American Westerns discussion

While reading the entry for Brooklyn born Western Fiction writer A. S. Fleischman in the ENCYCLOPEDIA OF FRONTIER AND WESTERN FICTION, I came across a curious statement: '"Every writer wants to try a western," Fleischman commented at the time, and his impetus came when he learned that SCALPING HAD FIRST BEEN INTRODUCED TO THE INDIANS BY THE WHITE MAN.'(capital emphasis added)
From the many western films and novels I have seen/read, the Indians are presented as the originators. However, a quick internet search reveals volumes of research on the subject; it turns out that Fleischman may have been correct. My question, then, is: has anyone read a western novel in which the Native Americans learn scalping from the white man?

I think scalping originated in the times of Imperial Rome. Seats at the Colosseum were hard to come by and enterprising citizens...

I've heard theories both ways and, if the whites originated the practice, it may have been as part of a bounty program though I've never heard of such a thing. Several western novels, particularly that abominable Blood Meridian, have whites as the practitioners. In other cases, over the history of western fiction and western diaries, it has always been the Indians. If Native American groups were getting a bad rap, I'd wager we would have heard of it by now.

I had read this was a French or Spanish invention from Colonial times, yeah. I think Forrest Carter mentions it in one of his books (either one of the Josey Wales novels or Watch For Me On The Mountain) but doesn't specifically depict it. A book I have, Scalping and Torture, states that the Puritans offered premiums for scalps in 1637, but the Algonquins were already practicing scalping in the 1500's.

Yeah in Blood Meridian (based on the real Glanton gang) the Mexicans hire the Glanton gang to collect Apache scalps. Unfortunately Glanton's guys notice that Mexican and Mexican Indian scalps don't look particularly different...

I also read Blood Meridian, but as a descendant of Cherokee great grandparents, it might be understandable that I've always thought the white men introduced this particular battle coup-taking to the Indians. Don't remember where I heard it, perhaps from one of my grandfathers.

At this point, at least in the literary view, the idea of Indians being the practicioners is almost set in stone. In my work Bonner's Road West, Chapters 1-4 I use an example where one tribe is pursuing a rival party who have trespassed. It is explained by the scout the Indians often wore elaborate hair styles as kind of thumbing their noses at the enemy. Sort of a come and get it if you can. I think counting coup was pretty much an exclusive native practice and the taking of the scalp was probably the ultimate form of counting coup.

It depends on what nation you're talking about too of course. Chiricahua Apaches didn't count coup - that's a plains thing. They only scalped when they hated the enemy.

So where did the Apaches learn it? If they learned it from the whites, then we would presume it was both an English practice and a Spanish one as the interaction with the plains nations was primarily from migration westward and the Spanish was northward.
I would conclude the nations then adopted the practice from intra-tribal 'interactions' and I don't mean a monthly newsletter.

Well they got it from either the Mexicans or the Comanche (but again, almost never did it, unless it was against a Mexican or a particularly hated enemy). If from the Comanche, they definitely learned it from the Mexicans, who got it from the Catalan Spanish who as above mentioned, used it as a bounty voucher in the days of New Spain (now Old Mexico). Either way Southwestern Indians got it from the Spanish. I don't know much about eastern/northeastern tribes.

Scalping and head-hunting were practiced by many tribes. But it wasn't limited to Native Americans. At various times, colonial governments, including the Puritans of New England, offered bounty for scalps. It didn't originate with them either. The earliest historical record of the practice dates to Herodotus in the 5th century B.C.

Thank you all for your fine input. I have BLOOD MERIDIAN on my reading list (abominable or not) and will put JOSEY WALES & Ken's book there, too.
Thank you Velda for the ancestral Cherokee perspective. I have been reading Diane E. Foulds' article "Who Scalped Whom?"(www.hawthorneinsalem.org/ScholarsForu...) and others on the internet. They reveal evidence that has been in front of us for years in statue form or historical markers.
Any other novels to recommend?

From your link:

But the English took scalping into their own hands when the Indians could no longer be relied upon, and it became an accepted - if unpleasant - reality of Colonial life. By 1723, Massachusetts was paying 100 pounds sterling for the scalps of male Indians aged 12 and over, and half that for women and children. The scalps were then burned or buried.

That sounds bogus to me. While a person's sex could probably be determined from a scalp, I doubt a 12+ person's could not. Secondly 100 pounds sterling is a boatload of money. A quick google search said the average colonist made between 15-25 pounds a year. If 100 pounds a scalp was the bounty, then it would have been the biggest industry in the colonies. Colonists would be raising Indian families for the scalps. There would be dedicated farms. Why mess around growing tobacco, corn or making whiskey when you could collect scalps for a month and live like an English Lord for the rest of your life?
Why would a voyageur venture forth in the dead of winter to trap beaver pelts for pennies? The article doesn't ring true to me.

Ken wrote: "From your link:

But the English took scalping into their own hands when the Indians could no longer be relied upon, and it became an accepted - if unpleasant - reality of Colonial life. By 1723,..."

Sadly, I'm going to agree with you, Ken. I think such a profitable enterprise would have led to the 'farming' of not only Native Americans, but just about anyone capable of having a head of hair that could pass for Indian.

Steve wrote: "Ken wrote: "From your link:

But the English took scalping into their own hands when the Indians could no longer be relied upon, and it became an accepted - if unpleasant - reality of Colonial li..."

Ken & Steve: your critiques of that article are persuasive; however, the argument assumes that colonist farmers/trappers would prefer substituting their self- reliant, self-respecting work for the visceral brutality and in-your-face violence of scalping (where they might also lose their own lives). I propose that this is why the pay for scalping was so high. Oh to have a time machine...

Steve wrote: "Ken wrote: "From your link:

But the English took scalping into their own hands when the Indians could no longer be relied upon, and it became an accepted - if unpleasant - reality of Colonial li..."

Ken & Steve: your critiques of that article are persuasive; however, the argument assumes that colonist farmers/trappers would prefer substituting their self- reliant, self-respecting work for the visceral brutality and in-your-face violence of scalping (where they might also lose their own lives). I propose that this is why the pay for scalping was so high. Oh to have a time machine...

A hundred pounds for a scalp does sound excessive given the comparative income Ken noted. In research for an article I did, I found the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania exhausted the treasuries of several counties in less than a year with a bounty of only 8 pounds for pesky squirrels in 1749. The minutes of the General Assembly for 1750 record that landowners complained of the loss of laborers who found squirrel hunting for bounty more lucrative than working for day wages.
So if that was the case for a mere 8 pounds, imagine the impact of a 100 pound bounty.

"..prefer substituting their self- reliant, self-respecting work for the visceral brutality and in-your-face violence of scalping.."

Well, I can only speak for myself. Oh, to have a time machine...

Ken wrote: ""..prefer substituting their self- reliant, self-respecting work for the visceral brutality and in-your-face violence of scalping.."

Well, I can only speak for myself. Oh, to have a time machine..."

I think we'd love one of those, Ken. Be quite a boon to writers.

If we originated scalping and then taught the indians I think thats a big mistake by us. Sure, lets teach the Indians how to cut the tops off peoples head and then have them use the technique against us as a signature. Seems crazy but wouldn't surprise me. Anyone ever see a scalping? It is gruesome and so barbaric which makes me believe it was all an Indian thing not picked up from the white man