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Lorsque le document est trop grend pour Atre reproduit en un seui cllchA, ii est filmA A partir da I'angle supArleur gauche, de geuche A droite, et de haut en bee, en prenant la nombre d'imegea nAcaasaira. i.as diagrammea suivants illuatrent la mAthoda. 1 2 3 4 5 6 * MSGILL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY ! X, x< N :^ ^ ^ A Ljayil^rd =:! (^me Physical CharacUrisHcs of Native Tribes of Canada. ADDRESS BT DANIEL WILSON, LL.D., F.R.S.E., VicK President, Section H. BCrORB TBK SECTION OF ANTHROPOLOGY, AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOB THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE, AT MONTREAL, CANADA, AUGUST, 1882. Boprlnted ftom Vol. XXXI, of the Proceedinga A. A. A. S. -^ SALEM : PRINTED AT THE SALEM PRESS. 1882. / '■■^'T-'i^imitifiumf'k ! j |||ill M^i »l|il lf i klr i i ii , ii .,. '(:- t-i.!|.3 Some Physical Characteristics of Native Tribes of Canada. ADDRESS BT DANIEL WILSON, LL.D., F.R.S.E., Vice President, Section H. BEFORE THE SECTION OF ANTHROPOLOGY, AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE, AT MONTREAL, CANADA, AUGUST, 1882. Roprintud from Vol. XXXI, of the Proceediuga A. A. A, S. SALEM : PRINTED AT THE SALEM PRESS. 1882. *.'"" M" mmmmmmmmmteSHSSM {/ il ' '• ■■'" I II II iiiiMMMiii •^4 it cai:^^. i/ or J^ ADDRESS BY DANIEL WILSON, LL.D., R R. S. E.. VICE PRESIDENl, SECTION 11, SOME PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF NATIVE TRIBES OF CANADA. In welcoming the Anthropological Section of the American Association for the Advancement of Science to its meeting here on Canadian soil, it will not, I trust, appear unsuitable to the occasion, if I invite attention to some of the physical character- istics which distinguish certain native races of the Dominion ; and especially to the significance of certain typical head-forms, and theiv bearing on our special researches in reference to the origin, distribution, and classification of rac'3s. In so doing, it is important to keep in view the prevalence throughout the American continent of varioils artificial modifica- tions of skull-forms. This strange custom is probably at the present time carried on more systematically among tlie different tribes of Flathead Indians of British Columbia, than in iny other region ; though abundant evidence exists to show its prevalence both in past and present times among many tribes and nations in very dirterent stages of progress, alike in Norti and South America. It has, indeed, attracted more general attention than most other characteristic practices of the American aborigines, owing to its prevalence alike among the most barbarous and the most civilized races. To all appearance the Teruvians aud Mexicans had devel- (8) *rw^' ■^wr »^^%. f 4 ADDRESS BT DANIiL WILSON, oped independent phases of progress in arts, science, and social policy, witlioiit anj' knowledge of eacli other. Nevertheless, we trace the singular practice of moulding the human head into ab- normal forms, alike among the civilized races of Peru, the ancient lettered architects of Central America and Mexico, and among barbarous tribes both to the east and west of the Rocky Moun- tains. The earthworks of the Mississippi Valley Mound-builders have been found to cover artificially flattened crania ; and the stu- dent of American native civilization, as he turns from pondering over the bas-reliefs and hieroglyphics on the sculptured slabs of Palenque and Uxmal, is startled to find that the cranial forms and strange physiognomical contour of the architectural race of Cen- tral America are reproduced among some of the most barbarous living tribes of Oregon and British Columbia. But, now that the study of craniology has been carried out by many intelligent observers, the fact is becoming familiar to us that artificial cranial deformation is no peculiarity of the American continent, either in ancient or modern times. The compressed crania of the Asiatic Macrocephali attracted the attention of Hippocrates five centuries before the Christian era ; and Blumenbach, the foremost of Euro- pean craniologists, figured in the first fasciculus of his "Decades Craniorum," in 1 790, an imperfect compressed skull, received by him from Russia, with the information that it was probably that of a Tartar. This he unhesitatingly designated an Asiatic Macro- cephalus. The conclusion thus arrived at has been sustained by subsequent discoveries ; and as attention is more widely directed to the general subject the results are found to have a special value for the American ethnologist. It seems probable that the name of Macrocephali, like that of our own Flatheads, did not properly belong to any single tribe, or even distinct race of ancient Asia ; but had its origi i in the effort, by artificial means, to produce the patrician head-form, primarily characteristic of some dominant, or conquering race. Among the Chinooks and other Flathead tribes of this continent, an.i also, as I believe, among the ancient builder-races of Yucatan and Peru, certain head-forms were recognized as an attribute of the ruling cast. Within the Flathead area of British Columbia the compressed and distorted skull is even now the symbol of aris- tocracy ; and adopted captives, or slaves, are precluded from giv- iug the prized deformity to their ofl'spriug. Hippocrates refers in ^ i "■'^'I'sffll!!''.,,!':!!! ler KiWM SECTION OF ANTHROPOLOGY. ^ ( his "De Aere, Aquis, et Locis," to the Macrocephali as a people among whom "those are tliought the most noble who have the longest heads." Skulls of this tjpe have been recovered in recent years from ancient graves in the Crimean Bosphorus, and the val- ley of the Don. Still more illustrative of the effort at superin- ducing a novel dolichocephalic form among races of brachycephalic type, are the examples of compressed Hun or Avar skulls found from time to time on the line of march of the great Hunish in- vasions of Europe in the fifth and sixth centuries. One of the first examples of such mediaeval compressed crania which attracted special attention in Europe was a skull found, in the year 1820, at Fuersbrunn, near Grafenegg, in Austria. Count August von lireuner, the proprietor of the soil, acquired possession of the in- teresting relic, and at once ascribed it to the Avarian Huns, who occupied that region from the middle of tiie sixth until the eighth century. Of this compressed Avar skull, Retzius gave a descrip- tion in the proceedings of the Royal Academj^ of Sciences of Stockholm, in 1844 ; and showed that t!