diversified as can now be found among the peoples of Europe or elsewhere; second, that a strong resemblance between some of the sculptures of the mounds and those of Mexico exist. It is a remarkable fact that those of Palenque furnish the most striking likeness to those of the Mississippi Valley.[278] There is, perhaps, no means of ascertaining of what color the pre-historic Americans were, certainly not of the Mound-builders; but judging from the great variety of tints and shades that prevail among the wild tribes of North America alone, we may conclude that no argument in favor of an American race can be based upon color.[279]
