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The long story/letters from the March 1, 1833 edition of the Christian Advocate now conclude with Disoway's "framing" paragraphs, to give context and "interpretation" to Walker's January 19, 1833 letter to him. This letter by Disoway is dated February 18, 1833 from New York.

Disoway's Comments on Walker's Letter to Him

"The most singluar custom of flattening the head prevails among all the Indian nations west of the Rocky Mountains. It is most common along the lower parts of the Columbia river, but diminishes in travelling eastward, until it is to be scarcely seen in the remote tribes near the mountains. Here the folly is confined to a few females only. The practice must have commenced at a very early period, as Columbus noticed it among the first objects that struck his attention. An essential point of beauty with those savage is a flat head. Immediately after the birth of a child the mother, anxious to procure the recommendation of a broad forehead for her infant, places it in the compressing machine. This is a cradle formed like a trough, with one end where the head reposes more elevated than the other. A padding is then placed upon the forehead, which presses against the head by cords passing through holes on each side of the cradle. The child is kept in this manner upward of a year, and the operation is so gradual as to be attended with scarcely any pain.--During this period of compression the infant presents a frightful appearance, its little keen black eyes being forced out to an unnatural degree by the pressure of bandages. When released from this process the head is flattened, and seldom exceeds more than one or two inches in thickness. Nature with all its efforts can never afterward restore the proper shape. The heads of grown persons often form a straight line from the nose to the top of the forehead. From the outlines of the face in Mr. Walker's communication I have endeavored to sketch a Flat Head for the purpose of illustrating more clearly this most strange custom. The dotted lines will show the usual rotundity of a human head, and the cut how widely a Flat head differs form the rest of the grat family of man.--So great is this difference as to compel anatomists themselves to confess that an examination of such skulls, and ocular demonstration only, could have convinced them of the possibiliity of moulding the head into this form. The "human face Divine" is thus sacreificed to fantastic ideas of savage beauty. They allege also, as an apology for this custom, that their slaves have round heads, and that the children of a brave and free race ought not to suffer such a degradation.

This deformity, however, of the Flat-Head Indians is redeemed by other numerous good qualities. Travellers relate that they have fewer vices than any of the tribes in those regions. They are honest, brave, and peaceable. The women become exemplary wives and mothers, and a husband with an unfaithful companion is a circumstance almost unknown among them. They believe in the existence of a good and evil Spirit, with rewards and punishments of a future state. Their religion promises to the virtuous after death a climate where perpetual summer will shine over plains filled with their much loved buffalo, and upon streams abounding with the most delicious fish. Here they will spend their time in hunting and fishing, happy and undisturbed from every enemy; while the bad Indian will be consigned to a place of eternal snows, with fires in his sight that he cannot enjoy, and buffalo and deer that cannot be caught to satisfy his hunger.

A curious tradition prevails among them concerning beavers. These animals, so celebrated for thei sagacity, they believe are a fallen race of Indians, who have been condemned on account of their wickedness, by the great spirit, to their present form of the brute creation. At some future period they also declare that these fallen creatures will be restored to their former state.*

[*Vide Lewis and Clarke's Travels; Cox's Adventures on the Columbia River; and North American Review--Disoway's note].

How deeply affecting is the circumstance of the four natives travelling on foot 3,000 miles through thick forests and extensive prairies, sincere searchers after truth! The story has scarcely a parallel in history. What a touching theme does it form for the imagination and pen of a Montgomery, a Mrs. Hemans, or our own fair Sigourney! With what intense concern will men of God whose souls are fired with holy zeal for the salvation of their fellow beings, read their history! There are immense plains, mountains, and forests in those regions whence they came, the abodes of numerous savage tribes. But no apostle of Christ has yet had the courage to penetrate into their moral darkness. Adventurous and daring fur traders only have visited these regions, unknown to the rest of the world, except from their own accounts of them. If the Father of spirits, as revealed by Jesus Christ, is not known in these interior wilds of America, they nevertheless often resound the praises of the unknown, invisible great Spirit, as he is denominated by the savages. They are not ignorant of the immortality of their souls, and speak of some future delicious island or country where departed spirits rest. May we not indulge the hope that the day is not far distant when the missionaries will penetrate into these wilds where the Sabbath bell has never yet tolled since the world began? There is not, perhaps, west of the Rocky mountains, any portion of the Indians that presents at this moment a spectable so full in interest to the contemplative mind as the Flat-head tribe. Not a thought of converting or civilizing them ever enters the mind of the sordid, demoralized hunters and fur trader. Those simple children of nature even shrink from the loose morality and inhumanities often introduced among them by the white man. Let the Church awake from her slumbers, and go forth in her strength to the salvation of these wandering sons of our native forests. We are citizens of this vast universe, and our life embraces not merely a moment, but eternity itself. Thus exalted, what can be more worthy of our high destination than to befriend our species and those efforts that they are making to release immortal spirits from the chains of error and superstition and to bring them to the knowledge of the true God.

New-York, Feb. 18, 1833. G.P.D."

The next essay gives some more interpretive comments of these two letters.

1991