CW: This topic is truly disgusting and horrific, and deals with violent dehumanization. At the same time, I believe it is important information about the mentality and behavior of settlers and the kind of things that settler society is made of. I have put some of the more detailed content under spoilers.

I found this article while learning about Mangas Coloradas, an Apache tribal chief who was tortured and murdered by the US military when he approached them trying to call a truce. An illustration and “analysis” of his skull appears in the book written by the people discussed in the linked article.

Photo of Phrenology Institute building:

photo of phrenology institute building exterior

As Fowler & Wells grew in popularity, they began soliciting and receiving skulls from “friends of Phrenology.” Skull and human remains collecting was a robust industry at the time, thanks in part to demand from medical schools and natural history museums, but Fowler & Wells became another lucrative destination. In the 1875 catalogue, after noting the “large sums” spent on skulls, Wells continued: “Travelers, captains of ships, soldiers on the frontier, have brought home specimens of the skulls of the different nations of the world, and contributed them to this collection.” Here, “contributed” probably meant “sold to.”

Fowler & Wells did not appear to mind how their skulls were acquired, as long as they added to the Cabinet’s overall effect. Their cold detachment also made the racism of the collection seem “scientific,” and masked the violence that produced it: Orson described Mangas Coloradas’s skull as “one of the best contributions to phrenological science possible,” for example, saying nothing of the trauma and suffering inflicted with his murder and mutilation. References throughout Fowler & Wells publications to “Indians,” “Eskimos,” and others suggest that Mangas was one among many indigenous people whose remains were stolen and displayed in the cranial collections, to say nothing of those from Africa, India, and other parts of the colonized 19th-century world.

A more detailed (cw: torture, murder, mutilation) description (from Wikipedia) of what happened to Mangas Coloradas when he approached US military leaders during a truce, and how his skull ended up being analyzed by these phrenologists:

spoiler

In January 1863, Mangas Coloradas agreed to meet with U.S. military leaders at Fort McLane, near present-day Hurley in southwestern New Mexico. Mangas Coloradas arrived under a white flag of truce to meet with Colonel Joseph Rodman West, an officer of the California Volunteers. Armed soldiers took him into custody, and West is reported to have ordered the sentries to execute the Apache leader. That night Mangas Coloradas was tortured with heated bayonets, shot and killed, as he was “trying to escape.” The following day, soldiers cut off his head, boiled it and sent the skull to the Smithsonian Institution. [Actually to Fowler’s Phrenology Institute]


The section about him in the book, written with the absolutely disgusting enthusiasm of the phrenologists:

spoiler

pages of phrenology book


  • Black AOCM
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    2 years ago

    I see the portrayal of Calvin Candie in Django Unchained was downright conservative in how these fuckers actually were, jesus fuck.