The North American Indian had been wiping each others tribes out and enslaving each other wholesale long before Whitey turned up in clothes and with civilization. Some Indian villages had permanent torture facilities set up so they whole tribe could gather around and watch and listen to the screams of their captured enemies before they would eat choice pieces of human flesh and pray to the ‘Great Sky Spirit.’
The Founding Stock American’s ancestors were fighting a ferocious and cruel foe. Scalp Dance is interesting as an anthropological study, the racial, behavioural, mentality and attitude differences between the Indians and the Whites. One of the differences of most immediate concern to White American’s ancestors was the unbelievable cruelty and sadism of the Indians. It shocked European settlers and took a lot of getting used to.
There’s been much written about the Aztecs (even the conquistadors diary entries about massive skull towers and monuments, previously dismissed as exaggeration, has now been proven to be real) but fuck all is ever said about the North American ‘Noble Savage’, probably because its been very un-pc for a while. But the fate of White captives almost invariably was much worse than death: it involved hideous and prolonged torture and mutilation, and for the women, gang rape. And not just ‘the odd tribe’ but pretty much ALL of them were at it to varying degrees. Every White “saved a bullet” to take his/friends own life/s save he/they fall into the hands of the savages.
The deceitfulness of the Indians also was something that took getting used to. The Indians have often complained that the Great White Father in Washington didn’t keep his promises, and of course, that’s still true. Politicians always have spoken with forked tongues. But the lies of the White politicians were nothing compared to the everyday deceit and trickery of the Indians. The Plains Indians quickly learned that many of the Whites freshly arrived from the east had been indoctrinated with liberal propaganda about the “noble savage” in their schools and churches. These innocents headed west with their heads pumped full of foolish notions about the basic decency of the Indians and determined to be fair in all their dealings with them.
When a group of Indians spotted a wagon train of such prospective settlers unaccompanied by soldiers or experienced scouts, they would approach with smiles and other indications of friendly intent, sometimes waving a white flag. Almost certainly there were good Christian souls in those wagon trains who told their husbands, “Put away your rifle, you fool! Can’t you see that they’re friendly? Don’t provoke them.” When the Indians got close enough to evaluate the situation fully, they either would strike immediately or mix with the prospective settlers and wait for the opportune moment to begin cutting throats and taking scalps.
Then, after a day or so of amusing themselves raping the White women and listening to the screams of the White men staked out on the ground with a small fire burning at their crotches, they would move on and leave the scraps for the wolves and coyotes. Such fools soon enough were weeded out of those Whites who settled in the plains and survived Indian attacks, but there seemed to be an inexhaustible supply of them back East, where the preachers continued pumping new heads full of dangerous nonsense. It’s really too bad that the preachers and other propagandists of the “noble savage” school didn’t head west themselves to try out their ideas on real savages.
References:
Scalp Dance: Indian Warfare on the High Plains, 1865-1879
Thomas Goodrich (author of Hellstorm: Death of Nazi Germany)
Have to sign in for free but it’s here https://archive.org/details/scalpdanceindian00good
