Why did scalping start

But there was one thing I never could see without a start, and a thrill of horror - the scalp of long fair hair. The Minnetaree village is a large village of dirt houses. Soon after we arrived the people who crowded the bank commenced a scalp dance on the top of the bluff in front of the pickets.

They used two drums, like tambourines, which were beat by the dancers themselves, and they danced in a ring from right to left about 30 in all, one-third of them women. They all danced. The women sang in a sort of chorus, with their voices an octave above those of the men. The step was the up and down on the heel step. They were celebrating the taking of the Sioux scalp we heard complained of at Fort Pierre. This morning I met the 3 who took the scalp, painted and dressed, coming through the village towards the boat, and walking side and slide, singing their exploit.

The dance, the song, the music, and the step among all our Indians came out of one brain. I soon became aware that the only members of the party who escaped the massacre, which proved to have been bloody as it was sudden, were Thomas Martin, John Stewart, Atkins, and myself.

Their next step was to collect the plunder. In this, they were, indeed, thorough. Not only did they gather up all our buffalo skins, Mexican blankets, rifles and revolvers, culinary utensils, and the like, but the dead bodies were stripped to the last shred, and tied on the backs of their mules. Nothing was left behind. By this time the morning light began to break on the eastern mountains, and preparations were made to depart.

Before starting, however, they unbound our feet, conducted us through the camp, pointing out the stark corpses of our butchered comrades, who had lain down to sleep with such light and happy hearts the night before. The scene was awful and heart-rending beyond the imagination of man to conceive. Not satisfied with merely putting them to death, they had cut and hacked the poor, cold bodies in the most brutal and wanton manner; some having their arms and hands chopped off, others emboweled, and still others with their tongues drawn out and sharp sticks thrust through them.

They then led us out some three or four hundred yards from the camp and pointed out the dead bodies of the sentinels, thus assuring us that not one of the entire party had escaped. During all the time they were thus exhibiting the result of their savage work, they resorted to every hideous device to inspire us with terror. A division of the plunder which they had brought from the ill-fated settlement, and with which their stolen horses nine in number were loaded, here took place, each savage stowing away in his pack his proportional share as he received it; but on nothing did they seem to set so great a value, or view with so much satisfaction, as the bleeding scalps which they had, ere life had become extinct torn from the mangled heads of the expiring victims!

That night we came in contact with a company of men and had a little fight. We killed one white man and captured fifteen horses. I think this must have been near Ballinger. We came down to Pack Saddle in Llano County and there had a terrible fight with four white men. We were in the roughs and so were the whites, so neither had the advantage, but we routed them in about a half hour.

I think I wounded one of the white men severely. I had a good shot at him, but they all got away. We wended our way from there to House mountains, and there we captured a nice herd of horses, and this increased our drove to fifty. We went our same old route up the Llano river, but the rangers got on our trail and followed us up through Mason county, but we made for Kickapoo Springs, but the rangers had changed horses and were giving us close chase.

We changed horses often and rode cautiously and made our escape, but we were followed to the edge of the plains. We reached home safely and with all our horses, but the Mexicans had again joined our squaws, and this time they had plenty of mescal and corn whiskey, and tobacco in abundance. We all got drunk and one hundred and forty Indian warriors and sixty Mexicans went on a cattle raid.

West of Fort Griffin, on the old trail, we ran into a big herd being driven to Kansas. There were about twenty hands with the cattle. We rushed up and opened fire. The cattle stampeded and the cowboys rode in an opposite direction. There were enough of us to surround the cattle and chase the boys.

Francis, two years later, that Major Robert Rogers "found. Atkins said he was "well assured Lord Loudoun detests that practice, and that the French General Moncalm in Canada does the same.

Many think, as Montcalm wrote in a letter, that it was "an operation from which you usually die, as is only natural and proper. Weyman's New York Gazette, for July 30, , carried an article proclaiming that "as a proof that many persons have survived after being scalped, we can assure our readers, that four Highlanders are lately arrived from America, in order for admission into Chelsea Hospital, who had been scalped and left for dead.

