Samuel George Morton

“ In my Crania Americana I have given abundant instances of a remarkable vertical flattening of the occiput, and irregularity of its sides, among the Inca Peruvians who were buried in the royal cemetery of Pachacamac, near Lima. These heads present no other deviation from the natural form; and even this irregularity I have thought might be accounted for by a careless mode of binding the infant to the simple board, which, among many Indian tribes of both North and South America, is a customary substitute for a cradle. ”

“ They teach us the value of archæological facts in tracing the primitive condition and cognate relations of the several great branches of the human family; at the same time that they prove to us, with respect to the American race at least, that we have as yet only entered upon the threshold of investigation. ”

“ But the absence of all decoration in the modern buildings, is no proof that they have not been erected by people of the same race with those who have left such profusely ornamented monuments in other parts of Mexico; for the ruins of Pueblo Bonito, in the direction of Navajo, and those of the celebrated Casas Grandes on the western Colorado, which were regarded by Clavigero as among the oldest Toltecan remains in Mexico, are destitute of sculpture or other decoration. ”

“ I grant that this course has been ably pursued by many intelligent writers, and the American Journal of Science is a fruitful depository of such observations.4-* With every acknowledgment to these praiseworthy efforts, let us urge their active continuance. Time and the progress of civilization are daily effacing the vestiges of our aboriginal race; and whatever can be done to rescue these vestiges from oblivion, must be done quickly.
We call attention in the first place, to two skulls from a mound about three miles from the mouth of Huron river, Ohio. ”

“ Nothing in the progress of human knowledge is more remarkable than the recent discoveries in American archæology, whether we regard them as monuments of art or as contributions to science. The names of Stephens and Norman will ever stand preëminent for their extraordinary revelations in Mexico and Yucatan ”

“ It is obviously an imitation of the attitude which the living Indian habitually assumes when sitting at perfect ease, and which has been naturally transferred to his lifeless remains as a fit emblem of repose. ”

“ Could we discover the cranial remains of the older Mexican nations, we should doubtless find many of them to possess the same fanciful type of conformation;8-‡ for if either of the skulls figured above could be again clothed in flesh and blood, would we not have restored to us the very heads that are so abundantly sculptured on the monuments of Central America, and so graphically described by Herrera, when he tells us that the people of Yucatan flattened their heads and foreheads? ”

“ They lay on their backs with their feet to the west.” The male cranium presents, in every particular, the characteristics of the American race. The forehead recedes less than usual in these people, but the large size of the jaws, the quadrangular orbits, and the width between the cheek bones, are all remarkably developed; while the rounded head, elevated vertex, vertical occiput and great inter-parietal diameter, (which is no less than 5·7 inches,) render this skull a type of national conformation. ”

“ Cities have been explored, replete with columns, bas-reliefs, tombs and temples; the works of a comparatively civilized people, who were surrounded by barbarous yet affiliated tribes. Of the builders we know little besides what we gather from their monuments, which remain to astonish the mind and stimulate research. ”

“ To render such relics available to science and art, their history and characteristics should be recorded in the periodicals of the day; by which means we shall eventually possess an accumulated mass of facts that will be all-important to future generalization. ”

“ The outer rooms only seem to be used for dwellings, and are lighted by little windows at the sides, but are entered through trap-doors in the azoteas or roofs. Most of the inner apartments are employed as granaries and storerooms, but a spacious hall in the centre of the mass, known as the estufa, is reserved for their secret councils. ”

“ Every one who is acquainted with the pliable condition of the cranial bones at birth, will readily conceive how effectually this apparatus would mould the head in the elongated or cylindrical form; for, while it prevents the forehead from rising, and the sides of the head from expanding, it allows the occipital region an entire freedom of growth ”

“ Dr. Ruggles has sent me the plaster model of a small, perforated, but irregularly formed stone of this kind, taken from an ancient Indian grave at Fall River in Rhode Island; but Dr. Edwin H. Davis, of Chilicothe, in a letter recently received from him, informs me that he had obtained, during his excavations in that vicinity, no less than “two hundred flint disks in a single mound, measuring from three and a half to five inches in diameter, and from half an inch to an inch in thickness, of three different forms, round, oval and triangular.” ”

“ The bodies are nearly all buried in the sitting posture, [the conventional usage of most of the American nations from Patagonia to Canada,] with the hands either placed on each side of the head, or crossed over the breast.”7-†
[8] This cranium (and another received with it) has that remarkable sugar-loaf form which renders them high and broad in front, with a short antero-posterior diameter, both the forehead and occiput bearing evidence of long continued compression. ”

“ This, we suggest, is a reasonable explanation of the presence of the Caucasian effigy found by Mr. Norman among the deserted ruins of Panuco.
Mr. Stephens has, I think, conclusively proved that the past and present Indian races of Mexico were cognate tribes. I had previously arrived at the same conclusion from a different kind of evidence. What was manifest in the physical man is corroborated by his archæological remains. ”

“ Even the entrance at the upper stories is frequently at the roof. This style of building appears to have been adopted for security against their marauding neighbors of the wilder tribes, with whom they were often at war. ”

“ Stephens6-* from a vault at Ticul, a ruined aboriginal city of Yucatan, and some mutilated but interesting fragments brought me from the latter country, by my friend Mr. Norman.6-†
These crania, together with upwards of four hundred others of nearly sixty tribes and nations, derived from the repositories of the dead in different localities over the whole length and breadth of both Americas, present a conformable and national type of organization, showing the origin of one to be equally the origin of all. ”