Child hygiene among the American Indians : a chapter in early American pediatrics / Samuel X. Radbill.

  • Radbill, Samuel X., 1901-1987.
Date:
[1945]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Child hygiene among the American Indians : a chapter in early American pediatrics / Samuel X. Radbill. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Nootka and Salishan tribes of the Columbia River country deformed the heads of their infants by strapping them between two boards which met at the top, or else compressed them with pads causing the forehead to slope sharply back from the eye¬ brows (Darby, 1933). The Coshuttas (Kaosoti) lived about 50 miles up the Trinity River in Texas. Flattening of the head among them was not a religious procedure but rather done for the cosmetic effect. The Coshutta’s technique was as follows: The infant, after ten days, was taken from the mother’s breast and strapped on a board as a cradle. A small concavity at one end of the board served to hold a lump of wet clay in which the infant’s head was imbedded, the infant lying on its back. Another lump of clay was strapped or tightly bandaged over the infant’s forehead, the bandage being gradually tightened as the soft skull yielded to the pressure. In 1820, head-flatten¬ ing was practiced by the Koosoti and a few of the Bidai, but not by the Carancahuas, Coker, Cujanos or Tonka ways (Dyer, 1916). De Soto observed this practice among the Indians of Florida; it was reported among the Choctaws, Chickasaws, the Waksaws of North Carolina, the Creeks, the Muskogees around the Gulf of Mexico, the Natchez, Catawbas, Attacapas of the west bank of the Mississippi, and among the Solkeeks in Northern Louisiana. In Central America the custom was found among the Caribs and upon images on ancient Mayan remains, as well as among the ancient Zapoteks, predecessors of the Aztecs of Central America. It was interdicted by a Synod of 1585 under pain of heavy punishment among the Peruvians (Ploss, 1876). Another reason for this treatment of the skull may have been based upon primitive desire to aid in the closure of the sutures, gathering in the bones of the head, as the Finns expressed it. Among the Lummi Indians of Northwest Wash¬ ington the head is flattened as a sign of rank (Stern, 1924). The Chinooks, of Oregon, also compressed the head to shape it in a peculiar way, but this was not permitted to the children of their slaves. This practice is also known in other parts of the world. Other forms of binding were practiced; the Kutchins bandaged their feet in order to keep them small and the Flat- heads and Pend d’Oreilles bandaged the waist and legs of