>? skull, which had been regarded as remarkable for its great elongation, was in reality a true brachycephalic skull, such as the Mongol allinities of the Avars would suggest, but tiiat by artificial compression it had been elon- gated, vertically, or rather obliquely. An additional interest is conferred on this European example of artificial crania! deforma- tion by tlic fact that scientific observers were persuaded n* a time to regard it, not as European, but as an intrusive Ani' ' ex- ample, brought thither soon after the discovery of this ent. The well known traveller Dr. Tschudi communicated to i\i r's "Archiv fiir Anatomie" a memoir, in which he instituted a compari- son between this Grafenegg skull and the compressed crania of an- cient Peruvian cemeteries, whence he arrived at the conclusion that scientific men had been deceived in ascribing to any Asiatic or European source a skull which must have been originally de- rived from Pern. In confirmation of this, he recalled the fact that, widely as Austria and Peru are now severed, in the sixteenth cen- tury the Emperor Charles V embraced both within his dominions. He accordingly conceived it no improbable conjecture that the compressed skull was brought to Europe, as an object of curi- osity ; and being afterwards tlirown aside, it was mistakenly as- sumeil to poruain to native sepulture when recovered at Fuersbrunn in the present century. 9m r^ 6 ADDRESS BY DANIEL WILSON, More recent discoveries of artificially compressed crania on European sites, liave removed all doubts of their native, or intru- sive Asiatic origin. It tlius appears that tlie barbarous i)ractice is neither recent, nor peculiar to the New World. Neither to Am- erica nor to Europe do those examples of mediaeval and ancient compressed crania really belong, but seemingly to the nomad Mongols and Ugrians of the steppes of Nortliern Asia, in the vast wilds of which we lose them as they spread away eastward toward the Okhotsk Sea and the Aleutian Islands. We are thus guided by unmistakable indications backward, as it seems, on this ancient trail, down the valley of tlie Danube, and beyond the Caspian and the Ural Mountains, to a region outside the farthest limits assigned by Hippocrates, Strabo, Pliny, or Mela, to the Asiatic Maeio- cephali ; and recover traces of the strange practice of the Amer- ican Flatheads fiir to the northeast of the Altai chain, in the val- leys that skirt the Yablonoi mountains, as they trend eastward towards the Okhotsk Sea. It may indeed be an American practice which Asia borrowed, for the alFinities of race between the tribes of the islands and Asiatic mainland immediately to the west of Behring strait point to a migration to Asia from America. Such, however, is limited and exceptional. On evidence which embraces the ethnical characteristics of a very wide Asiatic area, the Mongolian classification of the American Indian is confirmed by many significant points of resemblance in form, color, texture of hair, and peculiar customs and traits of character, which fail us when we turn either to the Asiatic Aleutians, tlie NamoUos, and other allied tribes of the older continent, or to the true Eskimo. The striking resemblance noted by Humboldt as existing between the American race and the Mongols of Asia, received independent confirmation from Dr. Charles Pickering, as the result of his ex- tensive observation of the races of botli continents, in his capacity of ethnologist to the American Exploring Expedition. Such affini- ties are still further confirmed, as we recover the traces of the singular practice of r-anial deformation extending in ancient and mediaeval times eastward from the Euxine and beyond the Altai mountains. To those little-known areas of northern Asia the ethnologist and the archaiologist have jet to turn in quest of tlie footprints of one of the immigrant routes to the new world. Tliere it is, in the vast unknown regions of Asiatic Russia, that wo may hope to recover evidence confirmatory of at least one source of the Asiatic rohitions of the American race. ! \ rya^/orc/^ V SECTION OF ANTHROPOLOOY. 7 It is now a recognized fact that the artificial head-forms clmrac- teristic of diverse tribes of Nortli and South America vary greatly, from the extreme depressed forehead and laterally compressed skulls of races that rivalled the ancient Macrocephali in their esti- mation that "the most noble are those who have the longest heads," to some among the Cowlitz or Chinook tribes of British Columbia, whose heads are compressed into a flattened disk. The two artificial extremes find their analogues in the distinct ethnical divisions of dolichocephalic and brachycephalic head-forms among well-known northern tribes. The predominant natural form, char- acterislic of the more southern tribes of North America, appears to have been brachycephalic, or, as it is sometimes called, globular. But along the regions of the great lakes, in the valley of the St. Law- rence, and northward throughout the whole Eskimo area, the dolicho- cephalic head-form prevails. The native races of the Dominion, and especially the earliest known aborigines of Upper and Lower Canada, including the province in which you are now met, appear to have been all of the same dolichocephalic type ; and so to have formed a class markedly distinct from the short, or globular headed races of the south, whose head-form was long regarded as typical of the whole American race. Of the Indians of Hochelaga, first met by Cartier, in 1535, we are able to judge from crania recovered from their cemeteries. The palisaded Indian town of Hochelaga occupied, in the sixteenth century, the site where we are now as- sembled ; and in the museum of McGill College may be seen ex- amples of the crania, as well as specimens of the Hint implements and pottery dug up on its site. Its traces revcj'lod notliing sug- gestive of any other rudiments of civilization than have long been familiar to the American student of primitive arts in the abundant remains of Indian settlements throughout the area of the eastern States, and on the sites of the Iroquois Confederacjf in the State of New York. Their earthenware pots and bowls of various sizes were decorated with rude yet tasteful incised patterns ; and the handles were further ingeniously modelled at times into human and animal forms. Tobacco pipes also, both of stone and earthenware, here as elsewhere, were special objects of artistic ornamentation. Stone and flint implements, bone needles and bodkins, also abounded ; l»ut of metal only very rare traces of the cold-wrought coi)per tool gave any indication of even the first rudiments of metallurgic art. In truth, Canada has no such evidences, even of {jff*llS!»