The beginnings of Indian scalping
1725 Possibly the first reported case of white men scalping Native Americans took place in New Hampshire colony. Ten sleeping Indians were scalped by Captain Lovewell and troops at Wakefield (in what became New Hampshire, USA) for scalp bounty. This is widely believed to be the first recorded instance of scalping, which some authorities insist was introduced to the Americas by Europeans. In 1820, an Allegheny Seneca chieftain named Cornplanter claimed that the natives were peaceful until Europeans came. However, other authorities show evidence that scalping existed in the Americas centuries before European colonization ...
Tagged: usa, indigenous, history
Pip Wilson posted item above at 12:40 PM | Permalink
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Scalping was practiced so universally among Native American tribes that anthropologists, relying on Native American oral tradition and evidence from gravesites thousands of years old, assume they bought the practice with them when they first crossed the land bridge from Asia into the Americas. Tribes carried their totem pole of scalps with them as they moved even before they got horses from the Europeans and had to carry everything on their backs or on dog travois. Europeans who scalped Native Americans or offered bounties for Native American scalps were imitating Native American custom. Scalping was among the least grotesque forms of mutilation Native American routinely performed. Since sexual mutilation was just as common, scalping was about the only form of mutilation that could be mentioned in newspapers without offending the reading public.
Scalping was so universally practiced among Native American tries that historians and anthropoligists conclude they bought the practice with them as they crossed the now vanished bridge between Asia to North America. The evidence comes not only from Native American oral histories but from graves thousands of years old. Europeans who scalped Native Americans were imitating Native American practices. Scalping was the least objectionable aspect of ritual mutilations routinely practiced by Native Americans. They routinely severed sexual organs, which they stuffed in the victim's mouths, and disemboweled victims.
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