Inhabiting the lower parts of the Columbia, are a small tribe, and
correctly come under the name of Flat Heads, as they are almost
the only people who strictly adhere to the custom of squeezing and
flattening the head. +Plate+ 209, is the portrait of a Chinook boy,
of fifteen or eighteen years of age, on whose head that frightful
operation has never been performed. And in +plate+ 210, will be seen
the portrait of a Chinook woman, with her child in her arms, her own
head flattened, and the infant undergoing the process of flattening;
which is done by placing its back on a board, or thick plank, to which
it is lashed with thongs, to a position from which it cannot escape,
and the back of the head supported by a sort of pillow, made of moss
or rabbit skins, with an inclined piece (as is seen in the drawing),
resting on the forehead of the child; being every day drawn down a
little tighter by means of a cord, which holds it in its place, until
it at length 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 very cruel one, though I doubt whether it
causes much pain; as it is done in earliest infancy, whilst 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 shape; 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.
In the process of flattening the head, there is often another form of
crib or cradle, into which the child is placed, much in the form of a
small canoe, dug out of a log of wood, with a cavity just large enough
to admit the body of the child, and the head also, giving it room to
expand in width; while from the head of the cradle there is a sort of
lever, with an elastic spring to it that comes down on the forehead
of the child, and produces the same effects as the one I have above
described.
The child is wrapped in rabbits’ skins, and placed in this little
coffin-like looking cradle, from which it is not, in some instances,
taken out for several weeks. The bandages over and about the lower
limbs, and as high up as the breast, are loose, and repeatedly taken
off in the same day, as the child may require cleansing; but the head
and shoulders are kept strictly in the same position, and the breast
given to the child by holding it up in the cradle, loosing the outer
end of the lever that comes over the nose, and raising it up of turning
it aside, so as to allow the child to come at the breast, without
moving its head.
[Illustration: 210½]
The length of time that the infants are generally carried in these
cradles is three, five, or eight weeks, until the bones are so formed
as to keep their shapes, and preserve this singular appearance through
life.
This little cradle has a strap, which passes over the woman’s forehead
whilst the cradle rides on her back; and if the child dies during its
subjection to this rigid mode, its cradle becomes its coffin, forming
a little canoe, in which it lies floating on the water in some sacred
pool, where they are often in the habit of fastening the canoes,
containing the dead bodies of the old and the young; or which is often
the case, elevated into the branches of trees, where their bodies
are left to decay, and their bones to dry; whilst they are bandaged
in many skins, and curiously packed in their canoes, with paddles to
propel, and ladles to bail them out, and provisions to last, and pipes
to smoke, as they are performing their “long journey after death, to
their contemplated hunting-grounds,” which these people think is to be
performed in their canoes.
In +plate+ 210½ letter _a_, is an accurate drawing of the
above-mentioned cradle, perfectly exemplifying the custom described;
and by the side of it (letter _b_,) the drawing of a Chinook skull,
giving the front and profile view of it. Letter _c_, in the same plate,
exhibits an Indian skull in its _natural_ shape, to contrast with the
_artificial_.[18]
This mode of flattening the head is certainly one of the most
unaccountable, as well as unmeaning customs, found amongst the
North American Indians. What it could have originated in, or for
what purpose, other than a mere useless fashion, it could have been
invented, no human being can probably ever tell. The Indians have many
curious and ridiculous fashions, which have come into existence, no
doubt, by accident, and are of no earthly use (like many silly fashions
in enlightened society), yet they are perpetuated much longer, and
that only because their ancestors practiced them in ages gone by. The
greater part of Indian modes, however, and particularly those that are
accompanied with much pain or trouble in their enactment, are most
wonderfully adapted to the production of some good or useful results;
for which the inquisitive world, I am sure, may for ever look in vain
to this stupid and useless fashion, that has most unfortunately been
engendered on these ignorant people, whose superstition forbids them to
lay it down.
It is a curious fact, and one that should be mentioned here, that
these people have not been alone in this strange custom; but that it
existed and was practiced precisely the same, until recently, amongst
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 incontrovertible evidence
of a similar treatment, with similar results.
The Choctaws who are now living, do not flatten the head; the custom,
like that of the _medicine-bag_, and many others, which the Indians
have departed from, from the assurances of white people, that they were
of no use, and were utterly ridiculous to be followed. Whilst amongst
the Choctaws, I could learn little more from the people about such a
custom, than that “their old men recollected to have heard it spoken
of”—which is much less satisfactory evidence than inquisitive white
people get by referring to the grave, which the Indian never meddles
with. The distance of the Choctaws from the country of the Chinooks,
is certainly between two and three thousand miles; and there being no
intervening tribes practicing the same custom—and no probability that
any two tribes in a state of Nature, would ever hit upon so peculiar
an absurdity, we come, whether willingly or not, to the conclusion,
that these tribes must at some former period, have lived neighbours
to each other, or have been parts of the same family; which time and
circumstances have gradually removed to such a very great distance from
each other. Nor does this, in my opinion (as many suppose), furnish
any very strong evidence in support of the theory, that the different
tribes have all sprung from one stock; but carries a strong argument to
the other side, by furnishing proof of the very great tenacity these
people have for their peculiar customs; many of which are certainly not
general, but often carried from one end of the Continent to the other,
or from ocean to ocean, by bands or sections of tribes, which often get
“run off” by their enemies in wars, or in hunting, as I have before
described; where to emigrate to a vast distance is not so unaccountable
a thing, but almost the _inevitable result_, of a tribe that have got
set in motion, all the way amongst deadly foes, in whose countries it
would be fatal to stop.
