Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/511

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DRESS AND ADORNMENT.
495

have been described from Peru alone. All the important types may also be found within a very limited area surrounding Vancouver Island. Several questions arise in connection with this practice. Is the operation painful? Are the effects harmful? Is the result hereditable? "It might be supposed," says Mr. Kane, "that the operation would be attended with great suffering, but I never heard the infants crying or moaning, although I have seen their eyes seemingly start out of their sockets from the great pressure; but, on the contrary, when the thongs were loosened and the pads removed I have noticed them cry till they were replaced. From the apparent dullness of the children while under the pressure I should imagine that a state of torpor or insensibility Fig. 7—Flathead Child. is induced, and that the return to consciousness caused by its removal must be naturally followed by a sense of pain" (Fig. 7) (Flower). Are the effects of such alteration of the skull hurtful to the brain? Most authors agree that in savage or barbarous life little or no harmful result comes. This belief is founded upon two facts: (1) the individuals deformed appear quite as intelligent as their neighbors; (2) in such tribes as hold slaves the deformation exists only among the free population. Were the masters seriously affected by it in mind, they would ere now have become themselves the slaves. In civilization sad results follow. Dr. Foville proves that it causes headache, deafness, cerebral congestion, epilepsy, and worse brain troubles (Flower). As to heredity, Hippocrates claimed that the tendency to abnormal form of head did become hereditary; recent authors, as a rule, do not agree with him.

The third group of deformations or bodily alterations is color decoration, and under this we shall class body-painting, tattooing, and gashing.

Body-painting and face-painting are universal. The Gani wear no dress, but paint the whole body. Thus: "Two messengers were painted—their faces were white; the bodies were painted in two coats of purple and ashen-gray; the latter was scraped off so as to show the former in patterns below. Some men paint the body in horizontal stripes like the zebra, or in vertical stripes down the back, or with zigzags of a lighter color."

All our North American Indians paint, and the patterns vary with the individual, with the family, and with the occasion. From notes made upon Sacs and Foxes painted for the dance we will give but one or two cases. One man's face was painted black, except around the eyes and mouth, which were scarlet. Upon