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Why did Indians scalp their enemies?

Why did Indians scalp their enemies?. Scalping was the cutting off of the skin and hair which covered the skull. The main reason for an Indian taking a scalp was that by doing this he believed he was taking his enemy’s spirit.

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Why did Indians scalp their enemies?

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  1. Why did Indians scalp their enemies? • Scalping was the cutting off of the skin and hair which covered the skull. The main reason for an Indian taking a scalp was that by doing this he believed he was taking his enemy’s spirit. • The enemy could not then go to the afterlife. Sometimes people survived being scalped but the Indians still believed that they had lost their spirit.

  2. Here is an example of a man who survived being scalped. • Robert McGee, scalped as a child by Sioux Chief Little Turtle in 1864.

  3. Here is an extract from Pierre Pouchot, he witnessed a scalping taking place • As soon as the man is felled, they run up to him, thrust their knee in between his shoulder blades, seize a tuft of hair in one hand and, with their knife in the other, cut around the skin of the head and pull the whole piece away. The whole thing is done very expeditiously. 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.

  4. Here is another extract. This looks at what could happen if you became captured • Mary Jemison, A Narrative of the Life of Mary Jemison (1824) 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.

  5. Task: My scalping Nightmare • I want you to write up a diary entry after you have witnessed a scalping. Remember you would never have seen anything like this and you would have been horrified. You have now been captured what do you think is going to happen to you? • How did events happen- were you attacked by the Indians? • What did you see? • What do you think about this? • Did they have time to disembowel them? • Why do you think they do this? • What do you think of the Indian people? • What about you? Are you going to be killed or you going to be adopted by the tribe?

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