SCALP Hunting

Pakwatikosewin

On July of 1689, at the start of King William’s War, the state of Massachusetts declared that each soldier would receive eight pounds out of the public treasury for each Indian scalp and that “whatever Indian plunders falls into their hands shall be their own.”

Less than a decade later, in 1697, a woman named Hannah Dustin became a Colonial heroine when she slayed her Abenaki captors while they slept "10 aboriginal women and children" then redeemed their scalps for money. A bronze monument honoring Dustin stands in Haverhill, Massachusetts, her home state. Clutched in her right hand is a hatchet. Dustin was held in New Hampshire, where a granite monument stands and one in Massachusetts.

This Hannah Dustin statue is in Haverhill, Massachusetts, her home state. This one shows her with a hatchet and the scalps of the native women and children.

statue of Hannah Dustin 

By 1702, Massachusetts offered 10 pounds for every scalp from a male Indian age 10 and older. That price increased to 20 pounds then 100, Scalps taken from women fetched 10 pounds each, while children under the age of 10 were sold into slavery with proceeds going to the scalp hunters.

“Scalp hunting provided both an effective and a financially rewarding means to kill, conquer and subjugate the Indian peoples of the Eastern Seaboard,”.

Scalping, according to James Axtell, a former history professor at the College of William & Mary, was performed after a person was unconscious or dead. The executor, from a position behind the victim, pulled the hair back and used an obsidian blade to slice off a section of skin, in some cases the skin was torn off.

In other cases, scalps were displayed as badges of honor. Other times they were gifts or decorations. When there were bounties to be collected, scalps served as a way to count the dead.

One of the problems of scalping, however, was that taking a scalp did not guarantee death, they would sometimes suffer and bleed out for days. “There are medical journals that include articles about the care and management of a scalped head.”

Despite the evidence of colonists scalping Natives, the word “scalp” is culturally loaded, and most people assume the practice is rooted in Native tradition. It was invented by the Europeans, French, and Spaniards.

In 1969 Vine Deloria Jr. said Europeans likened Natives to wild animals. “Scalping, introduced prior to the French and Indian War by the English, confirmed the suspicion that Indians were wild animals to be hunted and skinned,” he wrote. “Bounties were set and an Indian scalp became more valuable than beaver, otter, marten and other animal pelts.”

The practice of scalping was losing popularity by the early 1800s. Although there were some reports of scalping during the Revolutionary War and bounties were being offered as recently as the Civil War.

Scalping was practiced by the ancient Scythians of Eurasia. Herodotus, the Greek historian, wrote of the Scythians in 440 BC.



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