^ ADDRESS BY DANIEL WILSON, ,1 an incipient native civilization, as the remarkable earthworks which abound in the great river valleys to the south of Lake Erie. To all appearance, through unnumbered centuries, the tide of human life has ebbed and flowed, to the north of these great lakes, and in ■ he valley of the St. Lawrence, as unprogressively as on the great steppes of Asia, among !,he Bedouin tribes of the Arabian penin- sula, or around the tropical lakes of equatorial Africa. Such foot- prints as the wanderers have left on the sands of time tell us no more than the ripples on the sea beach, and are indeed still more evanescent. Nevertheless, in all their distinctive characteristics, the tribes of our Canadian forests and prairies present much in common with those by whom the whole area of this northern con- tinent, southward to the Gulf of ]Mexico, appears to have been oc- cupied when first brought under the notice of European explorers. It is indeed a noticeable fact in reference to the entire popula- tion of this western hemisphere, throughout areas so widely dif- fering in climate and physi'ial geography as are embraced within the region extending from the arctic circle to Terra del Fuego, that the ethnical diversities are sligiit when compared with those which pertain to what, historically speaking, are the older conti- nents. It seems to force on us the conclusion that, however re- motely we may trace our vftiy back into unrecorded centuries, ere we reach the time when man made his first appearance heve, so far as the multiplication of diverse racial varieties afford any evidence, it is recent when compared with the peopling of the an- cieiit world. To this indeed one mportant exception has been suggested in the assumption of a direct affinity between the hyper- borean tribes of this continent and the men of Europe's jiaheo- lithic era ; and I shall accordingly refer to it in its bearings on the general conclusions to which we are thus led. Great, however, as is the superficial resemblance which seems to pervade the diverse tribes of tiio American continent, some of the underlying ditlerences were noted from the first. Columbus, with an eye quick to discern all that was peculiar in the novel scenes on which he was the first to gaze, failed not to note the marked distinction between the fair complexion of the Guauches, who were brought under his notice on his first voyage, and the roddish-olivo of the ferocious Ciirihs. Apart from this purely physical distinction, those Guauches attracted his attention by their gentle manners and inolTensive hub'ts. From them he learned '^/■"'•WftllWJ iworks which :e Eric. To :le of human akes, and in on the great ibian penin- Such foot- e tell us no d still more racteristics, nt much in )rthern con- ive been oc- » explorers, bire popula- widely dif- Lced within del Fiiego, with those Ider conti- owever re- ituries, ere c here, so aftbrd any of the an- I has been the hyper- e's paheo- iigs on the ch seems , some of Columbus, the novel note tlie •Mauchcs, , imd the is purely ntiou by e learned d^l^ra =s i -'-'vVa' ' ■tii^^iR«ai--v»iwMili'i'''wiiil'&i','t-*gwa»I^Ji SECTION OF ANTHROPOLOCfY. 9 of the Caribs, as a fierce, warlike people occupying the neigh- bouring islands and the mainhuid, of win they lived in constant dread ; and who subsequently became fai.,iliar to the Spaniards as a ferocious, crafty, and revengeful race, delighting in cannibalism. Hence we perceive that from the first both physical and moral dif- ferences, of a sufficiently marked character, were observed among native tribesi of the New World. Nor indeed did Humboldt, or even Morton, entirely overlook the existence of considerable varieties in color and complexion, from nearly white to a dark brown ; though they were led, from diflerent causes, to under- estimate the extent of diversity prevailing among the widelj' scat- tered nations of North and South America. But while it is deserving of notice that the aborigines of Canada do differ in certain physical chanicteristics from those especially of the more southern states of Noith America, it is undoubtedly true that an approximate correspondence in eth- nical characteristics is common to manj- tribes both of North and South America. It is not, therefore, to bo wondered at that the idea of their constituting one native stock distinct from all the races of the Old World, and agreeing in the possession of physical characteristics peculiar to themselves, should have been accejjted for a time as indisputable. Tlie vague generalizations of trav- ellers, and the current forms of popular belief, however, gradu- ally accpiired consistency as an accepted canon of ethnical sci- ence ; until, in the final embodiment of Dr. Morton's matured opinions, be allirmed the American race to be essentially separate and peculiar, and with no obvious links, such as he could discern, between tliem and the people of the old world, but a race distinct from all otiiers. Tiiu gc(>grai)hical facilities for intermixture among the very diverse races of Asia, Africa, and Euro|)e, account for many in- termediate and transitional races ; but this increases rather than diminishes the dilliculty of referring to any satislactory souice, such primary types of extreme divorsily as the Negro, 15erl)er, Mongol, Malay, Aralt, and Saxon. Here, on the contrary, so far as now api)cars, approximate types were hemmed in between the Atlantic arid the I'acilic ; ami in so far as they unermingled, the tendency necessarily was to diminisii, if Jiot to efiace, any >5irongly marked distinct ions ; just as, in |)rei>istoric centuries, the blending of liio aboriginal savage witli intruding races is assumed to have begot- l* WPk'13M wasm^T ! n i 1 IV 10 ADDRESS BY DANIEL WILSON, ten the Mclanocroi and the Xanthocroi of Europe's ethnological classification. Here, undoubtedly, as well as in Europe and Asia, extreme diversities have been modified ; but from the first these diff* rences must have extended over a narrower range on the American con- tinent than that which finds such curious illustration in the an- cient sculpture and paintings of the Nile valley. The baso-relievos of Yucatan, the terra cottas of Mexico, and the pottery of Peru, furnish analogous evidence of considerable diversity of type among the prehistoric, as well as the historic and civilized races of the New "World. Nevertheless, after the fullest recognition of all that such evidence indicates, the fact remains that great as is the divergence of the Eskimo from the Mexican, or the Peruvian from the Patagonian, the difference becomes almost insignificant in comparison with that which distinguishes the Aryan Hindo from the Andaman Islander, the Arab from the Chinese, or the in- sular Malay from the Negritto. Yet all of those pertain to a con- tinent which is only separated from our own by Behring Strait. So