"Who Scalped Whom? " Topic

"As monuments go, the one depicting Colonial heroine Hannah Dustin looks like any other, with one crucial exception: In her left hand she holds a fistful of human scalps.

The inscription underneath tells of her 1697 capture in an Indian raid, and how she slew her captors as they slept – 10 women and children. Later she returned for their scalps, having remembered they could fetch a bounty.

The idea of a settler scalping Indians might seem like a historical quirk. Most Americans assume that if there was any scalping going on in Colonial times, the Indians were doing it, not the English…"
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Amicalement
Armand

It is my impression that scalping was pretty general as a practice among the real frontiersmen, whether English or French-Canadian, and for long after the colonial period when scalps fetched a bounty. It may seem disgusting to modern sensibilities, but it becomes fairly understandable when you contemplate that these same people would have seen a good many of their friends and kin scalped--not always after death either.

A disgusting custom no matter who practiced it. Shame on the natives for "starting" it. Shame on the settlers for copying it.

Terrible custom for sure but, I do not fault her for what she did.

I always had the impression the natives started it, and then the other side decided to play by their rules as well, and copied the practice.

Didn't read the article, so don't know if that's accurate or not.

Let's not bicker about who scalped who.

ha! Agreed!

Taking body parts to prove the body count is as old as the hills, and happened all over the world. The Egyptians collected hands from Nubians, penises (pe-ni?), from the Libyians. There is some thought that the Native Americans adopted it from the Colonials.

There is extensive evidence of trophy taking in 'Pre contact' American cultures.

I suspect that attribution of the origin of scalp taking to European settlers on the eastern seaboard is a piece of C20th self-flagellation, probably based on a mis-interprtation of the offering of bounties for scalps.