380 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 182 



taken to safety. In rare cases only was a member of a tribe scalped by 

 another member of the same tribe for other reasons ; Indians executed 

 by their own people were never scalped. Otherwise only enemies were 

 scalped. 



The evidence from the literature does little to elucidate the problem 

 presented by these three crania. Since the burial procedures probably 

 took some time, it is difficult to picture the Clarksville people expend- 

 ing the necessary effort on slain enemies. There is no particular rea- 

 son to believe that the bodies were dug up to obtain the scalps. Again, 

 since preparing the body for burial probably took several days, it is 

 difficult to reconcile this with the emergency removal of their friends' 

 scalps to a place of safety unless the Clarksville people reburied them 

 on their return to the site shortly afterward. Finally, there is the 

 possibility that these cases do not represent scalping (that is, the re- 

 moval of the scalp as a trophy) but were made during the usual 

 mortuary procedures. Nevertheless, since the other skulls from which 

 the flesh was removed do not show such cuts, it is possible that in 

 these cases special care was taken to insure proper removal and 

 preservation of the scalp. 



If, as the evidence suggests, these three persons were scalped, 

 their presence at the Clarksville site throws light upon another prob- 

 lem. Friederici (1907) argued that the custom came from the Old 

 World and spread rapidly over North America after the Europeans 

 introduced bullets for killing, and knives for scalping, and started 

 the practice of paying premiums for scalps. Others believe that the 

 Whites acquired this custom from the Indians. These three skulls, 

 from a site which, although late, shows no evidence of European 

 contact, are additional evidence for the pre-Columbian presence of 

 the custom, standing along side the Middle Mississippi skull from 

 Illinois described by Neumann (1940) and the Moundville, Alabama, 

 skull described by Snow ( 1941) . 



BURIAL PRACTICES 



During the examination of the first skeleton, burial 1 from the 

 Tollifero site (USNM B80890), a number of irregular pits, about a 

 centimeter in diameter and a few millimeters deep, were seen on 

 both the inner and outer tables of the cranial bones (pi. 104). At 

 first, it seemed that these might be vascular impressions, possibly as- 

 sociated with pathological changes elsewhere in the skeleton. When 

 similar markings (pis. 106-110) were noted on the long bones of other 

 skeletons, this interpretation was discarded, both because of differ- 

 ences in detail and because such vascular markings do not occur on 

 the long bones. Animal toothmarks were then considered, but ac- 