noticeable indeed is the prevailing correspondence in ethnical characteristics among the various races of this continent, that the elements of diversity were long overlooked, even by acute scien- tific observers. Malte lirun aflirmed as the result of a long course of observation, " that the Americans, whatever their origin may be, constitute at the present day a race essentially difi'erent from the rest of mankind." A more notable authority, possessed alike of rare capacity for accurate discrimination, and of opportunity for extended personal observation, — tlie distinguislicd scientific traveller, Humboldt, — remarked in tiie preface to his "Researches :" " The nations of America, except those which border the polar circle, form a single race, characterized by tiie formation of the skull, the color of the skin, the extreme thinness of tlie beard, and the straight glossy hair.'' Until very recent years this was accepted as no less indisput- able than any axiom of Euclid. American ethnologists were agreed as to tiie predominance of one ethnical ty[)e througiiout the whole western iiemisi)liere ; while those of Europe, with rarer opportunities for pcrsomU observation, wore predisposed by all the narratives of early voyagers to accept the conclusion that the man of the New World was a well-donned variety, if not a dis- tinct species, of the genus Homo. Pricliard, Lawrence, Wiseman, V vi ej a| si iJ fi I mT *J?fl ethnological !i, extreme (lifr« rences eiican coti ■• in the un- iso-relievos ry of Peru, y of type I'zed races »g"ition of ;feat as is i Peruvian significant an Hindo or the in- to a con- ig Strait. I ethnical •) that the lite scien- iig course igin may lent from sed alike >ortunity scientific arches :" lie polar II of the iird, and ndisput- s were Jiighout tij rarer l>y all liat the a (lis- seman, LrJ^t Y SKCTION OF ANTUHOPOI.OGY. 11 Knox, Morton, Agassiz, Sqnier, Gliddon, Nott, and Meigs, might each be quoted in confirniation of this opinion, and especially of the prevailing uniformity of certain strongly-marked cranial char- acteristics. Agassiz, for example, affirmed in very explicit lan- guage : " with the exception of the Arctic Esquimaux, there is only one single race of men extending over the whole range of North and South America, but dividing into innumerable tribes ; whilst, in the Old World, there are a great many well-defined and easily distinguished races, which are circumscribed within compar- atively much narrower boundaries." Morton, again, viewing the subject in the light of his own special evidence, designated a markedly brachycephalic skull, with flattened occiput, recovered from one of the mounds in the Scioto Valley, " an aboriginal American head," and added : " tiiis is, perhaps, the most ad- mirably formed head of the American race hitherto discovered. It possesses the national characteristics in perfection." Accord- ingly, after indicating these in detail, he afBrms : " 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." Among what may be designated typical Canadian skulls, those of the llurons of the region 13'ing around the Georgian Bay have a si)ecial value. They represent, as we believe, a native race which, under various names, extended from the Lower St. Law- rence westward to Lake St. Clair, the Ouane-dote : including the Petuns, Neuters, llurons, Eries, and other Wyandot tribes, of the same stoek as the Iroquois ; but to whose implacable enmity their extermination was ultimately due. The native population first met with by Cartier and the French explorers of 1535, is believed to have been of the same Wyandot stock ; but before the return of the French under Chumplain, in 1G03, they had been exterminated, or driven westward to the later country of the Hurons, on the Geor- gian Hay, There they were first visited by Ciiamplain in 1G15, and sul)sc(iuently by the French Jesuit missionari"s who, in 1(539, found them occupying thirty-two palisaded villages. Brelxruf reckoned their number in 1(135 at thirty thousand, and they are estimated, in the "Relation" of 1(5(')0 at thirty-five thousand. Al- ready, at that early date, the whole country westward from the Ottawa to the Huron eouulry around Lake Simcoe, had been de- popiiluti'd, and reduced to a desert, by tlie wrath of tlu; Irotpiois. Charlevoix assigns the year l(!55 as that of the destruction of ! '■*! -"-^smwri '5fi: ! ^i^ 12 AI^DHKSS BY UANIKL WILSON, tlie Attivvendrtronks or Np f P«"insula between iake ETe2','Zt""T' "'' '^''^''^ ^''V^-'a ;'-e t, bad aheady been extern ^t!, hi h'' '" "'"^^^ ^'-^ ^'-y kmclred race, before the Frenc^ex^ ,o '' . ' "''^'"'' «^ *''« «-"« -■stence of the lalce whicfbe^ '^^^^^^^^^ French maps an imaginary rive L J "''"'• ^" ^''« ^^''''er I^ake Huron to Lake Ontario ^''"'^ ""interruptedly ft-om "I^^east of the Dead" celeb at^l'" T'"'' '^^^"« ^^ ^''^i'" Wea^ ^vJ.ea the remains of tl et sc' '' '7^'^^ "^ t«" or twelve ve^ -.folded biers, or remotTg^:^ tc T ^"" ''''''•^' ^'^ «> l' •nonua and mourning i„ the ^e i:;^^^ '^'^^^ ^-"' gr-Kl cere- the vicinity of the sites of their n'n ,?'"'' ^' *''^ »'•'»>-• In «"aneshaverepeatecliybee, found 11 '"'•''^" «'^^«"«ive os" "; ^'- "".seum Of Lavil U ivt 1 U O r" "^ "-^P--ve, , sk-Ils recovered fron, the IhZT ^ '^''' "'"^'•^''•i^ of ei..htv achin »f eighty '■1 fit. Jo- villages, '11 in tlie tlie In- 5euni of loin tlie Huron e since of tlie se Hii- ed, or : and he re- :^(eiis- I'Ofll- y tlie illage since ■rest- ■ the survival alike of native intellectual and physical traits, after an interval of well nigh two centuries and a half passed in intimate intercourse, and latterly frequent intermarriage with the French habitans. The Huron skull is strongly marked as of the dolichocephalic type. The careful measurements of thirty -nine male skulls yield a mean longitudinal diameter of 7.39 to a parietal diameter of 5.50 ; and of eighteen female skulls, a longitudinal diameter of 7.07 to a parietal diameter of 5.22. One essential characteristic, therefore, that of great relative length, is unmistakable. I specially refer to this now, because we possess, in the collection of the Canadian Institute at Toronto, a skull recovered from one of the Huron ossuaries near Lake Siincoe which dift'ers essentially from this Huron type. It is a short skull, — shorter even than that from the Scioto mound, — of the same, so-called, globular type, measuring only 6.00 in longi- tudinal, and 6.40 in parietal, diameter. Reverting, therefore, to Dr. Morton's ascription to the Scioto mound skull of national characteristics, which constitute it "the perfect type of Indian con- formation, to which the skulls of all the tribes from Cape Horn to Canada more or less approximate," this northern example, if it