THE CANADIAN JOURNAL.

NEW SERIES.

No. XLI.-SEPTEMBER, 1862.

ETHNICAL FORMS AND UNDESIGNED ARTIFICIAL DISTORTIONS OF THE HUMAN CRANIUM.

BY DANIEL WILSON, LL.D.,

PROFESSOR OF HISTORY AND ENGLISH LITERATURE, UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, TORONTO.

THE differences between man and all other animals appear to be so clearly defined, that the Naturalist was long induced to overlook those which distinguish different races of men, and to regard any diversities of structure or relative proportions in the human form as mere variations from one common or ideal type. Nevertheless the craniologist, at the very commencement of his investigations, is led to recognise certain essential varieties of form; though still tempted, like Blumenbach, to refer all these to some "Caucasian" or other assumed highest type. Before, however, the ethnologist directed his attention to such researches, the artist had sought this type in the beautiful realisations of Greek sculpture; and by such means he determined the long-accepted statuary-scale of the human head and figure. The influence of this artistic ideal on the later speculations of the ethnologist should not be overlooked. It guided Camper in assigning the laws of his facial angle; controlled Blumenbach in his determination of the cranial peculiarities VOL. VII.

X

of leading races of men; and even influenced Prichard in his definition of the symmetrical or oval form of skull which he ascribed to his first division. Against the ideal canons of an antique statuary scale, however, some of the greatest modern masters protested; foremost of whom was Leonardo da Vinci, of whom Bossi remarks: "He thought but little of any general measure of the species. The true proportion admitted by him, and acknowledged to be of difficult investigation, is solely the proportion of an individual in regard to himself, which, according to true imitation, should be different in all the individuals of a species, as is the case in nature." In the features of the face there are the endless varieties of portraiture, controlled by family and national affinities, and so also in the varying proportions of the skull there appears to be an approximation in each race towards a special form. The craniologist accordingly finds in nature his short and truncated; his long and tapering, or "boatshaped;" his high or pyramidal; his broad, flattened, and oval: as well as intermediate forms. But besides those, to each of which a distinctive name has been assigned, attention is being anew directed to a totally distinct class, in which not only the absence of symmetry is suggestive of abnormal structure; but wherein certain special forms are recognised as the result of artificial causes, operating accidentally or by design. Some of these artificial forms have an additional significance from the fact that they are peculiar to man, and originate in causes which distinguish him from all inferior orders of animated nature. This is specially the case with one of the classes of artificial conformation, already traced, in a former number of this Journal, to influences resulting from the mode of nurture in infancy. As the same opinion has been recently reproduced in an English scientific journal as a novel discovery,* a recapitulation of the original idea, with additional illustrations, may not be out of place

here.

In the month of March, 1855, an Indian cemetery was accidentally opened at Barrie, on Lake Simcoe, from which upwards of two hundred skulls are said to have been exhumed, along with bones and Indian relics. Among the Crania preserved in the collection of the Canadian Institute is one of those Indian skulls, selected, no doubt, owing to its unusual form, which could scarcely fail to attract atten

*Nat. Hist. Review, July, 1862. J. B. Davis, M.R.C.S. Eng., &c., On Distortions in the Crania of the Ancient Britons.

tion. It was found in the country of the ancient Hurons; and though the idea was, that it lay among other relics of a battle-field, to which its unusual shape would give countenance, as the indication of some foreign intruder,—yet it is possible that it had been deposited in one of the Ossuaries into which it was the custom of the Huron Indians to gather their scaffolded dead, after they had been exposed for a certain time to decay.

The skull in question is large and massive, and differs essentially from the Huron type of Cranium in its short longitudinal diameter, vertical occiput, and flattening of the whole parieto-occipital region to so marked a degree, that when laid on the occiput it rests as firmly as on the base.

I have already shown, in a former paper,* that the Hurons were characterized by the more elongated, or dolichocephalic form of head. In this respect indeed their crania are prominently distinguished, exhibiting a greater divergence from Dr. Morton's assumed type, than any other of the American Aborigines, if we except the Esquimaux. The Barrie skull, on the contrary, approximates in a considerable degree to the celebrated mound-skull of the Scioto Valley, which Dr. Morton specially selected as "perhaps the most admirably formed head of the American race hitherto discovered. It possesses," he added, "the national characteristics in perfection, as seen in the elevated vertex, flattened occiput, great interparietal diameter, ponderous bony structure, salient nose, large jaws, and broad face. It is the perfect type of Indian conformation, to which the skulls of all the tribes from Cape Horn to Canada more or less approximate."

