The City of the Saints, and Across the Rocky Mountains to California

by Sir Richard Francis Burton

Scalp-taking is a solemn rite. In the good old times braves scrupulously awaited the wounded man’s death before they “raised his hair;” in the laxity of modern days, however, this humane custom is too often disregarded. Properly speaking, the trophy should be taken after fair fight with a hostile warrior; this also is now neglected. When the Indian sees his enemy fall he draws his scalp-knife—the modern is of iron, formerly it was of flint, obsidian, or other hard stone—and twisting the scalp-lock, which is left long for that purpose, and boastfully braided or decorated with some gaudy ribbon or with the war-eagle’s plume, round his left hand, makes with the right two semicircular incisions, with and against the sun, about the part to be removed. The skin is next loosened with the knife-point, if there be time to spare and if there be much scalp to be taken. The operator then sits on the ground, places his feet against the subject’s shoulders by way of leverage, and, holding the scalp-lock with both hands, he applies a strain which soon brings off the spoils with a sound which, I am told, is not unlike “flop.” Without the long lock it would be difficult to remove the scalp; prudent white travelers, therefore, are careful, before setting out through an Indian country, to “shingle off” their hair as closely as possible; the Indian, moreover, hardly cares for a half-fledged scalp. To judge from the long love-locks affected by the hunter and mountaineer, he seems to think lightly of this precaution; to hold it, in fact, a point of honor that the savage should have a fair chance. A few cunning men have surprised their adversaries with wigs. The operation of scalping must be exceedingly painful; the sufferer turns, wriggles, and “squirms” upon the ground like a scotched snake. It is supposed to induce brain fever; many instances, however, are known of men and even women recovering from it, as the former do from a more dreadful infliction in Abyssinia and Galla-land; cases are of course rare, as a disabling wound is generally inflicted before the bloodier work is done.

After taking the scalp, the Indian warrior—proud as if he had won a médaille de sauvetage—prepares for return to his village. He lingers outside for a few days, and then, after painting his hands and face with lampblack, appears slowly and silently before his lodge. There he squats for a while; his relatives and friends, accompanied by the elders of the tribe, sit with him dumb as himself. Presently the question is put; it is answered with truth, although these warriors at other times will lie like Cretans. The “coup” is recounted, however, with abundant glorification; the Indians, like the Greek and Arab of their classical ages, are allowed to vent their self-esteem on such occasions without blame, and to enjoy a treat for which the civilized modern hero longs ardently, but in vain. Finally the “green scalp,” after being dried and mounted, is consecrated by the solemn dance, and becomes then fit for public exhibition. Some tribes attach it to a long pole used as a standard, and others to their horses’ bridles, others to their targes, while others ornament with its fringes the outer seams of their leggins; in fact, its uses are many. The more scalps the more honor; the young man who can not boast of a single murder or show the coveted trophy is held in such scant esteem as the English gentleman who contents himself with being passing rich on a hundred pounds a year. Some great war-chiefs have collected a heap of these honorable spoils. It must be remembered by “curio” hunters that only one scalp can come off one head; namely, the centre lock or long tuft growing upon the coronal apex, with about three inches in diameter of skin. This knowledge is the more needful, as the Western men are in the habit of manufacturing half a dozen cut from different parts of the same head; they sell readily for $50 each, but the transaction is not considered reputable. The connoisseur, however, readily distinguishes the real article from “false scalping” by the unusual thickness of the cutis, which is more like that of a donkey than of a man. Set in a plain gold circlet it makes a very pretty brooch. Moreover, each tribe has its own fashion of scalping derived from its forefathers. The Sioux, for instance, when they have leisure to perform the operation, remove the whole headskin, including a portion of the ears; they then sit down and dispose the ears upon the horns of a buffalo skull, and a bit of the flesh upon little heaps of earth or clay, disposed in quincunx, apparently as an offering to the manes of their ancestors, and they smoke ceremoniously, begging the manitou to send them plenty more. The trophy is then stretched upon a willow twig bent into an oval shape, and lined with two semi-ovals of black or blue and scarlet cloth. The Yutas and the Prairie tribes generally, when pressed for time, merely take off the poll skin that grows the long tuft of hair, while the Chyuagara or Nez Percés prefer a long strip about two inches wide, extending from the nape to the commissure of the hair and forehead. The fingers of the slain are often reserved for sévignés and necklaces. Indians are aware of the aversion with which the pale faces regard this barbarity. Near Alkali Lake, where there was a large Dakotah “tipi” or encampment of Sioux, I tried to induce a tribesman to go through the imitative process before me; he refused with a gesture indignantly repudiating the practice. A glass of whisky would doubtless have changed his mind, but I was unwilling to break through the wholesome law that prohibits it.