stood alone, would seem to confirm his assumption. But it is a wholly exceptional case ; so distinct from the true Huron type that, after a careful studj' of one hundred and twenty-six crania from ossuaries of the Huron country, including considerable deviations from what may be regarded as the normal type, I have not found one other example approximating to it. It differs little less essen- tially from the race-form of the people whose grave its owner shared than that of a Chinese from the noriuj'' skull of the pure Anglo- American ; and may be assumed as that of an Indian belonging to some far southern tribe, whom the chances of Indian warfare had made a captive, or an adopted member, of the Huron tribe in whose cemetery he found his final resting-place. Such indications of physical diversit}', among the nations so widely scattered throughout the New World, accord with philo- logical and other cvidonco. Not bj' one, but by diverse routes have the fathers of the American nations found their way thither : some by liehring Strait and the Aleutian Islands ; others by more southern routes across the broad Pacific, aided by winds and cur- rents, and passing onwjird from islniid to island of the great archipelago ; others, us we know, i)y Iceland and Greenland, across I 1 ) "^mmm* ■»%-* w^^ '^mm^mmEmmX\ 111 Ml 14 AUDUESS BY UANiKL WILSON, the northern Atlantic; and others again — as philological evi- dence seems to indicate, — along the same route as that which Co- lumbus successfully pursued in 1492. But to the primary migra- tions we know not how remote a date to assign, in order to allow of the i^terblending of intruding races, and the development of the native American "Red Man" with all his distinctive traits of individuality. For, while it is important to note the elements of diversity, it is nevertheless true that the New World does differ from tlie Old in the narrow range of such variations of race-type through all extremes of climate from arctic to temperate, tropi- cal, and antarctic. The European traveller who surveys his own continent from the northern habitat of the Fins and Lapps, and the corresponding Asiatic hyperboreans, and then traverses the eastern hemisphere to the Cape or to the Indian Ocean, comes in contact with all intermedir.ee varieties between the two extremes of tlie white and black races ; and recognizes in western Europe the Melanocroi who seem to be the resultant of their inter-blendins; in prehistoric times. But in America we seem to see no more than a result analogous to tiie latter ; and this as the product of more nearly allied primitive stocks, the largely preponderating element of which has been derived from the Mongol uea of east- ern Asia. Piiilological evidence, on the other hand, no less clearly indicates the remoteness of the migrations by which this first colo- nization of the New World was effected ; it may be, indeed, that they pertain to periods when the physical geography of both con- tinents, and of the intermediate archipelago, afforded facilities for migration altogether wanting with!, historic times. But such ideas of a derivative origin of the American aborigines are of very modern growth, and are only now displacing long ac- credited beliefs. That the man of this New World must prove a being essentially different from any knov.'u race of Europe, Africa, or Asia, was an opinion which assumed ever stronger confirmation, as the idea of Columbus that he had landed on the eastern Con- tinent faded away from the minds of his successors. The Indians of his new-found world were no natives of Cipango, or the valley of the Indus; and the literature of the fifteenth and sixteenth cen- turies abounds with evidence that it was nnich easier to persuade the men of that age that Calibans and monstrous Anthropophagi peopled the sti'aiige regions beyond the Allaiitic, than that these were inhabited by human beings like themselves. . tiii^ipw*' r Urjm ray fori ii^k SECTION OF ANTHROPOLOGY. 15 Even Columbus, it has to be remembered, in searching for evi- dence to confirm his own scientific demonstration tliat tlie world was a spliere, and so, tliat the eastern continent could be readied by a western route, attached special value to indications of the ex- istence of a transatlantic continent, derived from the fact that the bodie:* of two dead men had been cast ashore on the island of Flores, differing essentially in features and physical characteristics from any known race. When, at length, the great discoverer set foot on the islands first visited bj' him, the peculiarities which marked the gentle and friendly race of Guanahani; were noted with curious minuteness ; and their ''tawny or copper hue," their straight, coarse, black hair, strange features, and well-developed forms, were all recorded as objects of interest. On his return, the little caravel of Columbus was freighted not only with gold and other coveted products of the New World, but with nine of its natives, brought from the Islands of San Salvador and Hispaniola, eight of whom survived to gaze on the strange civilization of Spain, and to be themselves objects of scarcely less astonishment than if they had come from another planet. Such was the earliest knowledge ac- quired by the Old World of the type of humanity generically de- signated as the Red Indian ; and the attention which its peculiarities excited when thus displayed in their fresh novelty has not yet exhausted itself, after an interval now lit'i\e short of four centuries. Of all known races of the New World, the Eskimo alone pre- sented, at first, a seemingly marked diversity from the other aborig- ines ; though the grounds on which such a conclusion was based arc traceable far more to Arctic conditions of life, than to auy eth- nical peculiarities definitely assigned to them. This is api)arent from the terms employed by the historian Robertson, who, writing in 1777, says: "Tiie Esquimaux are man- ifestly a race of men distinct from all the nations of the American continent, in language, in disposition, and in habits of life. But among all the other inl'.abitants of America there is such a striking similitude in the form of their bodies, and the qualities of their minds, that, notwithstanding the diversities occasioned by the in- fluence of clima.o, or unequal progress of improvement, we must pronounce them to be desceiinis up the ivaiiced in ations, ex- but of two t differ in lysical or ion of tiie not in a species." ed by the ifter siip- luble ad- mew and 'ing thus tic order iigenoiis s of the dogma : le scien- liai-acter erra del iinbohlt Jvrkabie 311 s and ; first a forms ; ication ^erpet- origi- ices of nuiial deformation supply suggests the origin of this barbarous practice in an