pointed upwards, owing to a custom of artificially compressing them from the
period of the child’s birth, until it attains the age of nine or ten years.”* The
people thus described are said to inhabit the province of Tula; and it is curious
to observe, that this name was also that of the Toltecan capital of Anahuac, and
signified a place o f reeds. The same name is found in Texas and Guatemala,
indicating the migrations of the Toltecan nation. It is, therefore, a reasonable
presumption, that the Natchez were a colony of the old Toltecan stock.f
The Natchez lived very much excluded from intercourse with the adjacent
nations, excepting the Chetimaches. They inhabited the banks of the Mississippi
in three principal villages near the city which now bears their name; hut the last
remnant of the nation not long since occupied a small village on the Talipoosa
river, in Alabama. During the late war between the United States and the Creek
Indians, these Natchez joined the army of General Jackson, hut since that period
their name appears to exist only in history4
PLATES XX AND XXI.
NATCHEZ.
The extraordinary cranium of which two views are given on the annexed
plates, was obtained from a mound near the city of Vicksburg, state of Mississippi,
by Dr. W. Byrd Powell, of New Orleans, who has furnished me with the following
brief memorandum.
“ This skull is a fac-simile of another obtained at Natchez, but in a better
state of preservation. It was obtained from a mound which was full of bones for
the most part in a decomposed state. The drawings I send you are remarkably
accurate; and the following are a few of the most remarkable phrenological
measurements, derived from the skull itself:
“ From individuality to occipital spine inches.
“ From destructiveness to destructiveness 51 inches.
“ From cautiousness to cautiousness 6^ inches.
* Garcilaso de la V ega, Hist, de la Florida, Lib. IV, cap. 13.—Instead of nine or ten years,
(nueve & diez ands,) the time employed in the process was probably that number o f months.
t M’Culloh, Researches, p. 271.—Mr. Nuttall thinks that the place called Quigalla in De Soto’s
narrative, and the place where that brigand expired, was within the Natchez territory.—Trav. in
Arkansas, p. 263.
% Nuttall, Trav. p. 234.
PRO FIL E VIEW.