aborigines, they seem placed here as if to give a practical illustration of the irrefragable distinctness of races."1 Dr. Pickering, as we have seen, with no prejudice against the theory of an " irrefragable distinctness of races,” never

theless came to the conclusion that the Asiatic and American nations of the Mongolian type are one race; and Humboldt, who enjoyed such preeminent opportunities of studying the Mongolian characteristics on the Asiatic continent, remarks in his introduction to his American Researches: "The American race bears a very striking resemblance to that of the Mongol nations, which include the descendants of the Hiong-Nie, known heretofore by the name of Huns, the Kalkas, the Kalmuks, and the Burats. It has been ascertained by late observations, that not only the inhabitants of Unalashka, but several tribes of South America, indicate by the osteological characters of the head a passage from the American to the Mongol race. When we shall have more completely studied the brown men of Africa, and that swarm of nations who inhabit the interior and north-east of Asia, and who are vaguely described by systematic travellers under the name of Tartars and Tschoudes: the Caucasian, Mongol, American, Malay, and Negro races, will appear less insulated, and we shall acknowledge in this great family of the human race one single organic type, modified by circumstances which perhaps will ever remain unknown." It is indeed an important and highly suggestive fact, in the present stage of ethnological research, that authorities the most diverse in their general views and favourite theories as to the unity or multiplicity of human species, can nevertheless be quoted in confirmation of opinions which trace to one ethnic centre, the Fin and Esquimaux, the Chinese, the European Turk and Magyar, and the American Indian.

1 Comparative Anatomy of Races, Types of Mankind, p. 447.

CHAPTER XXII.

ARTIFICIAL CRANIAL DISTORTION.

THE evidences of an assumed cranial and physical unity pervading the aborigines of the American continent disappear upon a careful scrutiny, and the like results follow when the same critical investigation is applied to other proofs adduced in support of this attractive but insubstantial theory. Dr. Morton, after completing his elaborate and valuable illustrations of American craniology, introduces an engraving of a mummy of a Muysca Indian of New Granada, and adds: "As an additional evidence of the unity of race and species in the American nations, 1 shall now adduce the singular fact, that from Patagonia to Canada, and from ocean to ocean, and equally in the civilized and uncivilized tribes, a peculiar mode of placing the body in sepulture has been practised from immemorial time. This peculiarity consists in the sitting posture.' The author accordingly proceeds to marshal his evidence in proof of the practice of such a mode of interment among many separate and independent tribes; nor is it difficult to do so, for it was a usage of greatly more extended recognition than his theory of "unity of race and species" implies. It was a prevailing, though by no means universal mode of sepulture among the tribes of the New World, as it was among many of those of the 1 Crania Americana, p. 244.

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Old, recorded by the pen of Herodotus, and proved by sepulchral disclosures pertaining to still older eras. The British cromlechs show that the very same custom was followed by their builders in primitive times. The ancient barrows of Scandinavia reveal the like fact, and abundant evidence proves the existence of such sepulchral rites, in ancient or modern times, in every quarter of the globe; so that if the prevalence of a peculiar mode of interment of the dead may be adduced as evidence of the unity of race and species, it can only operate by reuniting the lost links which restore to the red man his common share in the genealogy of the sons of Adam. But ancient and modern discoveries also prove considerable diversity in the sepulchral rites of all nations. The skeleton has been found in a sitting posture in British cromlechs, barrows, and graves, of dates to all appearance long prior to the era of Roman invasion, and of others unquestionably subsequent to that of Saxon immigration; but evidences are found of cremation and urn-burial, in equally ancient times, of the recumbent skeleton under the cairn, the barrow, in the stone cist, and in the rude sarcophagus hewn out of the solid trunk of the oak; and in this, as in so many other respects, the British microcosm is but an epitome of the great world. Norway, Denmark, Germany, and France all supply the same evidences of varying rites; and ancient and modern customs of Asia and Africa confirm the universality of the same. In the Tonga

and other islands of the Pacific, as well as in the newer world of Australia, the custom of burying the dead in a sitting posture has been repeatedly noted; but it is not universal even among them; nor was it so in America, though affirmed by Dr. Morton to be traceable throughout the northern and southern continents, and by its universality, to afford "collateral evidence of the

affiliation of all the American nations." So far is this from being the case, that nearly every ancient and modern sepulchral rite has had its counterpart in the New World. Mummification, cremation, urn-burial, and inhumation, were all in use among different tribes and nations of South America, and have left their traces no less unmistakably on the northern continent. Figure 65

illustrates a common form of bier, sketched from a

Chippewa grave on the Saskatchewan. The body is deposited on the surface, protected by wood or stones, and covered over with birch-bark. In the neighbourhood of the clearings, as at Red River, the grave is generally surrounded by a high fence. Among the Algonquins, the Hurons, the Mandans, the Sioux, and other tribes, the body was, and with the survivors still is, most frequently laid out at full length on an elevated bier or scaffold, or otherwise disposed above ground, where it was left to decay; and then after a time the

bones of the dead, with all the offerings deposited beside them, were consigned to one common grave. Ossuaries of great extent, forming the general receptacle of large communities, have been repeatedly brought to light both in Canada and the northern states. Creuxius quotes from Le Jeune an account of one of the great general burials of the Hurons which he witnessed. A grand celebration was solemnly convoked. Not only the remains of those whose bodies had been scaffolded, but of all who had died on a journey or on the war-path, and been temporarily buried, were now gathered together and interred in one common sepulchre with special marks of regard. The pit was lined with furs; all the relics and offerings to the dead were deposited beside the bones, and the whole. were covered with furs before the earth was thrown over them. When the Mandans buried the remains of their scaffolded dead, they left the skull uninterred; and Catlin describes their skulls as lying on the prairies arranged in circles of a hundred or more, with their faces towards the centre, where a little mound is erected, surmounted by a male and female buffalo skull.

When we pass to the westward of the Rocky Mountains, new modifications vary the Indian sepulchral rites. Along the Cowlitz and Columbia rivers, and among various north-west tribes on the Pacific, the canoe of the deceased is converted into his bier. In this he is laid at full length, adorned in his gayest attire, and surrounded with his weapons and favourite property, as well as with the offerings of his friends; and after being towed in solemn funeral procession to the burialplace of the tribe, the canoe is elevated on poles, and protected by a covering of birch bark. Among the Chimpseyan or Babeen Indians the female dead are scaffolded, but the male are invariably burned; and