The Wild Frontier (21 page)
Authors: William M. Osborn
Here is a description of fairly typical scalpings that happened during the Second Seminole War:
Through Gen. Thompson were shot fifteen bullets, and sixteen through Rogers. The Indians scalped all, taking off the scalp clear around the head as far as the hair extended, and then beating in their skulls. The heads of Rogers and Suggs were shockingly mangled.
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But the method of scalping differed among tribes. The whole skin of the upper head was taken by some. Only the crown was removed by others. Later, when the Indians had steel weapons, many used a faster method, holding on to the hair, making one cut in the front, and taking the scalp lock with a sharp pull.
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The River Yumans tribe (which included the Mojaves and Maricopas) had scalping specialists who acquired powers in dreams that enabled them to take off the skin of the entire head, including the ears.
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Several Indian practices were connected with scalping. The captive
James Smith was present when a Mohawk scalped his comrade. As they approached the Mohawk village, the Indians gave the usual scalp halloo, which was a long yell for every scalp or prisoner taken, followed by shouts of joy or triumph.
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The Pueblos had a women’s society “created to care for the scalps.”
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The Sioux captive Fanny Kelly described a scalp dance, which was held only at night. First the warriors came out and boasted of their prowess in war. Then their young women came with the scalps. The warriors leaped around in a circle, whooping and yelling the war cry. They made motions of cutting one another to pieces. They became furious, excited, ground their teeth, and tried to imitate the sound of death in battle.
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Scalping did not always cause death. A man living in northern Mexico described in detail how he was scalped by a Comanche. Some Black-feet reported that Indians who survived scalping wore caps to cover the area. It was not uncommon for Plains Indians to scalp an enemy, then send him back to his people as an insult.
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The daughter of Hepzibah Wells survived a scalping in 1690, as did others.
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Scalp bounties—the payment of money for a scalp—were common. In the early 1600s, the Spanish and the Apache did not get along at all. The Spanish then offered another tribe a bounty for Apache scalps.
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In 1675, both the Plymouth colony and Connecticut offered the Narragansets a bounty for Wampanoag scalps or captives during King Philip’s War.
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The French in 1703 paid the Choctaw and Chickasaw a bounty for the scalps of Alabama Indians.
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The same year Massachusetts paid 12 pounds for each scalp, but by 1722 they had raised it to 100 pounds.
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During the French and Indian War, between 1749 and 1763, New England and Pennsylvania offered scalp bounties.
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Some Pennsylvania settlers got $1,500 in 1763 by scalping 3 old Indian men, 2 women, and a boy who were making baskets in a nearby town.
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Pennsylvania offered a bounty of $1,000 for the scalps of all hostile Indians in 1780 during the Revolution.
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In 1776 New Hampshire offered 70 pounds for the scalp of each hostile male Indian and more than 37 pounds for that of each female or child over 12 years old.
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All 13 colonies eventually offered scalp bounties.
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The British offered the Indians bounties for white scalps. In 1778 alone, British colonel Henry Hamilton, headquartered in Detroit, reported that the Indians (mostly Miamis) had brought in 110 scalps.
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Two Mexican states offered bounties for Apache scalps in 1847.
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At times, scalp bounties were offered for Indians who had allegedly committed crimes, but bounties were paid even though the scalp wasn’t that of the alleged criminal. It was enough if it was the scalp of a person
belonging to the designated group. Of course, except for the terror factor, scalp bounties weren’t very productive. Indians and others soon learned that whites couldn’t distinguish between an enemy scalp and that of a friendly tribe, so scalps were brought in from the heads of any tribe. Finally, the Indians learned that the whites couldn’t distinguish between an Indian scalp and a white scalp. Indians then got bounties for white scalps.
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There are reports of scalp bounties in California well into the nineteenth century. In 1859, the Marysville newspaper announced that
a new plan has been adopted … to chastise the Indians for their many depredations during the past winter. Some men are hired to hunt them, who are recompensed by receiving so much for each scalp, or some other satisfactory evidence that they have been killed.
