Page 10
June 2020 THE INDIAN TRADER
Scalping
for Profit and Prestige
Scalp Dance of the Minitarres. Aquatint painting by Karl Bodmer, circa 1843/1844.
The practice of scalping appears to have been fairly uncommon among the Indian people in North America before the white man came. The taking of scalps as trophies was more popular throughout the Caribbean islands and in the Amazon basin than in North America where scalping was practiced in only a few fairly restricted areas. Instead of scalps, some tribes had a tradition in pre-Columbus times of taking the whole head or one of the limbs as a memento of the occasion. An early Dutch report mentioned that members of the Mohawk tribe carried away the arm and leg bones as war trophies after their raids. The establishment of scalp bounties, however, undoubtedly helped spread the repulsive custom throughout North America since it provided, for the first time, a financial incentive to the practice. The first of the notorious scalp bounties was initiated by the Dutch. In 1641, Raritan Delawares, forced by the coming of the white man from their hunting ways to thievery and begging, became such a nuisance to the settlers that Governor Kieft responded by proclaiming a bounty on their heads. Ten fathoms of wampum, a tidy sum in those days, was to be paid to anyone bringing in the head or scalp of a Raritan or other Indian hostile to the Dutch authorities. Later, Dutch soldiers, excited by the easy pay attacked a peaceful village of Hackensack Indians west of the Hudson River and, after killing many of the natives, brought back 80 heads. This pointed out one of the major problems of the bounty system since in many cases authorities never made any effort to distinguish between the heads of peaceful Indians and hostile tribes. Many peaceful tribes would suffer tragically in the years to come.
The Dutch apparently were happy to receive any heads or scalps, since the 80 heads taken by the Dutch soldiers were laid along the street for the public to view. The aged mother of Governor Kieft secretly kicked the heads about like balls. It was only after King Philip’s War in New England between the colonies and a group of local tribes that the practice of scalping became prevalent among the Indians. The horror and barbarism of the act became ingrained in the minds of the early settlers as a basic Indian trait even though scalp bounties offered by the colonies introduced scalping to tribes that previously never practiced it. The idea probably came to the colonies because scalping was fairly common in Europe at this time, being used as a form of punishment. Game poachers in England were frequently scalped for their crimes. In Spain, scalping was one of the tortures used during the Inquisition. With the advent of scalping among the Indian tribes of the Northeast, new customs of dress and ceremony were incorporated into tribal traditions. Warriors dressed their hair into a roach by plucking the hair on both sides of the head to leave a ridge which extended from the forehead to the base of the skull. Some also grew a ”scalp lock,” a braided portion of hair that hung down the back of the head like a pigtail, which they decorated with bits of fur, wam pum and feathers. It was, no doubt, a taunt and challenge to their enemies. Even though scalping was rapidly becoming a preferred way of taking trophies, old customs lingered on. Apparently scalps were being taken for bounty money in January 1757 when Thomas Brown, one of Roger’s Rangers, was wounded by some Indians near Lake Champlain. He and seven other
