Image provided by: The Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde; Grand Ronde, OR
About Weekly Chemawa American. (Chemawa, Or.) 189?-198? | View Entire Issue (Dec. 6, 1907)
8 THE CHEMAWA AMERICAN When Scalps Were in Demand The scalping of enemies seems to have been a practice rather uncommon in America up to the advent of the Euro pean. According to a statement by Geo Friederici, in the forthcoming Annual of the Smithsonian Institution, it was the whites who really popularized this en gaging pursuit. Previously, he asserts, all of the Indians on this continent had been head-hunters. The white man not only offered prizes of money for scalps, establishing a regu lar market for them, but furnished knives suitable for the purpose cutting instru ments, that is to say. vastly more effi cient than the knives of shell, of stone and of fish-tooth which had been up to that time the best obtainable by the un tutored aborigines. The scalping knife, shaped usually like a butcher knife, soon became a familiar merchandise common ly sold by traders. As far back as 1637 the Puritans of New England (scalping being as yet un known in that part of the country ) offered bounties for the heads of hostile Indians, large numbers of which were brought in and duly paid for. Forty years later the colony of Connecticut advertised for both heads and scalps, and, in July, 1675, the "heroine," Hannah Dustin, received $250 and "many expressions of thanks" for eight scalps which she had taken with her own hands, two of them being those of women and six of children. Subsequently, when, in the last decade of the seventeenth century, the English fought the French, both sides sought and paid for each others' scalps. In 1755 General Braddock guaranteed' his soldiers and Indians $25 for every trophy of the kind taken from the enemy; and nine years later Governor Penn, for the State of Pennsylvania, offered $134 for every scalp of an Indian warrior, and $50 for every scalp of a slain squaw. During the Revolution scalping was freely practiced on both sides, the Eng lish paying from $8 to $15 apiece for them as a rule. Rut prices sometimes ran considerably higher, and at one time the Legislature of South Carolina promised $370 for every scalp of the fighting men of the enemy. Such meth ods of warefare have long been abandon ed by civilized countries, yet in the middle of the nineteenth century the Legisla ture of the North Mexican States offered $100 for every scalp of a male Apache, $50 for that of a female, and $25 for that of every Indian child. This state of affairs continued, indeed, well into the eighties, the bounties for scalps raised as high as $500 for those of hostle warriors. Such prices natural ly attracted the attention of adventurers, who formed themselves into scalp-hunting bands, and, as far bacs as 1845, the leader of one of these marauding parties whose name was Kirker, achieved such success, through, the surprise of an Indi an camp and the massacre of all ayes and sexes, that the treasuries of Sonora and '..Chihuahua were able to pay him only a pa.it of the scalp money due him. EX. Miss Lalor visited her many friends at Sherman over Sunday. It seemed good to have her cheery presence again. Sherman Bulletin. We recently visited the Indians of Smoky Valley to investigate the practica bility of a day school in that valley, and chanced to arrive there about the time of their annual social dance,' for which we waited in order ro see them all conveni ently. New Indian.