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In 1861, the
Shasta Herald
reported that at a meeting “measures [were] taken to raise a fund to be disbursed in payment of Indian scalps for which a bounty was offered.”
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Communities and individuals in California even offered money for Indian heads. Shasta City, for example, awarded 5 dollars for each head. Residents of Honey Lake in 1863 paid 25 cents for each scalp.
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Soldiers and sometimes settlers scalped Indians from time to time, but such conduct was exceptional. The worst instance was by the soldiers at the Sand Creek Massacre in 1864. Major Scott Anthony testified at a congressional hearing that “he saw the soldiers committing many acts of mutilation but he noted that those were no worse than what Indians had done to whites.”
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According to Duane Schultz, his rationalization was this:
The only way to fight Indians is to fight them as they fight us; if they scalp and mutilate the bodies we must do the same. It is the general impression of the people of that country [the Colorado Territory] that the only way to fight them is to fight as they fight; kill the women and children. At the same time, of course, we consider it a barbarous practice.
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Atrocities other than scalping continued. Captain Richard Beers was dispatched with 36 men in 1675 to relieve the garrison in Northfield, Massachusetts. He and about 20 of his men were killed by Indians in an ambush. The next day, Major Treat with 100 men approached North-field in pursuit of Indians and were “much daunted to see the heads of
Captain Beers’ Soldiers upon poles by the way side.” They turned back as a result.
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Mary Rowlandson, the wife of a minister, wrote about the events leading to her captivity by the Narragansets that same year in Lancaster, Massachusetts. Twelve settlers were killed in a raid and 24 taken captive:
Hearing the noise of some guns, we looked out; several houses were burning and the smoke ascended into heaven. There were five persons taken in one house; the father and the mother and suckling child they knocked on the head; the other two they took and carried away alive…. Another there was who was running along was shot and wounded and fell down; he begged of them for his life, promising them money (as they told me), but they would not hearken to him but knocked him in [the] head, stripped him naked, and split open his bowels.
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The Wampanoag then came to the Rowlandson house and set it on fire, which forced the occupants into the hands of the Indians.
No sooner were we out of the house, but my brother-in-law (being before wounded, in defending the house, in or near the throat) fell down dead; whereat the Indians scornfully shouted, halloed, and were presently upon him, stripping off his clothes. The bullets flying thick, one went through my side, and the same (as would seem) through the bowels and hand of my dear child in my arms. One of my elder sister’s children, named William, had then his leg broken, which the Indians perceiving, they knocked him on the head. Thus were we butchered by those merciless heathens, standing amazed, with the blood running down to our heels.
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Rowlandson described the Indians as “a company of hell-hounds, roaring, singing, ranting and insulting.”
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Other settlers were very much interested in this event. Her book, published in 1682,
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was America’s first bestseller.
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In the raid, her baby was shot dead in her arms, she was shot in the side, her sister was killed, her brother-in-law was killed, her house was burned, another child died after 9 days of forced marching, and she spent 11 weeks in captivity. She was sold by one Indian, Quinnapin, to another and became the servant of the latter, Wetamoo, sister-in-law of King Philip from an earlier marriage. She appeared before King Philip twice.
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She was freed for a ransom of 20 pounds, 2 coats, half a bushel of corn, and some tobacco.
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Cotton Mather commented
on her captivity in a sermon, pronouncing that it was not individual courage and heroism, but faith in the power of God that had helped her.
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About the same time Rowlandson was captured, Maryland Nanticoke or Doeg Indians got in a dispute with a farmer named Thomas Mathew over an account. Before matters were over, 5 Indian chiefs, 27 Indians, and at least 49 settlers had been killed.
