Page:Don Coronado through Kansas.djvu/338

321 ORICHN OF KANSAS A.WD OSAOSS. 32). cords that in King Philip's war in 167&. the EogUsh soIdierB got thirty shillings for every Indian actJcp, and Philip's head was cut off and went at the sune price; ib. also says in snbstance, that in 1725 one tiovewell, having recruited a company of forty men, found ten Indians asleep, scalped them and took same to Boston and received £1,000 (about $5,000), and fur- ther intimated that Lovewell was in the business of scalping, but he got himself killed. How would the average man feel toward an outfit whose business was to tear the skin off another's head in cold blood? Can you blame the Indian for retaliating? And does it not appear a little as though the civilized nation first inau- gurated the atrocious custom? Can you not see that to bring to the authorities han-l^, foot or any small member of an Indian's body might lead to fraud? But without a single exception, every Indian has straight black hair, which would not even require an expert to detect; and again how necessary to have a crown, otherwise how easy it might be to manufacture sev- eral scalps from one flayed head! But the time is reached when our party must proceed on their journey home, but before they leave the Kansas people it is desired to say a few words rel- ative to their origin. It must be admitted that the place from whence they came is only conjecture. It is recorded by Du Pratz, who wrote of these people about 1750: "The tradition of their emigration from their old home to the northward of the great lakes, the journey southward, their separation into bands and settlement on the Missouri and its tributaries, was famiUar to many of the tribes when they first be-