Each case is interesting and gives insight into the horrors faced by these unfortunates, as well as others who did not survive. The New York Mercury reported that about June 8th, , "two of our battoes were attacked on their way up the Mohawk's River, by a party of the enemy,.

The same party a day or two after scalped a woman, and carried off a child and a servant that were in company, between Fort Johnson and Schenectady; the woman lived 'til she got into Schenectady, tho' in great agony. A fascinating scalping incident occurred as the siege of the English forts at Oswego, NY, were about to commence. In May, , French allied Indians skulked about the forts to inflict what casualties they could.

Stephen Cross, a shipbuilder from Massachusetts, records on May 25th that "one of our soldiers came in from the edge of the woods, where it seems he had lain all night having been out on the evening party the day before and got drunk and could not get in, and not being missed, but on seeing him found he had lost his scalp, but he could not tell how nor when, having no others around.

We supposed the Indians had stumbled over him in the dark, and supposed him dead, and taken off his scalp. The harrowing experience of Lieutenant Peter Wooster of Captain David Baldwin's Company of Colonel Nathan Whiting's Second Connecticut Regiment is reported as follows: "Lieutenant Wooster of the Connecticut Forces, who was wounded in Rogers' skirmish, is yet alive and likely to recover, no pains being spared to effect it, as the surgeons are extremely fond of making a cure of so extraordinary a case, which is this, he being in the front with Major Putnam, or not far in his rear, the enemy fired upon him, 8 bullets lodged in him, 3 of which are taken out; he had also three wounds by a tomahawk, two of which were on his head, and the other in his elbow, his head was flayed, almost the hair part off.

He was sensible all the while the enemy were scalping him, and finding him wounded in so many places he could not run, and the enemy close upon him, he fell on his face and feigned himself dead, and no doubt but the enemy thought he actually was; however they gave him two blows on his head, but not so hard as to deprive him of his senses, and then scalped him, during all which time he made not the least resistance.

James Axtell and William C. Sylvester K. Stevens, et. Harrisburg: The Pennsylvania Historical Commission, , Howard H. Peckham, Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 80 : New York Mercury, 9 July , 3. Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents, vol. Frank H. Severance, An Old Frontier of France, vol. Henry J. Pennsylvania Archives, vol. PA: A wealth of evidence, particularly from prehistoric sites along the Mississippi and Missouri rivers and in the Southeast, indicates just such a conclusion.

Two kinds of evidence of scalping have been unearthed by archaeologists armed with trowels and carbon dating. The first is cuts or scratches on the skulls of victims who had been previously killed. These cuts are of course subject to various interpretations, given the existence of post-mortem ritual mutilations in many Indian cultures. The trophy skulls found in several Hopewellian burial mounds in Ohio, for example, frequently exhibit superficial cuts, apparently made by flint knives in the process of removing the flesh.

But the second kind of evidence is more conclusive. In a number of prehistoric sites, circular lesions have been found on the skulls of victims who survived scalping long enough to allow the bone tissue to regenerate partially, leaving a telltale scar.

Contrary to popular belief, scalping itself was not a fatal operation, and American history is full of survivors. Scalping is the only possible explanation for these lesions, which appear exactly where eyewitness descriptions and drawings indicate the scalp was traditionally cut. In the light of such evidence, it is clear that Indians, not white men, introduced scalping to the New World.

At the same time, it cannot be denied that the colonists encouraged the spread of scalping to many tribes unfamiliar with the practice by posting scalp bounties. Nor can it be forgotten that Americans of every stripe—from frontiersmen to ministers—were tainted by participating in the bloody market for human hair.

Yet in the end, the American stereotype of scalping must stand as historical fact, whether we are comfortable with it or not. Please support this year tradition of trusted historical writing and the volunteers that sustain it with a donation to American Heritage. All Rights Reserved. To license content, please contact licenses [at] americanheritage. Who Invented Scalping? James Axtell. Johns River in Florida: They carried slips of reeds, sharper than any steel blade … they cut the skin of the head down to the bone from front to back and all the way around and pulled it off while the hair, more than a foot and a half long, was still attached to it.

Native Americans New England.