Scalping--still acceptable?

“Scholar's talk on scalping inspires debate - Presenter of talk at BBHC tells of white men taking their own trophies in clashesBy RUFFIN PREVOST
Gazette Wyoming Bureau

CODY, Wyo. - Popular culture and historical accounts reveal a conventional view of scalping as a "barbarous practice" of the Old West.

But the deeper context behind scalping shows that race, gender, politics and cultural perspectives have played a role in the practice and our historical and contemporary perceptions of it.

"Scalping also reveals who owns history," said Margaret Ball, a fellow at the Cody Institute for Western American Studies, a program of the Buffalo Bill Historical Center.

"The culture that owns history is the culture that's left with their hair."

Ball spoke Thursday at the BBHC, discussing scalping and other trophy-taking practices during conflicts between white settlers and American Indians throughout the late 1800s.

Her talk focused on the Sand Creek Massacre, an 1864 attack by the Colorado territorial militia on a peaceful group of Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians.

During that incident, at least 150 Indians, mostly women and children, were killed, and militia members took as trophies scalps and genitals from men and women, said Ball, a doctoral candidate at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Ball said the "morbid mementos" were taken back to Denver and displayed with pride, including at bars and at least one tavern for more than 40 years.

The East Coast professional military denounced the practice, and Congress conducted an investigation that found the incident to be "a foul and dastardly massacre."

But some whites, particularly around Denver, justified the mutilations - or "post-mortem corporeal modifications" - as an appropriate response to the scalpings carried out by Indians, she said.

Ball said scalping as practiced by Indians included ritual elements absent from its practice by white settlers.

Some tribes stretched scalps on circular frames, others buried them, and some made war shirts of them.

"In some tribes, only those who had been ceremonially initiated could remove scalps," she said.

Scalping also held a spiritual context among Indians, she said, "because a disfigured body could not reach the afterlife."

Scholars have also argued that "head hair is symbolic of genital organs," Ball said, and "hair cutting and shaving are symbolic castration."

"Scalping literally represented severing an individual's genetic line," she said.

Ball said hair remains a symbol of virility and power in contemporary American culture, and scalping continues to be a sensitive and controversial topic.

Some in the audience proved that point during a question-and-answer session, challenging the focus on Sand Creek and saying that mutilations during war occurred long before and since the late 1800s, in places across the globe.

One member of the audience challenged Ball's analysis of the Sand Creek mutilations, saying the lack of a larger historical perspective amounted to "taking the facts out of context and putting them together again in a wrong way."

The investigation of Sand Creek by Congress and the military proved it was an anomaly, and not a culturally accepted practice by most Americans, another person said.”

“Scholars have also argued that "head hair is symbolic of genital organs"...

Ball said hair remains a symbol of virility and power...

A friend of mine who was going pretty bald just after college would always say, "I have more important things to do with my hormones than grow hair!"”

“...sayeth the balding one..!”

“Ball said scalping as practiced by Indians included ritual elements absent from its practice by white settlers.

WTF? So preventing white men from reaching the afterlife is acceptable, but taking a scalp as retribution for that act isn't. Nice code that woman has.”

“I think, what she's saying is, that it was more of the white man's manifest destiny that empowered them to take scalps as compared to the Indian's spirtual reasons.”

“dude im scotch irish and cherokee indian...so what that translates into...I love whiskey and scotch and have a nasty temper that you dont want to arouse b/c I will scalp you :)”

“I would have to read more of her writing, but I doubt it. I get that she is saying white man mean, redman spiritual. Where as it was more, red man spiritual and mean (no afterlife for you, buddy) and white man saying whats good for the goose is good for the gander (no afterlife for you either). Also, it was an easier way to be sure that when you were paying the bounty for a dead indian you were getting what you paid for.
last edited: 7/06/07 2:59:34 PM”

“Her comment about history being owned by the one who keeps their hair belies the rest of her argument. It certainly can not be said the American Indian "owns the history" but it is true that scalping was more an act of Native American culture than white culture.

She's a nut case. I am very thankful I did not take my American Studies degree from the likes of her.

I assume since "hair cutting and shaving are symbolic castration" she avoids clean shaven men with short hair. Or maybe its the other way around.”

“
"Scalping also reveals who owns history,"

”

“"Just win, Baby."

- Al Davis”

“i never buy my tickets from ticketmaster...i refuse to pay the surcharge, besides i always get them cheaper from a scalper than face value”

“BTW, counting coup by taking body parts has been a practice by many more cultures than just native americans.

From wikipedia:

Scythia

Scalping was practiced by the ancient Scythians of Eurasia. Herodotus, the Greek historian, wrote of the Scythians in 440 BC: "The Scythian soldier scrapes the scalp clean of flesh and softening it by rubbing between the hands, uses it thenceforth as a napkin. The Scyth is proud of these scalps and hangs them from his bridle rein; the greater the number of such napkins that a man can show, the more highly is he esteemed among them. Many make themselves cloaks by sewing a quantity of these scalps together".

