Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/143

Rh this tariff of prices for Indian scalps: for a male scalp, $134; for that of a boy under ten, $130; for that of a female, $50. All that we can say of this self-degradation of the white man — civilized, Christian — to the barbarism of the red man is, that he was swift to learn and imitate all ill examples; and that he adopted scalping simply as one of the elements of wilderness warfare, like the lurking in ambushed thickets and ravines, and skulking behind a tree when firing his piece.

Again: shrinking from harrowing details, but for fidelity of view recognizing the truth, we must take note also of the hellish ingenuities practised by the savages in the mutilation and torture of the bodies of their victims and prisoners. All the taught skill which the anatomist can acquire with the scalpel, in dealing with the human body, could not have helped the Indian in his methods of drawing out, prolonging, and intensifying the pangs and agonies of his helpless foe. He seems to have known by instinct and by practice where were the quick points of keenest sensation, the order in which the nerves would quiver most torturingly, where fire would twinge the muscle, and how he might sap the life-currents so that they would most delay the blessing of unconsciousness. The preliminaries of the stake were found in the fun and revelry provided for the squaws and the pappooses, when the destined victim ran the gantlet, with its mocking jeers and its showering blows. We can well credit the repeated assertions of exposed frontier fighters and soldiers, that it is a habit among them to reserve the last charge of their rifles, or a secret pocket pistol, that they may terminate their own life when they know the game is over with them, to escape the dread fate.

If it will at all relieve the savage of the charge of utter inhumanity in this respect, it should be mentioned that it is a part of his education to prepare himself to