I am obliged therefore, to believe, that either the Chinooks emigrated
from the Atlantic, or that the Choctaws came from the West side of the
Rocky Mountains; and I regret exceedingly that I have not been able as
yet, to compare the languages of these two tribes, in which I should
expect to find some decided resemblance. They might, however, have been
near neighbours, and practicing a copied custom where there was no
resemblance in their language.
Whilst among the Choctaws I wrote down from the lips of one of their
chiefs, the following tradition, which seems strongly to favour the
supposition that they came from a great distance in the West, and
probably from beyond the Rocky Mountains:—_Tradition_. “The Choctaws,
a great many winters ago, commenced moving from the country where
they then lived, which was a great distance to the West of the great
river, and the mountains of snow; and they were a great many years on
their way. A great medicine-man led them the whole way, by going before
with a red pole, which he stuck in the ground every night where they
encamped. This pole was every morning found leaning to the East; and
he told them that they must continue to travel to the East, until the
pole would stand upright in their encampment, and that there the Great
Spirit had directed that they should live. At a place which they named
_Nah-ne-wa-ye_ (the sloping hill); the pole stood straight up, where
they pitched their encampment, which was one mile square, with the men
encamped on the outside, and the women and children in the centre;
which is the centre of the old Choctaw nation to ‘this day.’”
In the vicinity of the mouth of the Columbia, there are, besides the
_Chinooks_, the _Klick-a-tacks_, _Cheehaylas_, _Na-as_, and many other
tribes, whose customs are interesting, and of whose manufactures, my
Museum contains many very curious and interesting specimens, from which
I have inserted a few outlines in +plate+ 210½, to which the reader
will refer. Letter _d_, is a correct drawing of a Chinook canoe—_e_,
a Na-as war-canoe, curiously carved and painted—_f_, two dishes or
ladles for baling their canoes—_g_, a Stikeen mask, curiously carved
and painted, worn by the mystery-men when in councils, for the purpose
of calling up the Great or Evil Spirits to consult an the policy of
peace or war—_h_, custom of the _Na-as_ women of wearing a block of
wood in the under lip, which is almost as unaccountable as the custom
of flattening the head. Letter _i_, is a drawing of the block, and
the exact dimensions of one in the Collection, taken out of the lip
of a deceased _Na-as_ woman—_k_, “wapito diggers,” instruments used
by the women for digging the wapito, a bulbous root, much like a
turnip, which the French Traders call _pomme blanche_, and which I have
before described. Letter _l_, _pau-to-mau-gons_, or _po-ko-mo-kons_,
war-clubs, the one made by the Indians from a piece of native copper,
the other of the bone of the sperm whale. Letter _n_, two very
curiously carved pipes, made of black slate and highly polished.
Besides these, the visitor will find in the Collection a great number
of their very ingenious articles of dress; their culinary, war, and
hunting implements, as well as specimens of their spinning and weaving,
by which they convert dog’s hair and the wool of the mountain-sheep
into durable and splendid robes, the production of which, I venture to
say, would bid defiance to any of the looms in the American or British
Factories.
The Indians who inhabit the rugged wildernesses of the Rocky Mountains,
are chiefly the Blackfeet and Crows, of whom I have heretofore spoken,
and the Shoshonees or Snakes, who are a part of the Camanchees,
speaking the same language, and the Shoshokies or root diggers, who
inhabit the southern parts of those vast and wild realms, with the
Arapahoes and Navahoes, who are neighbours to the Camanchees on the
West, having Santa Fe on the South, and the coast of California on
the West. Of the Shoshonees and Shoshokies, all travellers who have
spoken of them, give them a good character, as a kind and hospitable
and harmless people; to which fact I could cite the unquestionable
authorities of the excellent Rev. Mr. Parker, who has published his
interesting Tour across the Rocky Mountains—Lewis and Clarke—Capt.
Bonneville and others; and I allege it to be a truth, that the
reason why we find them as they are uniformly described, a kind and
inoffensive people, is, that they have not as yet been abused—that they
are in their primitive state, as the Great Spirit made and endowed them
with good hearts and kind feelings, unalloyed and untainted by the
vices of the money-making world.
To the same fact, relative to the tribes on the Columbia river, I have
been allowed to quote the authority of H. Beaver, a very worthy and
kind Reverend Gentleman of England, who has been for several years past
living with these people, and writes to me thus:—
“I shall be always ready, with pleasure, to testify my perfect
accordance with the sentiments I have heard you express, both in
your public lectures, and private conversation, relative to the
much-traduced character of our Red brethren, particularly as it relates
to their _honesty_, _hospitality_ and _peaceableness_, throughout the
length and breadth of the Columbia. Whatever of a contrary disposition
has at any time, in those parts, been displayed by them, has, I
am persuaded been exotic, and forced on them by the depravity and
impositions of the white Traders.”
[18] Besides these, there are a number of other skulls in the
Collection, most interesting specimens, from various tribes.
LETTER—No. 49.