What's going wrong with America!

[Comrade]

On scalping, and the display of human remains as a tribal symbol of power.

http://college.hmco.com/history/readerscomp/naind/html/na_034800_scalpsandsca.htm

Scalps and Scalping
Before the 1960s most Americans believed that scalping was a distinctive military custom of the American Indians. History books and the popular media all attributed scalping to Indians, who collected the scalplocks of enemies as war trophies and proof of their valor in battle.

But with the advent of the Red Power and other countercultural movements in the 1960s, many people, Indians and non-Indians alike, began to argue that Native Americans had never scalped until they were taught and encouraged to do so by European colonists, who offered them monetary bounties for the scalps of the settlers' enemies. Since this new version of Indian history sounded plausible and suited the anti-Establishment tenor of the times, it was quickly adopted by many as conventional wisdom.

To be accurate, however, we must acknowledge the following. First, the only non-Indians known to have scalped their enemies were the Scythians, nomadic Eurasian peoples who flourished from the eighth to the fourth century b.c. The ancient Greeks regarded them as "barbarians" for their practice of making napkins from head scalps and for decorating their persons and their horses' bridles with them. When Europeans of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries wished to terrorize their enemies, rather than scalping the dead they decapitated them and mounted the heads in prominent places, a practice they continued in America.

Second, there is no evidence that colonial officials ever taught their Indian allies to take scalps. In the seventeenth century, European traders did introduce to native markets so-called scalping knives. But these were ordinary, all-purpose butcher knives, which the natives used more for cutting meat, wood, and skins than for lifting scalps. They were bought by Indian women as well as men because they were more durable and held an edge longer than knives of flint, reed, or shell.

Finally, while there is no evidence for European knowledge of scalping before the arrival of Europeans in the New World, we have abundant evidence that scalping took place in native America well before Europeans arrived. There are four different kinds of evidence, the best of which is archaeological. Two kinds of skulls from precontact sites east and west of the Mississippi, from as early as 2500 to 500 b.c. right up to contact, provide evidence of scalping. The majority of these skulls exhibit circular or successive cuts or scratches just where scalps were traditionally lifted. Some tribes took only a small patch of skin attached to a male victim's specially braided and decorated scalplock at the hair's whorl or vertex, which left little mark on the skull. But many tribes took larger scalps, sometimes from the middle of the forehead or hairline all the way back to the neck, with or without the ears. To extract such a scalp, the warrior probably put one foot on the prone victim's back, pulled back his or her head by the hair, made an incision with a knife across the forehead and around the sides to the back, and then cut or tore the whole skin away from the skull. A nonmetal knife used forcefully to cut away the skin often scratched the bone, leaving telltale marks.

Even better evidence is provided by lesions on the skulls of victims who survived scalping long enough to allow the bone tissue to partially regenerate, leaving a distinctive dark ring where the skull had been cut and infected. Contrary to popular belief, scalping was not necessarily fatal. The historical record is full of survivors, so many that in 1805-6 a physician published "Remarks on the Management of the Scalped-Head" in a Philadelphia medical journal.

The most familiar kind of evidence for pre-Columbian scalping comes from written descriptions by some of the earliest European observers, who saw the Indian cultures of the eastern seaboard in virtually aboriginal condition. On his voyage up the St. Lawrence in 1535-36, Jacques Cartier was shown by the Stadaconans at Quebec "the skins of five men's heads, stretched on hoops, like parchment." In 1540, two of Hernando de Soto's men, the first Europeans to reach west Florida, were seized by Indians. The killers of one "removed his head, or rather all around his skull ... and carried it off as evidence of their deed." Twenty years later, another Spanish entrada reached the Creek town of Coosa on the Alabama River and accompanied local warriors on a raid against an enemy town. They found it abandoned, but in its plaza was a war pole "full of hair locks of the Coosans. It was the custom of the Indians to flay the head of the enemy dead," wrote a chronicler, "and to hang the resulting skin and locks insultingly on that pole." Much angered, the Coosans cut down the pole and carried the scalps home to bury them with proper respect and ceremony.

Virtually every major group of European explorers found scalping among the eastern Indians in the earliest stages of contact, before native customs had changed appreciably or at all. Later descriptions closely resembled earlier ones. The first characteristic they share is an expression of surprise at the discovery of such a novel practice. The nearly universal highlighting of scalping in the early literature, the search for comparisons intelligible to European readers (such as parchment or vellum), the detailed anatomical descriptions of the act itself, and the total absence of any suggestion of European precedence or familiarity with the practice at all suggest that scalping was unique to native America.

These descriptions also indicate that the actual taking of a scalp was firmly embedded in other customs whose forms and patterning varied markedly from tribe to tribe and area to area. In some areas of North America and most of South America, scalping was not in vogue before contact. But in the Southeast, the Northeast, parts of the Southwest, and on the Great Plains, scalping was richly associated with a wide variety of customs.

Scalps were elaborately prepared by drying, stretching on hoops, painting, and decorating. Warriors gave special scalp yells when a scalp was taken and when it was carried home on a raised pole, bough, or bow. Men grew scalplocks to symbolize their soul or personhood; these were never touched without grave insult, because their loss was tantamount to social death, even if physical death did not occur. Young males earned status by taking the scalp of an enemy, which then could be adopted by a family, like a living captive, to replace a dead member or to avenge the dead person's restless spirit. Scalps were given to chiefs or loved ones or worn on a horse's bridle or as fringe on a buckskin war shirt. At a warrior's death, his accumulated scalps might be buried with him or hung on his grave marker. Scalps were routinely displayed on palisades, cabins, and canoes to intimidate enemies and to impress allies. And scalps were always treated ritually, most often in dances to celebrate victory and to thank the appropriate gods.

Some utopian society! :duh3:

And where they found more advanced civilizations in Southern America, human sacrifices, slavery, and the absolutely tyranny of might makes right were all the rage in society.

 

[Said1]

And where they found more advanced civilizations in Southern America, human sacrifices, slavery, and the absolutely tyranny of might makes right were all the rage in society.

They still kidnap women in Amazonia today, not ALL tribes, but some.