It is not wonderful that the modern missionary should be unable to influence such a brain as the Prairie Indian’s. The old propagandists, Jesuits and Franciscans, became medicine-men: like the great fraternity in India, they succeeded by the points of resemblance which the savages remarked in their observances, such as their images and rosaries, which would be regarded as totems, and their fastings and prayers, which were of course supposed to be spells and charms. Their successors have succeeded about as well with the Indian as with the African; the settled tribes have given ear to them, the Prairie wanderers have not; and the Europeanization of the Indian generally is hopeless as the Christianization of the Hindoo. The missionaries usually live under the shadow of the different agencies, and even they own that nothing can be done with the children unless removed from the parental influence. I do not believe that an Indian of the plains ever became a Christian. He must first be humanized, then civilized, and lastly Christianized; and, as has been said before, I doubt his surviving the operation.

As might be expected of the Indian’s creed, it has few rites and ceremonies; circumcision is unknown, and it ignores the complicated observances which, in the case of the Hindoo Pantheist, and in many African tribes, wait upon gestation, parturition, and allactation. INDIAN NAMES.The child is seldom named.[74] There are but five words given in regular order to distinguish one from another. There are no family names. The men, after notable exploits, are entitled by their tribes to assume the titles of the distinguished dead, and each fresh deed brings a new distinction. Some of the names are poetical enough: the “Black Night,” for instance, the “Breaker of Arrows,” or the “War Eagle’s Wing;” others are coarse and ridiculous, such as “Squash-head,” “Bull’s-tail,” “Dirty Saddle,” and “Steam from a Cow’s Belly;” not a few bear a whimsical likeness to those of the African negroes, as “His Great Fire,” “The Water goes in the Path,” and “Buffalo Chips”—the “Mavi yá Gnombe” of Unyamwezi. The son of a chief succeeding his father usually assumes his name, so that the little dynasty, like that of the Pharaohs, the Romuli, or the Numas, is perpetuated. The women are not unfrequently called after the parts and properties of some admired or valued animal, as the White Martin, the Young Mink,[75] or the Muskrat’s Paw. In the north there have been men with as many as seven wives, all “Martins.” The Prairie Indians form the names of the women like those of men, adding the feminine suffix, as Cloud-woman, Red-earth-woman, Black-day-woman. The white stranger is ever offending Indian etiquette by asking the savage “What’s your name?” The person asked looks aside for a friend to assist him; he has learned in boyhood that some misfortune will happen to him if he discloses his name. Even husbands and wives never mention each other’s names. The same practice prevails in many parts of Asia.

[74] The Ojibwa and other races have the ceremony of a burnt-offering when the name is given.

[75] Putorius vison, a pretty dark-chestnut-colored animal of the weasel kind, which burrows in the banks of streams near mills and farm-houses, where it preys upon the poultry like the rest of the family. It swims well, and can dive for a long time. Its food is small fish, mussels, and insects, but it will also devour rats and mice.

Marriage is a simple affair with them. In some tribes the bride, as among the Australians, is carried off by force. In others the man who wants a wife courts her with a little present, and pickets near the father’s lodge the number of horses which he supposes to be her equivalent. As among all savage tribes, the daughter is a chattel, an item of her father’s goods, and he will not part with her except for a consideration. The men are of course polygamists; they prefer to marry sisters, because the tent is more quiet, and much upon the principle with which marriage with a deceased wife’s sister is advocated in England. The women, like FEMALE CONDUCT the Africans, are not a little addicted to suicide. Before espousal the conduct of the weaker sex in many tribes is far from irreproachable. The “bundling” of Wales and of New England in a former day[76] is not unknown to them, and many think little of that prœgustatio matrimonii which, in the eastern parts of the New World, goes by the name of Fanny Wrightism and Free-loveism. Several tribes make trial, like the Highlanders before the reign of James the Fifth, of their wives for a certain time—a kind of “hand-fasting,” which is to morality what fetichism is to faith. There are few nations in the world among whom this practice, originating in a natural desire not to “make a leap in the dark,” can not be traced. Yet after marriage they will live, like the Spartan matrons, a life of austerity in relation to the other sex. In cases of divorce, the children, being property, are divided, and in most tribes the wife claims the odd one. If the mother takes any care to preserve her daughter’s virtue, it is only out of regard to its market value. In some tribes the injured husband displays all the philosophy of Cato and Socrates. In others the wife is punished, like the native of Hindostan, by cutting, or, more generally, by biting off the nose-tip. Some slay the wife’s lover; others accept a pecuniary compensation for their dishonor, and take as damages skins or horses. Elopement, as among the Arabs, prevails in places. The difference of conduct on the part of the women of course depends upon the bearing of the men. “There is no adulteress without an adulterer”—meaning that the husband is ever the first to be unfaithful—is a saying as old as the days of Mohammed. Among the Arapahoes, for instance, there is great looseness; the Cheyennes, on the contrary, are notably correct. Truth demands one unpleasant confession, viz., on the whole, chastity is little esteemed among those Indians who have been corrupted by intercourse with whites.

