patterns of figures cut on them.  These were said to be emblems of mourning for the dead."[89] Among the Snanaimuq “the face of the deceased is painted with red and black paint...  After the death of husband or wife the survivor must paint his legs and his blanket red."[90] Numerous other instances may be found in Mallery, who remarks that “many objective modes of showing mourning by styles of paint and markings are known, the significance of which are apparent when discovered in pictographs."[91]

INDICATIONS OF TRIBE OR RANK

Among the customs which, in Darwin’s opinion, show “how widely the different races of man differ in their taste for the beautiful,” is that of moulding the skull of infants into various unnatural shapes, in some cases making the head “appear to us idiotic.”  One would think that before accepting such a monstrous custom as evidence of any kind of a sense of beauty, Darwin, and those who expressed the same opinion before and after him, would have inquired whether there is not some more rational way of accounting for the admiration of deformed heads by these races than by assuming that they approved of them for esthetic reasons.  There is no difficulty in finding several non-esthetic reasons why peculiarly moulded skulls were approved of.  The Nicaraguans, as I have already stated, believed that heads were moulded in order to make it easier to bear burdens, and the Peruvians also said they pressed the heads of children to make them healthier and able to do more work.  But vanity—­individual or tribal—­and fashion were the principal motives.  According to Torquemada, the kings were the first who had their heads shaped, and afterward permission to follow their example was granted to others as a special favor.  In their classical work on Peruvian antiquities (31-32) Eivero and Tschudi describe the skulls they examined., including many varieties “artificially produced, and differing according to their respective localities.”

“These irregularities were undoubtedly produced by mechanical causes, and were considered as the distinctive marks of families; for in one Huaca [cemetery] will always be found the same form of crania; while in another, near by, the forms are entirely different from those in the first.”

The custom of flattening the head was practised by various Indian tribes, especially in the Pacific States, and Bancroft (I., 180) says that, “all seem to admire a flattened forehead as a sign of noble birth;” and on p. 228, he remarks: 

“Failure properly to mould the cranium of her offspring gives the Chinook matron the reputation of a lazy and un-dutiful mother, and subjects the neglected children to the ridicule of their companions; so despotic is fashion.”

The Arab races of Africa alter the shapes of their children’s heads because they are jealous of their noble descent. (Bastian, D.M., II., 229.)