As I go over the materials for a post about the recent article PLoS Biology article "The Mismeasure of Science: Stephen Jay Gould versus Samuel George Morton on Skulls and Bias." by Lewis, DeGusta, et al., I thought it might be a good idea to go ahead and post some relevant extracts from Morton and Gould.
Below is Morton's description of his collection, presented at the Academy of Natural Sciences and included as the Introduction to Catalogue of Skulls of Man and Inferior Animals in the Collection of Samuel George Morton, third edition. Philadelphia: Merrihew & Thompson, 1849, p. i-x.
This is the text in full with accompanying tables. Click on the images to see the table in full size.
INTRODUCTION
The primary motive in making the following collection has been to compare the characters of the cranium in different races of men, and these again with the skulls of the interior animals, not only in reference to their exterior form, but also to internal capacity as indicative of the size of the brain.”
Besides these strictly Ethnographic objects, some others of a different and subordinate kind have been had in view; such as pathological conditions of the skull from diseases and from wounds; remarkable developments illustrative of the principles of Phrenology, and preternatural growths of every description.
The Indian crania contained in this series have received my especial attention, both in respect to their number and authenticity, for they have been collected with great care by gentlemen whose names are associated with them. In every instance where a doubt is entertained as to the tribe or nation to which the skull belonged, it is expressed by a mark of interrogation; and where no clue exists for such information, the deficiency is noted accordingly. I have sometimes had the skulls of both Europeans and Africans sent to me by mistake for those of Indians: that these should occasionally be mingled in the same cemeteries is readily understood; but a practised eye can separate them without difficulty.
Large as this collection already is, a glance at the Ethnological Table will show that it is very deficient in some divisions of the human family. For example, it contains no skulls of the Eskimaux, Fuegians, Californians or Brazilians. The distorted heads of the Oregon tribes are also but partially represented, while the long-headed people of the Lake of Titicaca, in Bolivia, are altogether wanting. Skulls also of the great divisions of the Caucasian and Mongolian tribes of Northern Asia and China, are among the especial desiderata of this collection.
The following analysis exhibits an Ethnographic view of the materials embraced in the entire series.
The letters F. A. express the facial angle, and I. C. refer to the internal capacity of the cranium as obtained by the process invented by my friend Mr. J. S. Phillips, and described in my Crania Americana, p. 253, merely substituting leaden shot, one-eighth of an inch in diameter, in place of the white mustard-seed originally used. I thus obtain the absolute capacity of the cranium, or bulk of the brain, in cubic inches; and the results are annexed in all those instances in which I have had leisure to put this revised mode of measurement in practice. I have restricted it, at least for the purpose of my inferential conclusions, to the crania of persons of sixteen years of age and upwards, at which period the brain is believed to possess the adult size. Under this age, the capacity-measurement has only been resorted to for the purpose of collateral comparison.
All the measurements in this Catalogue, both of the facial angle and internal capacity, have been made with my own hands. I at one time employed a person to aid me in these elaborate and fatiguing details; but having detected some errors in his measurements, I have been at the pains to revise all that part of the series that had not been previously measured by myself. I can now, therefore, vouch for the accuracy of these multitudinous data, which I cannot but regard as a novel and important contribution to Ethnological science.
It is necessary to add, that the measurements originally published in the Crania Americana were made with seeds, which will explain the discrepancy between the numbers observable in that work and this catalogue. The measurements of the Crania Egyptiaca having been originally made with shot, require no revision: nor can I avoid expressing my satisfaction at the singular accuracy of this method, since a skull of an hundred cubic inches, if measured any number of times with reasonable care, will not vary a single cubic inch.
I am now engaged in a memoir which will embrace the detailed conclusions that result from these data; and meanwhile I submit the following tabular view of the prominent facts.
In this table the measurements of children, idiots and mixed races are omitted, excepting only in the instance of the Fellahs of Egypt, who, however, are a blended stock of two Caucasian nations,—the true Egyptian and the intrusive Arab, in which the characteristics of the former greatly predominate.
“No mean has been taken of the Caucasian race* collectively. Because of the very great preponderance of Hindu, Egyptian and Fellah skulls over those of the Germanic, Pelasgic and Celtic families. Nor could any just collective comparison be instituted between the Caucasian and Negro groups in such a table, unless the small-brained people of the latter division (Hottentots, Bushmen and Australians) were proportionate in number to the Hindoos, Egyptians and Fellahs of the other group. Such a computation, were it practicable, would probably reduce the Caucasian average to about 87 cubic inches, and the Negro to 78 at most, perhaps even to 75, and thus confirmatively establish the difference of at least nine cubic inches between the mean of the two races.*[**]
*“It is necessary to explain what is here meant by the word race. Further researches into Ethnographic affinities will probably demonstrate that what are now termed the five races of men, would be more appropriately called groups; that each of these groups is again divisible into a greater or smaller number of primary races, each of which has expanded from an aboriginal nucleus or centre. Thus I conceive that there were several centres for the American group of races, of which the highest in the scale are the Toltecan nations, the lowest the Fuegians. Nor does this view conflict with the general principle, that all these nations and tribes have had, as I have elsewhere expressed it, a common origin; inasmuch as by this term is only meant an indigenous relation to the country they inhabit, and that collective identity of physical traits, mental and moral endowments, language, &c., which characterizes all the American races. The same remarks are applicable to all the other human races; but in the present infnat state of Ethnographic science, the designation of these centres is a task of equal delicacy and difficulty. I may here observe, that whenever I have ventured an opion on this question, it has been in favor of the doctrine of primitive diversities among men, ---an original adaptation of the several races to those varied circumstances of climate and locality, which, while congenial to the one are destructive to the other; and subsequent investigations have confirmed me in these views. See Crania Americana, p. 3; Crania Egyptiaca, p. 37; Distinctive Characteristics of the Aboriginal Race of America, p. 36; Silliman’s American Journal of Science and the Arts, 1847; and my letter to J. R. Bartlett, Esq., in Vol. 2 of the Transactions of the Ethnological Society of New York.
*[**] From the Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia for September and October, 1849.
[Updated September 28, 2019]