aim at conformity with the natural head-form of a patrician or conquering race. Dr. Fitzinger, who has caiefuUy investigated the whole subject of the discovery of macrocephalic skulls in an- cient Austrian sepulchral deposits, after tracing the evidence sup- plied by the allusions of classic writers, mentions an interesting independent illustration of the subject. A medal, struck appar- ently to commemorate the destruction of the town of Aquileia, by Attila the Hun, in the year 452, came under his notice. On one side is represented the ruined city, and on the other the bust of the Hunish leader in profile, with thv sunn form of head as that shown in the supposed Avar skulls found in the valley of the Dan- ube. One of this type obtained by M. Hippolyte Gosse, from an ancient cemetery in Savoy, presents the favorite Hun or Avar form when viewed in profile, with the singular vertical elongation wiiich appears to have constituted an ideal type of masculine beauty among the Asiatic followers of Attila, as among the Natchez, the Peruvians, and other nations of thj New World. It was found at Villy, near lleigner, and has been engraved by lletzius, from a drawing furnished to him by the discoverer. Thierry, in his "Attila," refers to the artificial means resorted to by his followers in order to give a Mongolian physiognomy to their children. The Hunish leader welcomed every able bodied recruit to his standard, and was in reality as much a leader of Goths as of Huns ; though the black Huns from the dreary Siberian steppes constituted the aristocracy' of his wild followers, whose Mongolian physiognomy formed the ideal of ethnic beauty. At this the Gothic mother accordingly aimed, by bandaging the nose, com- pressing the cheek bones, and giving an artificial form to the cranium of her infant. Such practices, however, when once brought into general use, continue long after the reason for their adoption has ceased. It need not therefore greatly surprise us to learn that the practice of distorting the skull in infancy still prevails in some districts of France. Among the examples of such cranial malformation engraved bj- Dr. Foville, in his work on the "Anatomy of the Nervous System," there is one wliich might take its place alongside of some of the most exaggerated specimens brougl\t from Peruvian cemeteries. IJiit hdui'ver Mie (iothicr inotlier migiit labor to make the natural develoi)meut of her infant's iicad conform to the Mongolian nioilel, -ii-^awBTTrtl 18 ADDRESS BY DANIEL WILSON, tlic traces of the originally dolichocephalic type could not be wholly eradicatetl. This is seen on comparing examples in any large collection of American Indian skulls. ^ ' -> compressed and distorted Peruvian crania, traces of tw ,ct types appear to me still uneradicated. The same is noticeable in the sculptures of Central America, as in the Palenque bas-reliefs where deities and cliiefs treading kneeling figures underfoot, present the long, sloping forehead in a line with the straight nose, with other features of the strange profile peculiar to the old race ; while the subject race is hook-nosed, with high foreheads, and heads seeminglj' uncom- pressed. If the idea is well-founded, which thus traces the origin of this barbarous practice to the etforts of an inferior, or subject race to approximate in outward appearance to the privileged class, its very occurrence points to the existence at some previous time of races essentially diverse in physical character. And if we as- sume their relative positions to have been akin to that of tiie con- quering Hun and tlie enslaved Frank or German, the motive to such a practice is suinciently obvious. Were it possible for the colored population of Canada and the United States, at the present day, by any analogous process to assimilate their offspring to the Anglo- Saxon type, how irresistible would the motive be to its use. Such ideas, however, found no favor with the author of the "Cra- nia Americana ;" and in some of tlie conclusions finally adopted by him he has been sustained by authorities of just weight in sci- ence. In the latest record of his matured views, as set forth in a posthumous paper contributed to Schoolcraft's "History of the In- dian Tribes," he remarks : "I at first found it dillicult to conceive that the original rounded skull of the Indian could be changed into this fantastic form ; and was led to suppose that the latter was an artificial elongation of a head remarkable for its length and narrowness. 1 even supposed that the long-headed Peruvians were a more ancient people than tlie Inca tribes, and distinguished from them by their cranial configuration. In this opinion I was mistaken. Abundant means of observation and comparison have since convinced me that all these variously formed heads were originally of the same rounded shape." In that same final contribution to his favorite science, Dr. Mor- ton's matured views on the whole subject of tiie cranial type of the American continent — based on tlu? acMitional evidence accu- mulated by him, in the interval of twelve years which elapsed bel ar fol an| be j.WjMW^-Wi'lTliWailiSlI'' r<»,Y UrJM^ SECTION or ANTIIROrOLOGY. 19 between tlio publication of the "Crania Americana" and his death, — are tims (lefiiicd : "The Indian skull is of a decidedly rounded form. The occipital portion is flattened in the upward direction, and the transverse diameter, as measured between the parietal bones, is remarkably wide, any Sir .lolin Ross, the '"Arctic Highlanders." liut their extreme northern limits have yet to be determined. The most advanced arctic ex- plorers have either come in contact with the natives, or found traces of their habitation ; and their habits and indifference to the extrcmest rigor of the climate, justify the assumption that only the absence of game will restrict the limits of their habitat. They oc- cupy the whole coast regions of Behring Strait ; and extend beyond that to the islands and neighboring continent, westward even to the shores of northeastern Siberia. The collection formed by Pro- fessor Nordenskeold in his Vega expedition — part of which was exhibited at Edinburgh during the present year, — includes an in- teresting series of implements used by the Chukches of Sil)eria and the Asiatic Eskimo in fishing and hunting. They employ the same kind of harpoon for hunting the walrus; use a long spear of nearly the same fashion, generally furnished now with an iron head, for hunting the bear ; while their arrows are still pointed with walrus ivory. Such traces alike of connnunity of arts and of race, within the arctic circle of the Asiatic and American conti- nents, and even extending to Europe, show that, whatever may liave been the ancient