Note 231 — Chapter IV
Reading edition
This author (Dr. Morton), who has given us such numerous and valuable facts, as well as the linguists who have studied these American languages with indefatigable zeal, have arrived at the conclusion that both race and language in the new world are unique. I am obliged to avow that the facts advanced by Morton himself, and that the study of numerous skulls with which he has enriched the museum of Stockholm, have conducted me to a wholly different result. I can only explain the fact by surmising that this remarkable man has allowed the views of the naturalist to be warped by his linguistic researches. For, if the form of the skull has anything to do with the question of races, we cannot fail to see that it is scarcely possible to find anywhere a more distinct distribution into dolichocephalæ and brachycephalæ than in America. It would be only necessary, in order to show this, to direct attention to certain of the delineations in his own work, where the skull of the Peruvian infant (Pl. 2), the Lenni-Lenape (Pl. 32), the Pawnee (Pl. 38), the Blackfoot (Pl. 40), etc., as clearly present the dolichocephalic form as on the other hand his Natchez (Pl. 30 and 31) and the greater part of his representations of the skulls of Chile, Peru, Mexico, Oregon, etc., are distinct types of the brachycephalic. Conclusive, however, as the plates are, I should scarcely have ventured to advance these remarks, if the rich series of our own collection, and the numerous and excellent figures of Blumenbach, Sandifort, Van der Hoeven, etc., did not declare in favor of my opinion. (
Retzius
in
Smithsonian Report
, 1859, p. 264.)
Latham, in Natural History of the Varieties of Man, p. 452, says: “As to the conformation of the skull, a point where (with great deference) I differ with the author of the excellent Crania Americana, the Americans are said to be brakhy-kephalic, the Eskimo dolikho-kephalic.” He quotes Morton’s tables to contradict his (Morton’s) conclusions.