Elongated skull tradition among Northwest tribes. #history #anthropology #nativeamerican

Hinzugefügt: 2026-05-06

[00:00:00]When Lewis and Clark met a native named Comcomly, they saw something unbelievable. And most of the art doesn't portray it, but he had a pronounced elongated skull. People on the west side of the Cascade Mountains all elongated their skulls. This was so ubiquitous that to the Native Americans on the west side of the Cascades, they were all known as flatheads. They did this all the way up into the 1800s. When the Europeans first made contact with these people, they saw massive amounts of cranial modification. [music] And the first time it was really spoken of a lot was during the Louisiana Purchase, [music] when Thomas Jefferson went and bought a bunch of land from Napoleon.

[00:00:37]And Lewis and Clark were sent up there.

[00:00:39]When they got up there, they noticed that the closer they got to the coast, the more they saw natives with elongated skulls. Did you know about this unique cultural practice? What are your thoughts?