Indian Scalping History

The practice of scalping, the removal of the scalp from the head often to be used as a trophy, has long been one of the most enigmatic, contentious, and startling elements of early American history. Often distorted by Anglo-Saxon ethnocentrism, understandings of scalping, both past and present, have most commonly presented the practice as the embodiment of Indian savagery and cruelty. Much more than evidence of Indian warfare’s barbarism, however, scalping was a vital part of the nuanced and dynamic relationship that defined the colonial and Indian experience in early America. As the symbiosis that tied Indians and colonials changed, so did the function of scalping in the colonial period up through the early nineteenth century. Initially, …show more content…
Racial tension has dominated conceptions of scalping as “the traditional wisdom of American history asserts that the ‘savage’ Indians scalped ‘civilized’ whites in their resistance to the ‘taming’ of the continent.” In the twentieth century, this racialized understanding was rebuked as a fundamental distortion of Indian history. Attempts to “de-racialize” scalping allowed for a series of new and troubling misrepresentations of the practice’s role in early America to emerge. By far the most significant of these claims was the proposition that it was colonials who first introduced scalping and forced the alien practice on Indians. While well meaning, those who propose that Europeans introduced scalping to Indians only serve to further cloud the issue. In fact, contrary to this claim, nearly all of the historical and anthropological evidence suggests scalping emerged first as a pre-Columbian ritual practice connected to intertribal warfare that was only to later be adopted by colonials for their own …show more content…
The fact that the Indian tribes insisted Champlain take the scalps as a gift for himself and the French King suggests that they clearly believed that the product (enemy scalps), and thus the practice, were of particular value and import. After the arrival of European colonists, which created and exacerbated intertribal tension, scalp taking had emerged as a highly formalized and refined practice that was a central ritual feature in Indian society and diplomacy. The increased practice and importance of scalping was almost certainly a function of the resource wars among Indian groups first prompted by the arrival and early settlement of European colonists. However, this leaves the important question as to how exactly European colonists, and the resource wars their settlement caused, facilitated the growth of scalping. The natural inclination has long been to assign blame to exogenous factors beyond Indian control, particularly