Becoming Indians

It is au oxtraordinary question in antliropologieal science which has been propounded popularly of late. The infhienee of environment upon the race resident in the United States must in the cov.rse of f our centuries produce certain marked and undeniable physical results. It is not generally acknowledged by American anthropologists that there is a tendency of reversion to the type indigenous to the soil. But foreign studente of race, with more perspective, have offered interesting food for reflection. A writer in the Chicago TimesHerald, commenting on the assertion of the French authors that on this continent the American white man has varied toward the Indian type, offers a supporting study which is ctiriously fascinating - possibly vastly important. First, the familiar faces of the caricaturists' creation are called in as witnesses. Theïankee and the southron - large and loose linibed - of these pictures are types, even as the stout, full faced John Buil is a type found in another environment. Both American fayorites of the cartoonist have high cheek bones and usually excellent straight noses. These witnesses are not, of coiirse, scientifically admissible. The faces given us by the caricature makers are impressions, not testimony. Scientific, however, is the study offered of the Pennsylvania Germans - a happy, thrifty, frugal people, who have been subjected to American conditions for nearly two centuries, with very little intermingling with other races, much less than the English people in New England or in Virginia. It is true that the pervasive and beguiling Irish have intermarried somewhat with these old Pennsylvania settlers, but in the main it is a very exclusive, pure blooded Palatinate stock. Data have been seoured relative to a large number of school children and to adult males from 25 to 50 years of age, and many copies of portraits of original settlers. It appears that stature increases and that other important generalizations may be made, tentatively of course. The increase of flnger reach is marked, and the kead nieasures are important. "The anthropologist places considerable valué upon certain proportions or relations between measures, ' ' says the student of the subject. ' ' Thus the length of the head and the breadtli of the head, when compared, give numerical expression, which is called the cephalic index. To find it the length is divided into the breadth and the result multiplied by 100. A head one-half as wide as it is .long would havo au index of 50; one three-fourths as wide as long would have an index of 75; one as wide as it was long would have an index of 100. There is no race whose head is normally so wide as to have an index of 100 or so narrow as to have one of 50. Thehigher the index, of course, the broader and sounder the head; the lower the index, the longer and narrower the head. Germans generally are notably round headed. Topinard gives for sorae people of Lorraine the index of 85. 3. The average index of 100 Penusylvania Gemians ís 81.9, which 's notably less and narrower. The heads of our northern and eastern Iudians are still longer and narrower. $"e cannot at present make a further comparison with proflt. What we have already said may prove erroneous when we learn the actual Palatinate type. We assume now that the Palatinate Gcrmans were of medium stature, light haired, blue or light eyed, round headed, with a finger reach o] 1.04a. We find that the Pennsylvahia Germán children are dark iu hair anc eyes, that the men are probably of increased stature, that heads appear to be lengthening, that arm reach appears to be increasing. In all these respects the Pennsylvania Germán varíes from the assumed Palatinate type and in the direction of the Iudian. If our assumption proves valid, we may claim that our evidence shows change, which, if continued, may form an Indian type fi-om the Germán. ' ' All this, it must be noted, is absolutely distinct from any of the reasons for discussing the tendency of Americans to revert to original types from the infiltration of the red Indian blood itseL in the veins of the white race. From the days of the old French and Indian wars flreside tales of New England intermix ture of that sort have been common enough. A recent novel has expressec the country knowledge in New Englanc that there is an occasional "streak' from ancestry that approached New England from the west as well as tha which approached it from the east across the Atlantic. In the western states anc territories the great numbers of hal breeds whose descendants fiud their way into the life of cities brings to bear a curious and unreckoned force in the de velopment of the fiber and sinew of the