lines of migration, tiie oversow in later centuries across Behring Strait has been from the American con- tinent westward into the Old World. This widely scattered race, though corresponding in ethnical character, is broken up, by the exigencies of their rigorous climate into small tribes and isolated bands, dispersed for the most part over a coast line extending from Labrador to Behring Strait up- ward of 5,000 miles, and migrating with the animals on which they depend for subsistence. Thej' are hunters and fishers. The deer, the polar bear, the wild goose, swan, and other birds that resort to arctic breeding grounds, are alike objects of the chase ; but they i)rimarily depend on seals and cetaceous animals, the l)iul)l)cr of which furnishes food calculated to beget the animal heat which enables them to brave the severity of an arctic cli- mate. Eskimnntzik appears to be an Abenaki term signifying "• eaters of raw flesh ;" and as sucii indicates the smprise with wiiicli even the Indian nomailsof New England viewed tiie striinge liuliits of tlio liyperltorciui hunters witii wiiom tlii'y were occsLsion- allv l)rought into contact. The Kskinui, iiowever, is neither ignor- ^af/fort/ ^0mM¥^^^ &^mm^^m ■iitM:Jti':^.Lj^ the A SECTION OF ANTIIKOPOLOGY. 23 ant of tlie use of fire, so indispensable to him in his rigorons climate ; nor is he an exception to the lilting delinition of man as " the Cooking Animal ;" though in his peculiar condition of exposure to an arctic winter, raw blubber is at once a necessity and a luxury. In one respect, as already indicated, the Eskimo occupy a peculiar position on this continent. They are the only race com- mon to the Old and the New World ; and, if we accept the con- clusion arrived at by the author of " Early Man in Britain," they constituted an Old World race to all appearance before this New World had come into existence. The cave r.en of Europe's pahw- olithic era, the contemporaries of the mammoth, and other long- extinct mammals of central Europe, have naturally excited an un- wonted interest, as their arts and their remains have been brought to light in recent years. A people of lowest type, as illustrated by the famous Neanderthal skull, that of the Forbes quarr}"^ near Gil)- raltar, and of the Gourdon grotto, with some imperfect traces of others, all classed under the connnon term of '' The Canstadt race," is now assumed to represent the earliest, if not indeed the prinueval man of ancient Europe. 80 far as rudest Hint imple- ments atford any evidence of his condition, we might class him with the IJosjesman, the Australian, or the Patagonian of our own day. The evidence, however, in proof of the existence of this Canstadt savage race of paliuolithic Europe, rests as yet on insuf- ficient grounds. Curiously, indeed, Professor De Quatrefagos hiis drawn attention to the fact that not only are heads of the Neander- thal type to be met with in modern Europe, in some examples per- taining to men of exceptional intelligence ; but the skull of Saint Mansuy, Bishop of Toul, of the fourtli century, surpasses the Neanderthal cranium in some of its most simian featiu'ea ; and thnt of the sagacious and politic hero of Scottish independence, Uobert the Bruce, " is a reproduction of the Canstadt type." But however uncertain our conclusions may as yet l)e relative to this assumed prinueval European type, there is no douitt as lo the Cro-niagnon race of the reindeer period of southern France. Examples have, iniU'cd, by no means been confined to Hint area. The Eiigliis skull was found, with other hiimaii reiiiaius, enibedtled in a breccia along with teeth of the fossil niaminoth, rhinoceros, horse, and reindeer, in a cavern on the left bank of the IMeuse ; and the Rlciit.one ('Jivc, to the south of the Al|is, disclosed an 1111- diiiturlied sepulchre of the siime ancient hunter race. Ihit a S^iaiiicSSsr: 24 AUUIiESS HY DANIEL WILSON, special interest attaclies to the remains brought to light in 1858, in the rock shelter of Cro-magnon, in the valley of the Vesere. Tiuee men, a woman and a child, had all been buried in the cave. From their remains it is seen that the race was unusually tall, and bore equally little resemblance to the Neanderthal or " Canstadt" type, or to the modern Eskimo. The best preserved skulls — tiiose of an old man and a woman, — are finely proportioned, with large, high foreheads, and great cerebral capacity. M. Broca stated that of the man to be fully 1590 (lubic centimetres, or 96.99 cubic inches ; and Dr. Pruner-Bey says of two of the male skulls and that of the female, they " have a cranial capacity much superior to the average of the present day." It may remind us of Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace's remark that " natural selection could only have endowed savage man with a brain a little supe- rior to that of an ape, whereas he actually possesses one very little inferior to that of a philosoplier." Wiiatever differences of opinion affect the determination of the probable age of the Cro-magnon race, tliey unquestionably pertain to a period so remote that tlie very earliest historical traces of man in soutliern France scarcely seem to bring us any nearer to the period which tiiey represent. Their physical characteristics have, therefore, a special significance. The skulls are dolichocephalic, with tlie frontal bone high and well arched, a graceful fronto- occipital curve, and well-balanced symmetrical proportion through- out. The profile of the old man indicates an expressive contour, the face long, the nose very prominent, and the frontal s iiusos but sliglitiy developed for a male. The full face presents a well-pro- portioned oval, with pointed chin. Tiie one feature detracting from its otherwise attractive expression would seem to have been the unifine cliaracter of tiie long and narrow eyes, as indicated by the nnusnal form of the orbits. At tlie same time it is to l)e noted tliat this well proportioned iiead bears ample evidence of the ex- posed life of the wild hunter. Tiie features are rugged, as of one subject, througii a long life, to all the hardsliips of a rigorous cli- mate ; and numerous strongly marked iini)reHsions of muscular in- sertions accord witii tlie conditions of savage life. This is the type of an altogether remarkable prehistoric people, the artistic race of the paheolithic era, to wiiose skill we owe the contoinporary etchings iind cinvings oC flic inannnoth, the fossil- horse, the reindeer, and other nianinials of (iiat strangely reniole h ia;ggr?g*ia5.