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A year later, Connecticut major John Talcott and his men pursued the Pocasset Indians. The Pocasset chief and sachem was the female Wetamoo. An Indian betrayed her and led Talcott’s men to her camp, where they captured everyone but Wetamoo. She jumped onto some wood and tried to escape out to sea. Her naked body was found later by the colonists. They severed her head and displayed it on a pole in Taunton.
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In 1689, the Pennacook, Ossipee, and Pigwacket Indians assaulted settlements in Maine and then attacked Dover, New Hampshire, where they killed 20 or 30 English. One of them was the 75-year-old fur trader Major Richard Waldron, an old enemy from King Philip’s War. They cut off his fingers one by one. Then they took turns slashing his chest, stating they were crossing out their accounts.
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In 1676, the Christian Indians of Loretto burned an Iroquois to death in the presence of the governor-general of New France, Louis de Buade, comte de Frontenac. Other Frenchmen viewed the burning as well.
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Louis de Buade was in the military service of Venice, France, and the Netherlands and was then appointed governor-general of New France, an area that included what is now Canada and the central Mississippi Valley.
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Frontenac sent a party of 160 French-Canadians and 100 Indians from Montreal in 1690 to attack Albany. They found Albany too difficult because it was too far to go in freezing weather, so they chose to attack Schenectady instead. They attacked and found the gates open and guarded only by 2 snowmen. For 2 hours they hacked men, women, and children to death.
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It is said they acted without provocation and were motivated only by brutal lust and wantonness. It was also reported that pregnant women were ripped open and their babies thrown into the flames or dashed against posts.
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Sixty colonists were killed.
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The Abnaki Indians
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and the French attacked Fort Loyal, now Falmouth,
Maine, 2 years later. The fort surrendered on the condition that the soldiers would be granted safe conduct. As they marched out of the fort, however, they were massacred, and at least 100 of them died.
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The Abnakis had agreed by treaty to refrain from hostilities until May, but instead they with some Canadians attacked York, Maine, on February 5. They killed 48 and took 70 prisoners. In June they attacked Wells, Maine, and Deerfield, Massachusetts. Widow Hepzibah Wells and her 3 daughters were scalped. The Thomas Broughton family of 5 was killed.
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The Abnakis captured Mrs. Hannah Duston when they raided Haverhill, Massachusetts, in 1697. She had had her eighth child the week before and was resting inside. Her farmer husband told the other children to run to a fortified house while he tried without success to reach his wife. The Indians carried off Hannah, the baby, and a nurse, Mary Neff, who was caring for them. While they were going through the forest, the baby cried, and an Indian smashed its head against a tree, killing it. Hannah and the nurse were then turned over to a group of 2 warriors, 3 women, and 7 children. The group went north for more than a month, with the Catholic Indians pausing twice a day to say their rosaries.
On the last night of her captivity, Hannah Duston, the nurse, and 10-year-old Samuel Lennardson got up quietly from the campfire, took hatchets, and killed 4 adult Indians and most of the children. An old woman and a boy escaped. Hannah remembered that Massachusetts was offering a scalp bounty at the time, so she scalped the Indians and returned home, where she found all the other members of her family alive. She collected her 25-pound scalp bounty even though the time for collecting such bounties had expired. Of course, Cotton Mather incorporated her experience—like that of Mary Rowlandson—into his sermons, attributing the evil of the Indians to their conversion to Catholicism and citing her escape as an example of the Protestant ideal of divine deliverance from evil.
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Sieur d’Iberville explored the lower Mississippi region for France and discovered the Mississippi Delta.
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There he and other French officials encountered the Natchez tribe
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in 1700. They were present later at an “orgy of ritualistic human sacrifices” after the female chief, the Great Sun, died. Later, a French commandant ordered a Natchez town to be removed from the site where he planned to build a settlement. Because a
Natchez sacred temple with ancestral bones was there, the Natchez massacred the garrison. The French, with 700 Choctaw allies, counterattacked and almost annihilated the tribe. The 427 survivors were shipped to Haiti as slaves.
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The tribe gradually lost its identity.
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