Note 266 — Chapter VIII

"The custom of squeezing and flattening the head is still strictly adhered to among the Chinooks. The people bearing the name of Flat Heads are very numerous, but very few among them actually practice the custom. Among the Chinooks it is almost universal. The process is thus effected: The child is placed on a thick plank, to which it is lashed with thongs to a position from which it can not escape, and the back of the head supported by a sort of pillow made of moss or rabbit-skins, with an inclined piece resting on the forehead of the child. This is every day drawn down a little tighter by means of a cord, which holds it in its place, until at length it touches the nose, thus forming a straight line from the crown of the head to the end of the nose. This process is seemingly a cruel one, though I doubt whether it causes much pain, as it is done in earliest infancy, while the bones are soft and cartilaginous, and easily pressed into this distorted shape by forcing the occipital up and the frontal down, so that the skull at the top in profile will show a breadth of not more than an inch and a half or two inches, when in a front view it exhibits a great expansion on the sides, making it at the top nearly the width of one and a half natural heads. By this remarkable operation the brain is singularly changed from its natural state, but in all probability not in the least diminished or injured in its natural functions. This belief is drawn from the testimony of many credible witnesses who have closely scrutinized them, and ascertained that those who have the head flattened are in no way inferior in intellectual powers to those whose heads are in their natural shapes. This strange custom existed precisely the same until recently among the Choctaws and Chickasaws, who occupied a large part of the states of Mississippi and Alabama, where they have laid their bones, and hundreds of their skulls have been procured, bearing marks of a similar treatment, with similar results."—Catlin's American Indians, vol. ii., p. 112.

With respect to the origin of this singular custom, Humboldt is inclined to think that it may be traced from the natural inclination of each race to look upon their own personal peculiarities as the standard of beauty. He observes that the pointed form of the heads is very striking in the Mexican drawings, and continues thus: "If we examine osteologically the skulls of the natives of America, we see that there is no race on the globe in which the frontal bone is more flattened or which have less forehead.[267] (Blumenbach, Decas Quinta Craniorum, tab. xlvi., p. 14, 1808.) This extraordinary flattening exists among people of the copper-colored race, who have never been acquainted with the custom of producing artificial deformities, as is proved by the skulls of Mexican, Peruvian, and Aztec Indians, which M. Bonpland and myself brought to Europe, and several of which are deposited in the Museum of Natural History at Paris. The negroes prefer the thickest and most prominent lips, the Calmucks perceive the line of beauty in turned-up noses. M. Cuvier observes (Leçons d'Anatomie Comparée, tom. ii., p. 6) that the Grecian artists, in the statues of heroes, raised the facial line from 85° to 100°, or beyond the natural form. I am led to think that the barbarous custom, among certain savage tribes in America, of squeezing the heads of children between two planks, arises from the idea that beauty consists in this extraordinary compression of the bone by which Nature has characterized the American race. It is no doubt from following this standard of beauty that even the Aztec people, who never disfigured the heads of their children, have represented their heroes and principal divinities with heads much flatter than any of the Caribs I saw on the Lower Orinoco."—Humboldt's Researches on the Ancient Inhabitants of America.