Scalping

For Profit and Prestige

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.

Scalp Dance of the Minitarres. Aquatint painting by Karl Bodmer, circa 1843/1844.

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 Rangers tried to conceal themselves in the snow, but to no avail. Brown, the only survivor, later wrote of his experience;

“… I saw an Indian coming towards us over a small stream that separated us from the enemy. I crawled away from the fire so that I could not be seen, though I could see what happened. The Indian came to Captain Spikemen, who is not able to resist, and stripped him and scalped him alive. Baker, who was lying by the captain, pulled out his knife to stab himself, but an Indian prevented him and carried him away.”

The Indians later discovered Brown and made him a prisoner, subjecting him to threatening taunts and jeers. He was forced to watch as his captain’s bloodied head was fixed to a pole as the Indians celebrated their triumph over the Rangers. Brown was kept as a prisoner for seven years.

Survivor Robert McGee was scalped as a child in 1864 by Sioux —photo c. 1890.

While the French were at war with the British, they paid bounties for English scalps to their Indian allies that they brought in. The British, in retaliation, offered payment to the Iroquois for scalps of the French and their native allies. Although each side expressed horror and disgust when scalping was done by the other, scalping became a way of life in the Indian wars. When steel knives became available as trade items, the Indians took to the loathsome act enthusiastically.

They soon got the act down to an art. In order to do it right, the scalper would grab a handful of the victim’s hair, and circled the head quickly with a knife and then yanked the hair from the scalp with the skin attached. Usually a victor would place his knee in the back of his slain foe while he committed the act. Afterwards, the scalp would be stretched within a hoop made of sapling to dry, painted on the skin side and then hung on a pole.

Remembering his capture by Shawnees in Ohio in 1790, Charles Johnston, a Virginia lawyer, wrote and published a narrative of “The incidents attending the capture, detention and ransom of Charles Johnston in 1827. In his observations, he wrote that;

“… The Indians perform the process of scalping without regard to the size of the portion of skin taken from the crown of the head. If in their haste to cut it off, they take more than they needed, afterwards they would pare it down into a round shape to a diameter of about 2 inches.

“Originally, they cut off the heads of their enemies and carried them away as trophies. But as they found these cumbersome in their retreat, they became satisfied with the tearing off of scalps.

Treatment of the scalps, of course, differed according to the custom of the various tribes. Usually when a victorious war party returned to his village, a scalp dance would be performed. The women carried the scalps about on poles as the warriors reenacted their achievements in the dance. Some of the scalps were kept by the warrior who had taken them as symbols of prestige. If the hair was long enough, he would decorate his clothing, weapons or bridle with the enemy scalps.

Individuals of the Apalachee tribe of northern Florida were reputed to have decorated their bows with the scalps of DeSoto’s men. Some tribes made sacrifices of the scalps to the gods; others made scalps of particularly brave men a part of a medicine bundle in an effort to share their bravery. Many tribes simply destroyed the trophies after celebrating the war dance. They had no other use for them.

Among the Indians of the Northwest coast, only the Tlingit scalped. The preferred trophies of the region were heads which the Haida, Kwakiutu and others fastened to the side of their huge sea-going canoes when they returned triumphantly to their villages. The heads, after a victory dance, were then mounted on poles in front of the Cedar lodges.

Lithograph depiction of scalping, circa 1850s. The work is called “The Death Cry”. Printed in color by P.S. Duval Philadelphia around 1852.

Horizontal hand-colored engraving showing a British officer paying American Indians to scalp and American soldier, circa 1812.

The Navajos of the Southwest, however, looked upon scalping as an wounds when I saw her, but was obliged to wear a wig of cloth.” adhorrance perpetuated by the Spaniards and, except for a few individuals, they never picked up the practice. Apaches did take scalps, however, that they would then conduct elaborate ceremonies to purify them with smoke. They, like the Navajos, believed that the spirits of the dead could harm them unless they were pacified.

The entire skin of the head, including the ears, was taken as a trophy by the River Yumans of southern Arizona. Enemy warriors who were slain during a battle were scalped by an individual who had obtained his special scalping power from a dream.

The Teton Dakota and Plains Cree took all of the skin from the head and face of their enemies as well. When Jacques Cartier visited a Sioux encampment in 1535, he wrote about viewing the “skins of five men’s heads” in his journal.

Throughout the Southwest and below the Mexican border, heads as well as scalps were taken routinely. The skulls and other bones of enemies were stored in ceremonial buildings or mounted on poles around the Plaza of the Indian villages.

In 1574, Gonzalo de las Casas, a Spanish priest, wrote about the Chichimecs of the Valley of Mexico:

“They are extremely cruel and brutal. To a person they capture, whether a man or woman, the first thing they do is scalp them, leaving the entire crown bare, like the tonsure of the friar. They wear, hanging at their backs, the scalps which they have taken, and some of these are from beautiful women with long blonde locks; they also wear the arm and leg bones as trophies…”

As strange as it seems, scalping did not always result in the death of the victim. Frequently the Plains Indians, instead of killing a foe, would simply scalp him Horizontal hand-colored engraving showing a British officer paying American Indians to scalp and American soland spare his life. The victim was then forced to redier, circa 1812. turn to his village without his hair as a sign of ultimate continued from page 11 degradation and humiliation. Blackfeet warriors who had survived the scalping often wore cloth or skin to others fastened to the side of their huge sea-going canoes when they returned protect the tender parts of their head. Once, when Chief Kahdewaquonaby of triumphantly to their villages. The heads, after a victory dance, were then the Obijibwa tribe saw an Indian woman at Lake Huron who have been both mounted on poles in front of the Cedar lodges. tomahawked and scalped by the Sioux, he said, “she had recovered from her

Buffalo hunter Ralph Morrison, killed and scalped by Cheyennes in December 1868 near Fort Dodge, Kansas.