426 SCALPING IN AMERICA, 



The opinion is quite general that scalping was practiced by all the 

 North American Indians, and that it did not exist in South America. 

 Both of these notions are erroneous, for notwithstanding the fact 

 that the habit spread greatly after the discovery of North America, 

 yet there are immense stretches of the country where scalping was 

 never in vogue, and on the other hand the usuage has been encoun- 

 tered in Chaco and the Guianas. 



To establish exact boundaries to the regions where scalping was 

 practiced and where it was not, is impossible, and so likewise as to 

 the period of time. Similar difficulties are also met with in regard to 

 head trophies and allied customs, so that all conclusions are only 

 approximations, caused by the complete lack of records in many cases 

 and an incompleteness of the information in others. 



Farrand, in his Basis of American History, says " Scalping was 

 a custom over the whole continent north of jSIexico, except at certain 

 points on the Pacific slope and among the Eskimo." The only uncon- 

 ditionally correct part of this statement is that regarding the Eskimo, 

 among whom the habit seems actually to have been wholly unknown. 

 Of the neighbors of the Eskimo, the Athapascan of the north and 

 northwest practiced no scalping, while the Thlinkit did so only in a 

 restricted and not characteristic manner. On Hudson Bay , in 

 Labrador, and toward Newfoundland the Eskimo lived near the 

 Algonquin and Beothuc, of which the former took many an Eskimo 

 scalp, yet the habit was not communicated to the latter. In the 

 eighteenth century the Nottaway, on Moose River, at that time great 

 enemies of the Eskimo, imposed on their dependent Montagnais 

 tribes a yearly tribute of Eskimo scalps. 



The Eskimo of Bering Strait took the whole heads of their fallen 

 enemies as trophies, but they learned this custom from the Thlinkit, 

 and were the only branch of the people who practiced it. 



Being neither scalpers nor head gatherers, the Eskimo were famed 

 for the mutilations which they practiced on the dead bodies of their 

 enemies. These horrible mutilations were a potent cause of the great 

 hate felt toward the people by all the neighboring Indians. They 

 quartered the bodies, cut or tore them into pieces, abused them, and 

 threw the remains into the water. 



The tribes of the Athapascan linguistic family, the neighbors of 

 the Eskimo along a great stretch of the country in the north, also, as 

 a rule and in their old abodes, never scaljjed. Thej^ likewise did not 

 practice head-hunting. In only one of the many reports concerning 

 these tribes has the writer encountered a note that one of them, the 

 Loucheux, took off with them on one occasion as trophies the lower 

 jaws of their fallen enemies. Even the so-called Avestern Athapascan, 

 namely, those who are settled west of the Rocky Mountains on the 