«^^S^---;i'ifft»» ■■ " nw 28 ADDRESS BT DANIRL WILSON, Dr. George M. Dawson's "Report on the Queen Charlotte Islands," published as one of the Reports of the Geological Survey of Can- ada. The Tawatin Indians on the Fraser River work with no less in- genious skill, and in a like style of combined imitative and conven- tional art, suggestive at times of curious analogies to some of the finished sculptures of Yucatan. Some of their ivory carvings are executed with a minute delicacy of workmanship such as no Eskimo carver could surpass ; but with the same kind of conventional or- namentation as is in use by the Ilaida artists, strongly suggestive of inherited modes of thought, and traces of intercourse or re- lationship with the ancient civilized races of Central America. There is thus no need to assume for the imitative arts of the New World a European source in the remote dawn of pleistocene times. Nor is the identity discernible between certain harpoons and other implements of the ancient hunters of Central Europe and those of the arctic Americans of our own day much more demon- strative of derived arts or community of race. Within the compara- tively narrow range of needful weapons or implements, the cor- respondence notable between some of those of the palaeolithic cave-men and of the Eskimo amounts to little more than what is seen in flint arrowheads, stone hammers, and the more common primitive tools of all kinds, executed under nearly similar condi- tions of life. "The absence of pottery" proves little more than the absence of tropical vegetation ; fo. both were nearly equally impossible under the conditions of climate. The preference for bone and ivory as the materials for their arts is etjually due to climatic conditions which render rock and flint generally inacces- sible througiiout the greater part of the year. The points of agreement are, in truth, little more than are to be anticipated among savage tribes living under similar conditions of climate. It', however, the skulls of the Cro-mugnon cave-men resembled those of tlie Eskimo, or the underlying debris revealed any traces of crania of the Eskimo type, there would then be good reason for giving consideration to tlie bearing of any supplementary evi- dence depending on correspondence in arts, usages and habits. But neither the Cro-magnon cave, nor any other of the caverns of the district, otherwise so rich in arcliti'ological and paiivonlo- logical traces, have yielded the needful evidence. Th»i contrast between the large, well developed Cro-magnon race and the stunted, i rk. nHUBR i !lT!;?fT'*rff'^ ' i^ayil^rd ^=1 \ \ n f SECTION O" ANTHROrOLC GT. 29 almost dwarfish Eskimo at once attracts attention. But much greater difference in stature would find ready solution in the priva- tions of an arctic habitat prolonged through unnumbered ages. The notable fiict, however, is the absolute contrast in every respect. The Eskimo physiognomy is of a poor Mongolian type. The nose is flat, and the cheek bones are very prominent ; the tendency in the skull istowards an acrocephalic form, narrow and long, with the parietal bones frequently meeting at an angle at the sagittal su- ture. The one possible point of resemblance that could be sug- gested with any acceptance would be the eye, which in the Eskimo seems often narrow and oblique. This, however, may be apparent only, traceable to the habits of a people one-half of whose year is an unbroken midnight ; and who grope in the darkness of their ob- scurely lighted snowhuts. Certain it is that the long, narrow orbits of the Cro-magnon skulls are not represented in tlie modern crania. Sufficiently extensive opportunities of studying the Eskimo cra- nium have come within my reach to afford me some fair means of forming an idea of the predominant type. In 1862, through the kind services of the late Dr. J. Aitken Meigs, I enjoyed the advantage of carefully examining a series of one hundred and twenty-five skulls, obtained by Dr. Hayes during his Arctic exolorations, and making drawings of some of the most marked examples. I have also examined and taken careful measurements of other examples including Western Eskimo, Innuit, and Tsehukt- chi crania, in the collections at Washington. With the resulting impressions in mind, it is impossible to look on casts of the large and finely developed Cro-magnon skulls now in my possession without being struck with the extreme contrast between them and the Eskimo crania. No wonder that tliey prove a stumbling block to evolutionists, who look for something of a totally opposite character in the Troglodytes of the pala3olithic, or pleistocene age. M. M. Lartet, Ilamy, De (^uatrcfages, the editors of the IMiquim ylquitanica', and other equally competent autlioritiea, have ha 1 no didlculty in accepting the evidence that the reindeer hunters of the Vcsiue lay there intombed in the cave which had so long been a shelter to men of the same race. Had the Neanderthal skull been found under similar circumstances, no doubt, founded on its lower cerol)ral capacily, would have interfered to prevent its recognition as the type of the artist race to wliicli we owe tlie life-picture of the UKunmoth. But Professor Dawkins not only notes that tlie human •: m IhBIIWlllifnilf t-^ samrmmm mmmmmmtmim 30 ADDRESS BT DANIEL WILSON, SECTION OP ANTHUOPOLOGT. remains were deposited in an abandoned palseolitliic cave, when it Lad been nearly filled up with the accumulated debris of successive occupants ; but he assigns the remains to the later Neolithic age, notwithstanding the absence of any accompanying relics of the art of the polished stone period. But I have already exceeded the reasonable limits of an ad- dress to this Section of Anthropology, and must leave unnoticed various further points in reference to the aborigines of the Do- minion, illustrative alike of the physical characteristics of our native Canadian tribes, and of some special points of significance in relation to their arts. One deduction, however, may be worthy of future consideration. If it be a fact borne out by much indepen- dent evidence, that from the extremest northern range of the arctic Eskimo, southward to the Great Lakes, and beyond this, especiallj' to the east of the Alleghany Mountains, amid consid- erable diversity of ethnical characteristics, the dolichocephalic type of head prevailed ; whereas among more southern tribes, such as the Osages, Ottoes, Missouris, Dacotas, Cherokces, Seminoles, Creeks, and many others, including the Florida Indians, the short, rounded, or brachycephalic head appears to have been universal : this seems to point to a convergence of two distinct ethnical lines of migration from opposite centres. In this, as I believe, the evi- dence thus derived from physical characteristics confirms what is indicated by wholly independent evidence of language, tradi- tional customs, and native arts. ) V ^wvw m "■'^imm