[edit] Northern Europe

Scalps were taken in wars between the Visigoths, the Franks and the Anglo-Saxons in the 9th century according to the writings of Abbott Emmanuel H. D. Domenech. His sources included the decalvare of the ancient Germans, the capillos et cutem detrahere of the code of the Visigoths, and the Annals of Flodoard. ”

“... and there was that story about Samson & Delilah ....”

“Ya harebrain!!!”

“scary... i am reading "Mayflower" and there is a lot of scalping goin' on there... esp during the war with the indians. awful stuff!”

“bad hare day ----”

“what do you call a bunch of rabbits side by side stepping backwards?

A receding hare line”

“At the head of a company of thirty men attractdd by a bounty of £100 that had been offered for every Indian scalp, he marched to the north of Winnipiscogee lake on 19 December, 1724, and returned with one scalp and a boy prisoner. With forty men he surprised ten Indians near Tamworth, New Hampshire, on 20 February, 1725, and marched into Dover with their scalps exhibited on poles. In his third and last expedition he led forty-six men to attack the Indian town of Pigwacket, the village of the Ossipee or Pigwacket tribe. After leaving twelve men in a fort that he built near Ossipee lake, he marched to the north of the lake with his command, reduced to thirty-four. While at morning prayers the company were alarmed by the report of a gun and the discovery of an Indian. They left their packs, and advanced, seeking the enemy in front ; but the Indians had gained their rear, and took possession of their camp. The savages outnumbered the English two to one, and were commanded by their able chief, Paugus. They were met in a sparsely wooded place, and at the first fire Captain Lovewell fell, mortally wounded. His men withdrew in good order to the lake to escape being surrounded, and the fight continued from 10 A. M. till nightfall, when the Indians, having lost their chief, retired from the field. Only nine of Captain Love-well's company escaped unhurt.

http://www.famousamericans.net/johnlovewell/”

“Any way you look at it, paybacks are heck.”

“Did native Americans learn scalping from Europeans?

...Call it a case of parallel development, Taylor. Scalping — that is, the excision of the scalp and (usually) attached hair of one's (usually) dead enemies for display, exchange, or (if the victim wasn't dead) torture — is one of those classic concepts for which no single group can take all the credit. Native Americans didn't get the idea from Europeans, but the arrivistes encouraged them to bring it to what was arguably its fullest flowering.

The Seneca leader Cornplanter was perhaps the first to suggest Europeans imported scalping, in 1820, but the idea didn’t become prominent till the 1960s and ’70s. By then contrary evidence was mounting, but let's concede an important point: scalping has a long history in the Old World. Herodotus recorded scalping by ancient Scythians in central Asia, and archaeologists have since unearthed skulls with likely scalping marks at Scythian sites. Evidence indicates Europeans were scalping from the Stone Age till as late as 1036 in England...

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/061215.html”

“The date of 1820 is not likely to be correct. In early American literature prior to that time the Natives were using the technique. In no way do I suggest the white culture did not engage in scalping. It is unquestionable that they did. However to suggest that the natives learned it from the Europeans seem to stretch credulity for me.”

“Still, it accomplishes most everything taking the complete head does, without nearly the storage headaches.

(aHem)”

“Bada Bing!

1820 is the date the Seneca leader discussed the practice of Europeans scalping. I'm sure tribes developed the practice on their own. I'm sure tribes also learned it from Europeans.

Look how well they adapted to horses. We're lucky Europeans were so dirty.”

“strung on a paracord around my neck...

Asian beliefs are such that if your body is not whole after death, those same parts will be missing in the afterlife...

The VC in 'Nam used to telltale their plans for attack by building boxes for the dead (they were brave SOB's when they thought they would be whole in the afterlife); and making ladders (To throw across the wire when breaching perimeter defenses).

Strangely, they brought the Ear taking on themselves by creating "Hanging Gardens" where the dismembered bodies of killed americans were strung from the trees...once the South Vietnamese explained the belief to the Americans, you can guess the result....”

“I had been told in high school history that scalping was encouraged by the french during the french and Indian war as a way to kill off the british. A bounty was payed to the Natives by the french, for british scalps. I wounder how they told the brit scalps from the french?”

“The french all wore wigs. If the scalp was white and came off too easily it was French... otherwise it was British.”

“Am remembering the guy in Jeremiah Johnson who shaved his head to avoid scalping ----”

“The french all wore wigs. If the scalp was white and came off too easily it was French... otherwise it was British.”
Ramblinrev
11:03:47 AM
7/07/07


So does that mean they could get a two-fer from the french? I think I would have been on the brit's side if that was the case...”