Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 January 1912 — HAS LOST HUMAN HEADS [ARTICLE]

HAS LOST HUMAN HEADS

University of Pennsylvania Museum Has 200-Year-Old Smoked Heads. Chickasha, Okla.—Prof. George B. Gordon, director of the University of Pennsylvania museum, has just received, through his agents In London, three human heads, which, although preserving the full contour of the features, are approximately 200 years old. They are the grotesquely tattooed heads of leaders of the ancient Maori of New Zealand, who were first discovered in 1770 by the famous explorer, Capt James Cook. Professor Gordon explained that the heads were preserved by a process of smoking them and were kept for the same reasons that Caucasians keep pictures of their ancestors. The beads are not gruesome or revolting, even to the most sensitive and highly Imaginative person. The faces are smooth and pot suggest human flesh any more than the face of a wax doll. The eyes are closed and the hair is well preserved. The entire face la covered with fanciful though symmetrical figures, tattooed during life. The Maori are the only tribe of the entire Polynesian race ' who preserved their heads. The people of Borneo also preserve beads,"but do not tattoo their faces as did the Maori. According to Dr. Gordon, the preserved heads are very rare, there be ing only two or three known to be in existence besides rhe Robley collection at Columbia university, which contains nearly a score.— North American.