Some observations on the ethnography and archaeology of the American aborigines / By Samuel George Morton.

  • Morton, Samuel George, 1799-1851.
Date:
1846
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Some observations on the ethnography and archaeology of the American aborigines / By Samuel George Morton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    to Charleston, South Carolina. Dr. Moultrie, who has described this very interesting relic, makes the following observations:— “ Compared with the cranium of a Peruvian presented to Prof. Holbrook by Dr. Morton, in the museum of the state ot South Carolina, the craniological similarity manifested between them is too striking to permit us to question their national identity. There is in both the same coronal elevation, occipital compres¬ sion, and lateral protuberance accompanied with frontal depres¬ sion, which mark the American variety in general.”* There is additional proof of identity, not only of original con¬ formation, but of conventional modification of the form of the head, which I may be excused from reverting to in this place, inasmuch as the materials I shall use have but recently come to my hands. The first of these subjects is represented by the subjoined wood-cut, (fig. 2.) It was politely sent me by Dr. John Hous- toun, an intelligent surgeon of the British Navy, with the following memorandum : “ From an ancient town called Chiuhiu, or Atacama Baja, on the river Loa, and on the western edge of the desert of Ata¬ cama. 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. Fig. 2. * Araer. Jour, of Science, xxxii, p. 364. t See Proceedings of the Acad, of Nat. Sciences of Phi la., vol. ii, p. 274. If I mis¬ take not, I was the first to bring forward this mode of interment practiced by our abo¬ riginal nations, as a strong evidence of the unity of the American race. “ Thus it is that notwithstanding the diversity of language, customs and intellectual character, we trace this usage throughout both Americas, affording, as we have already stated, collateral evidence of the affiliation of all the American tribes.”—Crania Ameri¬ cana, p. 246, and pi. 69. Mr. Bradford in his valuable work, American Antiquities, has added some examples of the same kind; and the Chevalier D’Eichthal has also adduced this custom, in connexion with some traces of it in Polynesia, to prove an exotic origin for a part at least of the American race. See Mdmoires de la Societd Ethnologique de Paris, Tome II, p. 236. Whence arose this conventional position of the body in death ? This question has been often asked and variously answered. It is obviously an imitation of the attitude which the living Indian habitually as¬ sumes when sitting at perfect ease, and which has been naturally transferred to his lifeless remains as a fit emblem of repose.