Why does scalping kill you

The three had survived a major massacre by the Blackfeet with a party trying to establish a fur post at the Missouri headwaters. One of the trappers, the year-old Kentuckian Robinson, wore a scarf around his head. Under it were the scars of a scalping.

Robinson and company said they knew a better way to the Pacific than the Lewis and Clark route, one that left the Missouri, skirted to the south around Blackfeet territory, across several mountain ranges, to a headwaters branch of the Columbia.

Here the voyageurs could build canoes and easily paddle to the Pacific to start Mr. In fact, the three trappers wanted a piece of the action, too. Hunt spent an anxious night agonizing over the decision about route. Robinson had actually received the scalping some years earlier in Ohio Valley Indian wars.

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: Hamilton, Edward P. Jesuit Relations, Millan, , Milton W. Then, brandishing the scalp, they utter a whoop which they call the 'death whoop'. If they are not under pressure and the victory has cost them lives, they behave in an extremely cruel manner towards those they kill or the dead bodies. They disembowel them and smear their blood all over themselves.

It is a custom of the Indians, when one of their number is slain or taken prisoner in battle, to give to the nearest relative to the dead or absent, a prisoner, if they have chanced to take one, and if not, to give him the scalp of an enemy. On the return of the Indians from conquest, which is always announced by peculiar shoutings, demonstrations of joy, and the exhibition of some trophy of victory, the mourners come forward and make their claims.

If they receive a prisoner, it is at their option either to satiate their vengeance, by taking his life in the most cruel manner they can conceive of; or, to receive and adopt him into the family, in the place of him whom they have lost. All the prisoners that are taken in battle and carried to the encampment or town by the Indians, are given to the bereaved families, till their number is made good.

And unless the mourners have but just received the news of their bereavement, and are under the operation of a paroxysm of grief, anger and revenge; or, unless the prisoner is very old, sickly, or homely, they generally save him, and treat him kindly. But if their mental wound is fresh, their loss so great that they deem it irreparable, or if their prisoner or prisoners do not meet their approbation, no torture, let it be ever so cruel, seems sufficient to make them satisfaction.

It is family, and not national, sacrifices amongst the Indians, that has given them an indelible stamp as barbarians, and identified their character with the idea which is generally formed of unfeeling ferocity, and the most abandoned cruelty.

Seizing with his left hand the long and braided lock on the centre of the Indian's head, he passed the point edge of his keen butcher-knife round the parting, turning it at the same time under the skin to separate the scalp from the skull; then, with a quick and sudden jerk of his hand, he removed it entirely from the head, and giving the reeking trophy a wring upon the grass to free it from the blood, he coolly hitched it under his belt, and proceeded to the next; but seeing La Bonte operating upon this, he sought the third, who lay some little distance from the others.

This one was still alive, a pistol-ball having passed through his body, without touching a vital spot. Thrusting his knife, for mercy's sake, into the bosom of the Indian, he likewise tore the scalp-lock from his head, and placed it with the other. Apropos to scalps, I have seen many of the warriors here, who had one or more of these suspended as decorations to their dress; and they seemed to me so much a part and parcel of the sauvagerie around me, that I looked on them generally without emotion or pain.

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.