We call attention in the first place, to two skulls from a mound about three miles from the mouth of Huron river, Ohio. They were obtained by Mr. Charles W. Atwater, and forwarded to Mr. B. Silliman, Jr., through whose kindness they have been placed in my hands. These remains possess the greater interest, because the many articles found with them present no trace of European art; thus confirming the opinion expressed in Mr. Atwater’s letter:—“There are a great many mounds in the township of Huron,” he observes, “all which appear to have been built a long time previous to the intercourse between the Indians and the white men. I have opened a number of these mounds, and have not discovered any articles manufactured by the latter. A piece of copper from a small mound is the only metal I have yet found.”
The stone utensils obtained by Mr. Atwater in the present instance, were, as usual, arrow heads, axes, knives for skinning deer, sling-stones, and two spheroidal stones on which I shall offer some remarks in another place. The materials of which these articles are formed, are jasper, quartz, granite stained by copper, and clay slate, all showing that peculiar time-worn polish which such substances acquire by long inhumation.
The two skeletons were of a man and a woman. “They had been buried on the surface of the ground and the earth raised over them. They lay on their backs with their feet to the west.” The male cranium presents, in every particular, the characteristics of the American race. The forehead recedes less than usual in these people, but the large size of the jaws, the quadrangular orbits, and the width between the cheek bones, are all remarkably developed; while the rounded head, elevated vertex, vertical occiput and great inter-parietal diameter, (which is no less than 5·7 inches,) render this skull a type of national conformation. ([Fig. 1.])
The female head possesses the same general character, but is more elongated in the occipital region, and of more delicate proportions throughout.[5-*]
Similar in general conformation to these are all the mound and other skulls I have received since the publication of my work on American Crania, viz. five from the country of the Araucos, in Chili, from Dr. Thomas S. Page of Valparaiso; six of ancient Otomies, Tlascalans and Chechemecans, from Don J. Gomez de la Cortina of the city of Mexico; three from near Tampa, in Florida, from Dr. R. S. Holmes, U. S. A.; one from a mound on Blue river, Illinois, from Dr. Brown of St. Louis; and four sent me by Lieut. Meigs, U. S. A., who obtained them from the immediate vicinity of Detroit, in Michigan. To these may be added two others taken from ancient graves near Fort Chartres, in Illinois, by Dr. Wistlizenus of St. Louis; a single cranium from the cemetery of Santiago de Tlatelolco, near the city of Mexico, which I have received through the kindness of the Baron von Gerolt, Prussian minister at Washington; and another very old skull from the Indian burying grounds at Guamay, in Northern Peru, for which I am indebted to Dr. Paul Swift. Last but not least, I may add the skull obtained by Mr. Stephens[6-*] from a vault at Ticul, a ruined aboriginal city of Yucatan, and some mutilated but interesting fragments brought me from the latter country, by my friend Mr. Norman.[6-†]
These crania, together with upwards of four hundred others of nearly sixty tribes and nations, derived from the repositories of the dead in different localities over the whole length and breadth of both Americas, present a conformable and national type of organization, showing the origin of one to be equally the origin of all.
To this prevading cranial type I have already adverted. Even the long-headed Aymaras of Peru, whom, in common with Prof. Tiedemann, I at first thought to present a congenitally different form of head from the nations who surrounded them, are proved, by the recent discoveries of M. Alcide D’Orbigny, to have belonged to the same race as the other Americans, and to owe their singularly elongated crania to a peculiar mode of artificial compression from the earliest infancy.[6-‡]
But there is evidence to the same effect, but of more ancient date than any we have yet mentioned. The recent explorations of Dr. Lund in the district of Minas Geraes, in Brazil, have brought to light human bones which he regards as fossil, because they accompany the remains of extinct genera and species of quadrupeds, and have undergone the same mineral changes with the latter. He has found several crania, all of which correspond in form to the present aboriginal type.[6-§]