She cut off their scalps before she escaped. Then she grabbed a tomahawk and rammed it into the heads of the 10 Abenaki people holding her hostage. The Abenaki dragged Hannah to an island to be their captive, but Hannah spent every second looking for her chance for revenge. Then her Abenaki captor pulled her newborn baby girl from her arms and smashed the baby’s head against a tree. Hannah watched in horror as 27 people in her village were murdered. Her husband, Thomas, fled with seven of their children, but he left Hannah and their newborn daughter behind. Her story begins in 1697 when her home in Haverhill, Massachusetts, was attacked by the Abenaki tribe. Hannah Duston was a housewife, the mother of eight children, and the last person you’d expect to walk into a governor’s office demanding the bounty for her 10 scalps. Every citizen, the governor declared, was called upon to “embrace all opportunities of pursuing, capturing, killing, and destroying all and any of the aforesaid Indians.” The Massachusetts Bay Colony soon had their own, promising 40 pounds for the scalps of warriors and 20 pounds for women and children younger than 12 years old. By 1641, the governor of New Netherlands put out the first official bounty on any and all scalps from a native’s head, promising “10 fathoms of wampum” for every scalp from a member of the Raritan tribe. They started cutting off scalps, filling bags with them, and bringing the scalps home instead. It wasn’t long before the Puritans picked up an idea from their enemies. Heads, though, are large and cumbersome, and the men would have to come home with only a few kills under their belts to claim their reward. Soon, the governor was promising a reward for any man who could bring home the head of a Native American. When a trader named John Oldham was killed by Native Americans, the Puritans of the Massachusetts Colony started fighting a full-on war with their neighbors. The first scalps were claimed during the Pequot War. Not long after the Mayflower set sail to the New World in search of a Christian utopia of peace and tolerance, white men started taking scalps. Their skulls would get inflamed, and the bone would start to separate, slowing exposing their bare, unprotected brains.Ĩ American Colonies Paid Bounties For Indian Scalps They would live for a few months with exposed bone at the top of their heads until infection set in. Other people survived without treatment-but not for long.
But it would also leave them with a soft, thin spot on the top of their skulls and put them through excruciating pain. Opening up little holes into the bone marrow, the doctors wrote, would make a “flesh projection” grow over the wound. The first treatments for scalped men had doctors pierce the skull to the bone marrow. In the earlier days, though, the doctors weren’t as effective.
If a doctor acted fast, he could surgically repair the scalp and leave the person alive, with nothing worse than a disfiguring, bald scar that would cover the head for the rest of the person’s life.
We have medical records from doctors who had to treat the still-living victims of a scalping.
#Death road to canada deep cut skin#
Some people were still alive and struggling when a warrior would pull back their head and slice off the skin at the top of their skulls. Scalping wasn’t just a way to claim a trophy from the body of a dead man. But after describing the scalps with hoops, the account ends with a stoic, “After seeing these things, we returned to our ships.” The record of Cartier’s voyage says little about their reaction. It was psychological warfare, meant to terrify, and it definitely worked on the Europeans. They would pass them around and make jokes about them, sometimes even feeding them to their dogs. Other Europeans would soon start writing home about it, describing warriors who would carve off the scalps of their dead enemies, raise them above, and let out a cry they called “the death cry.” The Native Americans, men reported, would bring the scalps of their enemies home on the tips of their lances. Then, to impress his new friend, Donnacona showed Cartier his most prized possession: five human scalps, dried out and stretched across hoops. The tribe put on a dance of welcoming for the visiting explorers, and Cartier presented Donnacona with gifts.
While in the area now known as Quebec City, he met with a tribal chief named Donnacona. Jacques Cartier may have been the first European to see a scalp firsthand.
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