Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 17.djvu/755

Rh pressure, it bulges out sideways to compensate for the shortening in the opposite direction (Fig. 10). This form is very often unsymmetrical, as the flattening boards, applied to a nearly spherical surface, naturally incline a little to one side or the other; and when this once commences, unless great care is used, it must increase until the very curious oblique flattening so common in these skulls is produced. This is the ordinary form of deformity among the Chinook Indians of the Columbia River, commonly called "Flat-heads." It is also most frequent among the Quichuas of Peru.

The second form of deformity (Figs. 7, 11, and 12) is produced by constricting bandages of deer's hide, or other similar material, encircling the head behind the ears, usually passing below the occiput behind, and across the forehead, and again across the vertex, behind the coronal suture, producing a circular depression. The result is an elongation of the head, but with no lateral bulging, and with no deviation from bilateral symmetry. This was the form adopted with trifling modifications by the Macrocephali of Herodotus, by the Aymara Indians of Peru, and by certain tribes, as the Koskeemos, of Vancouver Island. The "déformation Toulousaine" is a modification of the same form.

The brain, of course, has had to accommodate itself to the altered shape of the osseous case which contained it; and the question naturally arises, whether the important functions belonging to this organ are in any way impaired or affected by its change of form. All observations upon the living Indians who have been subjected to it, concur in showing that if any modification in mental power is produced, it must be of a very inconsiderable kind, as no marked difference has been detected between them and the neighboring tribes which have not adopted the fashion. Men whose heads have been deformed to an extraordinary extent, as Concomly, a Chinook chief, whose skull is preserved in the museum at Haslar Hospital, have often risen by their own abilities to considerable local eminence, and the fact that the relative social position of the chiefs, in whose families the heads are always deformed, and the slaves on whom it is never permitted, is constantly maintained, proves that the former evince no decided inferiority in intelligence or energy.

Although the American Indians, living a healthy life in their native wilds, and under physical conditions which cause all bodily lesions to occasion far less constitutional or local disturbance than is the case