[Footnote 266: "The custom of squeezing and flattening the head is still strictly adhered to among the Chinooks. The people bearing the name of Flat Heads are very numerous, but very few among them actually practice the custom. Among the Chinooks it is almost universal. The process is thus effected: The child is placed on a thick plank, to which it is lashed with thongs to a position from which it can not escape, and the back of the head supported by a sort of pillow made of moss or rabbit-skins, with an inclined piece resting on the forehead of the child. This is every day drawn down a little tighter by means of a cord, which holds it in its place, until at length it touches the nose, thus forming a straight line from the crown of the head to the end of the nose. This process is seemingly a cruel one, though I doubt whether it causes much pain, as it is done in earliest infancy, while the bones are soft and cartilaginous, and easily pressed into this distorted shape by forcing the occipital up and the frontal down, so that the skull at the top in profile will show a breadth of not more than an inch and a half or two inches, when in a front view it exhibits a great expansion on the sides, making it at the top nearly the width of one and a half natural heads. By this remarkable operation the brain is singularly changed from its natural state, but in all probability not in the least diminished or injured in its natural functions. This belief is drawn from the testimony of many credible witnesses who have closely scrutinized them, and ascertained that those who have the head flattened are in no way inferior in intellectual powers to those whose heads are in their natural shapes. This strange custom existed precisely the same until recently among the Choctaws and Chickasaws, who occupied a large part of the states of Mississippi and Alabama, where they have laid their bones, and hundreds of their skulls have been procured, bearing marks of a similar treatment, with similar results."--Catlin's _American Indians_, vol. ii., p. 112.