[76] Traces of this ancient practice may be found in the four quarters of the globe. Mr.Bartlett, in his instructive volume, quotes the Rev. Samuel Pike (“General History of Connecticut,” London, 1781), who quaintly remarks: “Notwithstanding the great modesty of the females is such that it would be accounted the greatest rudeness for a gentleman to speak before a lady of a garter or a leg, yet it is thought but a piece of civility to ask her to bundle.” The learned and pious historian endeavored to prove that bundling was not only a Christian, but a very polite and prudent practice. So the Rev. Andrew Barnaby, who traveled in New England in 1759-60, thinks that though bundling may “at first appear the effect of grossness of character, it will, upon deeper research, be found to proceed from simplicity and innocence.”

CHIEFS.The dignity of chief denotes in the Indian language a royal title. It is hereditary as a rule, but men of low birth sometimes attain it by winning a name as warriors or medicine-men. When there are many sons it often happens that each takes command of a small clan. Personal prowess is a necessity in sagamore and sachem: an old man, therefore, often abdicates in favor of his more vigorous son, to whom he acts as guide and counselor. There is one chief to every band, with several sub-chiefs. The power possessed by the ruler depends upon his individual character, and the greater or lesser capacity for discipline in his subjects. Some are obeyed grudgingly, as the Sheikh of a Bedouin tribe. Others are absolute monarchs, who dispose of the lives and properties of their followers without exciting a murmur. The counteracting element to despotism resides in the sub-chief and in the council of warriors, who obstinately insist upon having a voice in making laws, raising subsidies, declaring wars, and ratifying peace.

MODE OF LIFE. Their life is of course simple; they have no regular hours for meals or sleep. Before eating they sometimes make a heave-offering of a bit of food toward the heavens, where their forefathers are, and a second toward the earth, the mother of all things: the pieces are then burned. They are not cannibals, except when a warrior, after slaying a foe, eats, porcupine-like, the heart or liver, with the idea of increasing his own courage. The women rarely sit at meals with the men. In savage and semi-barbarous societies the separation of the sexes is the general rule, because, as they have no ideas in common, each prefers the society of its own. They are fond of adoption and of making brotherhoods, like the Africans; and so strong is the tie, that marriage with the sister of an adopted brother is within the prohibited degrees. Gambling is a passion with them: they play at cards, an art probably learned from the Canadians, and the game is that called in the States “matching,” on the principle of dominoes or beggar-my-neighbor. When excited they ejaculate Will! Will!—sharp and staccato—it is possibly a conception of the English well. But it often comes out in the place of bad, as the Sepoy orderly in India reports to his captain, “Ramnak Jamnak dead, Joti Prasad very sick—all vell!” The savages win and lose with the stoicism habitual to them, rarely drawing the “navajon,” like the Mexican “lepero,” over a disputed point; and when a man has lost his last rag, he rises in nude dignity and goes home. Their language ignores the violent and offensive abuse of parents and female relatives, which distinguishes the Asiatic and the African from the European Billingsgate: the worst epithets that can be applied to a man are miser, coward, dog, woman. With them good temper is good breeding—a mark of gentle blood. A brave will stand up and harangue his enemies, exulting how he scalped their sires, and squaws, and sons, without calling forth a grunt of irritation. Ceremony and manners, in our sense of the word, they have none, and they lack the profusion of salutations which usually distinguishes barbarians. An Indian appearing at your door rarely has the civility to wait till beckoned in; he enters the house, with his quiet catlike gait and his imperturbable countenance, saying, if a Sioux, “How!” or “How! How!” meaning Well? shakes hands, to which he expects the same reply, if he has learned “paddling with the palms” from the whites—this, however, is only expected by the chiefs and braves—and squats upon his hams in the Eastern way, I had almost said the natural way, but to man, unlike all other animals, every way is equally natural, the chair or the seat upon the ground. He accepts a pipe if offered to him, devours what you set before him—those best acquainted with the savage, however, avoid all unnecessary civility or generosity: Milesian-like, he considers a benefit his due, and if withheld, he looks upon his benefactor as a “mean man”—talks or smokes as long as he pleases, and then rising, stalks off without a word. His ideas of time are primitive. The hour is denoted by pointing out the position of the sun; the days, or rather the nights, are reckoned by sleeps; there are no weeks; the moons, which are literally new, the old being nibbled away by mice, form the months, and suns do duty for years. He has, like the Bedouin and the Esquimaux, sufficient knowledge of the heavenly bodies to steer his course over the pathless sage-sea. Night-work, however, is no favorite with him except in cases of absolute necessity. Counting is done upon man’s first abacus, the fingers, and it rarely extends beyond ten. The value of an article was formerly determined by beads and buffaloes; dollars, however, are now beginning to be generally known.