I formerly showed, from the results of a series of careful measurements of Canadian crania, that the latter remark is not born out by a minute determination of the Algonquin, Iroquois, or Huron cranial type; and more extensive observations have since strongly confirmed me in that conclusion. The mean derived from the measurement of thirty-seven skulls procured from Indian graves within the Huron district, including those of twenty-nine males and eight females, is here placed in comparison with the measurements of the Scioto-Mound and Barrie skulls; and, as will be perceived, presents a striking

contrast:

* Supposed prevalence of one Cranial type throughout the American Aborigines. Canadian Journal, Vol. II., p. 406.

If no artificial element was supposed to affect any of those forms, the Barrie skull would naturally be classed with the former in any such comparison; and even with a full recognition of the artificial influences, for the illustration of which the Barrie skull (Plate I.) is now selected, it forms quite an exceptional instance among crania exhumed within the Huron country. Its markedly brachycephalic character, however, is chiefly determined by its parieto-occipital flattening, with the accompanying parietal expansion; and although the same may be affirmed to some extent of the typical Moundskull, yet it is only in certain respects that the two agree in form or measurements. The important difference in the vertical diameters constitutes an essential distinction between them, the Barrie skull being below the Huron mean, while the Mound-skull is considerably above it. Dr. Morton was familiar with the effects produced by the widely extended practise among the American Aborigines of cranial deformation, and did not overlook its probable influence on certain familiar forms of head, which he assumed to be universally prevalent throughout the Western Hemisphere. Accordingly, while selecting the Scioto Mound-skull as most perfectly illustrating the typical American head, he remarks on its peculiar parieto-occipital conformation :- "Similar forms are common in the Peruvian tombs, and have the occiput, as in this instance, so flattened and vertical, as to give the idea of artificial compression; yet this is only an exaggeration of the natural form, caused by the pressure of the cradle-board in common use among the American nation."

But the vertical flattened occiput, thus referred to as of common occurrence in Peruvian crania, and described as, in its extremest development, only an exaggeration of the American typical form, is by no means peculiar to the New World; and a comparison of the American examples now referred to, with others derived from ancient British cemeteries, may help to throw new and interesting light on

*

some of the customs of Europe's prehistoric tribes. The subject thus referred to was first brought by me, under the notice of ethnologists, in a paper on the supposed American cranial type, read before the American Association for the Advancement of Science, at its Montreal meeting in August, 1857, and submitted to the notice of the Ethnological section of the British Association, at the Dublin meeting in the same year. In this I selected the Barrie skull as exhibiting in a remarkable manner the peculiarities of the vertical occiput; and after quoting the above remarks of Dr. Morton on the corresponding feature, as it occurs both in the Scioto Moundskull, and in many Peruvian crania, the paper thus proceeds :

I think it extremely probable that further investigation will tend to the conclusion that the vertical or flattened occiput, instead of being a typical characteristic, pertains entirely to the class of artificial modifications of the natural cranium familiar to the American ethnologist alike in the disclosures of ancient graves, and in the customs of widely separated living tribes. In this I am further confirmed by the remark of Dr. Morton in reference to the Peruvian crania :— "These heads are remarkable, not only for their smallness, but also for their irregularity; for in the whole series in my possession there is but one that can be called symmetrical. This irregularity chiefly consists in the greater projection of the occiput to one side than the other, showing in some instances a surprising degree of deformity. As this condition is as often observed on one side as the other, it is not to be attributed to the intentional application of mechanical force; on the contrary, it is to a certain degree common to the whole American race, and is sometimes, no doubt, increased by the manner in which the child is placed in the cradle." To this Dr. Morton subsequently added in describing an unsymmetrical Mexican skuil: "I had almost omitted the remark, that this irregularity of form is common in, and peculiar to, American crania."§ The latter remark, however, is too wide a generalization. I have repeatedly noted the like unsymmetrical characteristics in the brachycephalic crania of the Scottish barrows; and it. has occurred to my mind, on more than one occasion, whether such may not furnish an indication of some partial compression, dependent, it may be, on the mode of nurture in infancy, having tended, in their case also, if not to produce, to exaggerate the short longitudinal diameter, which constitutes one of their most remarkable characteristics.

From this it will be seen that, so early as 1857, I had given expression to an idea formed previously to my leaving Scotland in 1853, relative to undesigned artificial changes wrought on crania recovered from Scottish barrows, and which I conceived to be traceable to the

* Canadian Journal, Vol. II., p. 406.

+ Edinburgh Philosoph. Journal, N. S., Vol. VII., p. 1.

Crania Americana, p. 115.

§ Types of Mankind, p. 144.