Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/141

Rh scalping a victim seems to have been universal among our aborigines. It has been a matter of question whether the practice was original with and peculiar to them. It has been affirmed that the wild hordes of Huns scalped their victims. Lafitau finds parallelisms of the practice among the pagans of the Old World. Niles, in his “History of French and Indian Wars,” makes, I think, the utterly unwarranted assertion that the French initiated the Indians into the habit. But they do not appear to have needed any teaching from civilized men in this or in any other shape or ingenuity of excessive and needless cruelty. They took to it and delighted in it as of the prompting of nature and instinct, and it became, if we may so use the word, a part of their religion.

Now what type of nature or character is indicated in this mastering and ferocious passion for inflicting mutilations and torture on helpless victims? The scalp was seized and preserved as a trophy. It was worn as a personal ornament. The number of scalps which a warrior could count as taken by his own hand marked as it were the degrees of honor and renown which he had reached and won, as degrees are graded in our lodges and commanderies of Masonic orders. Before they had edged tools of metal, the savage skill had sharpened stones or fish-bones so that they would sever the skin of the top-lock, whether of man, woman, or child. The dismal trophy would be stretched upon a wicker frame, tanned, and dried; and, after being a part of the ensigns displayed in his lodge, and worn as a trinket, it was buried with the warrior in his grave as a sort of Charon's penny for the fee on his voyage to the other shore. Several trustworthy persons, most familiar by long and intimate converse with the red men, have testified that the Indians have a very suggestive superstition on this subject, though there is no evidence that it is universal among them. They are said to believe that if a body — whether of white or red man, friend or foe — is