"What does my brother find that is so horrible in a scalp?" he inquired, extending a particularly gory one for my inspection. "'Tis no more than the crown of a man's head—and that man an enemy."
"I like not the idea of mutilating a body," I retorted. "If you have slain a man, 'tis sufficient. Why, you might as well cut off his arm or his head!"
He considered my point while he made another hoop and adjusted a scalp to it.
"Yes," he agreed; "that is what the English do, I am told."
"What?" I protested indignantly. "'Tis absurd!"
"To be sure, Ta-wan-ne-ars knows no more than what the missionaries and his other white friends have told him," he answered. "But they say that when a man in England is condemned to die, if he is an enemy of the King, his head is chopped off and put on a high place, and sometimes his arms and his legs are hacked off, too, and shown elsewhere."
For an instant I was nonplussed.
"That may be so," I said finally, "but in battle we do not cut off the heads or limbs of our foes."
"It is not your custom to do so," rejoined the Seneca equably. "It is the custom of my people to scalp their foes. Then when a warrior returns to his village and recounts his exploits nobody can deny his proof."
I was at a loss to reply, and Corlaer averted further argument by announcing that the bacon and maize were cooked. But I was somewhat amused to notice that Ta-wan-ne-ars was careful to wash his hands before eating. So much, at least, the missionaries had dented the armor of his innate barbarism.