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Chap. II.
THE INDIAN'S CONSTITUTION.
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differs materially from that of the European and the Asiatic. The animal development varies in the several races: the Pawnee's and Yuta's scalp-lock rarely exceeds eighteen inches in length, while that of the Crow, like the East Indian Jatawala's, often sweeps the ground. There are salient characteristics in the cranium which bear testimony to many phrenological theories. The transverse diameter of the rounded skull between the parietal bones, where destructiveness and secretiveness are placed, is enormous, sometimes exceeding the longitudinal line from sinciput to occiput, the direct opposite of the African negro's organization. The region of the cerebellum is deficient and shrunken, as with the European in his second childhood: it sensibly denotes that the subject wants "vim." The coronal region, where the sentiments are supposed to lie, is rather flat than arched; in extreme cases the face seems to occupy two thirds instead of half the space between poll and chin. The low conical forehead recedes, as in Robespierre's head, from the region of benevolence, and rises high at the apex, where firmness and self-esteem reside: a common formation among wild tribes, as every traveler in Asia and Africa has remarked. The facial angle of Camper varies, according to phrenologists, between 70° and 80°. The projecting lower brow is strong, broad, and massive, showing that development of the perceptions which is produced by the constant and minute observation of a limited number of objects. The well-known Indian art of following the trail is one result of this property. The nose is at once salient and dilated—in fact, partaking of the Caucasian and African types. The nostrils are broad and deeply whorled; the nasal orifice is wide, and, according to osteologists, the bones that protect it are arched and expanded; the eyebrows are removed, like the beard and mustache, by vellication, giving a dull and bald look to the face; the lashes, however, grow so thickly that they often show a sooty black line, suggesting the presence of the Oriental kohl or surma. The orbits are large and square: largeness and squareness are, in fact, the general character of the features: it doubtless produces that peculiar besotted look which belongs to the Indian as to the Mongolian family. The conjunctival membrane has the whiteness and clearness of the European and the Asiatic; it is not, as in the African, brown, yellow, or red. The pupil, like the hair, is of different shades between black and brown: when the organ is blue—an accident which leads to a suspicion of mixed blood—the owner generally receives a name from the peculiarity. Travelers, for the most part, describe the organ as "black and piercing, snaky and venomous;" others as "dull and sleepy;" while some detect in its color a mingling of black and gray. The only peculiarity which I observed in the pupil was its similarity to that of the gipsy. The Indian first fixes upon you a piercing glance, which seems to look below the surface. After a few seconds, however, the eye glazes as though a film passed over it, and