A friendly London cab driver who knew a lot about American history told me Indians never scalped their slain enemies until the white man showed up and taught them. Can you cast some light on this claim? –Taylor Waller, UK
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The Seneca leader Cornplanter was perhaps the first to suggest Europeans imported scalping, in 1820, but the idea didn’t become prominent till the 1960s and ’70s. By then contrary evidence was mounting, but let’s concede an important point: scalping has a long history in the Old World. Herodotus recorded scalping by ancient Scythians in central Asia, and archaeologists have since unearthed skulls with likely scalping marks at Scythian sites. Evidence indicates Europeans were scalping from the Stone Age till as late as 1036 in England.
Since 1940 archaeologists have discovered hundreds of pre-Columbian skulls with scalping marks at North American sites ranging from Georgia to Arizona to the Dakotas. A few predate even the abortive Viking explorations. Many of the skulls come from a single site in South Dakota where almost 500 people were massacred and scalped around 1325 AD, refuting the common contention that scalping in the Plains arose after 1492. At least one instance of pre-Columbian artwork depicts a warrior toting scalps.
Europeans didn’t take a backseat to the locals when it came to inventive brutality. Spaniards may have introduced burning alive to the southeast–at least scalping victims were generally dead first. New Englanders displayed the heads of rebel Indians, just as the English did with Irish rebels. Let’s not forget the biowarfare plan to infect Indians with smallpox that I’ve discussed before. European soldiers often raped female captives, whereas by reputation Indians (at least those east of the Rockies) didn’t. I wouldn’t make too much of this, though. Newcomers and natives had their differences, but in their willingness to butcher their enemies they found common ground.
