Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 7.pdf/189

Rh. They have not a great many words, and almost every one is uttered with a strong guttural sound. They count to ten, and afterwards by tens and hundreds. These are the Flathead Indians, and we believe the only Tribe that practice this singular custom upon the Continent of America, or upon the surface of the globe. How it has happened that the name has been given to a Tribe inhabiting a country upon the upper part of that branch of the Columbia, commonly known in the States by the name of Clarke's River, and separated by several hundred miles from the only people who are known to have ever practiced this custom, we are unable to imagine. Some ignorance and mistake, however, have thus widely misplaced the name, and instead of having given it to those whose most unnatural fancy would have rendered it highly appropriate, they have wrongly designated by it a people whose heads are as round as our own. The same error has likewise been committed in giving to a Tribe inhabiting a country on the North side of Snake River the name of Nez Pierce, to whom the custom of piercing the nose is not at all peculiar, but which is practiced extensively by the Tribes along the coast, all of whom are separated from these who bear the name by a distance of two or three hundred miles, and between whom the lofty range of the Cascade Mountains, (which intervenes,) admits but little intercourse. The custom of piercing the nose, for the purpose of wearing in it shells, quills, rings, etc., is practiced somewhat by all the aboriginal inhabitants of America. But with the Tribes inhabiting these shores of the Pacific it has been almost universal and is still so with some. With those, however, who have had much intercourse with the whites, this, together with the custom of flattening the head, is beginning to be less observed.

The custom of flattening the head originated, probably, in the idea, that it was unbecoming the dignity of a