Did the Colonists
Invent Scalping?

This article goes into some detail concerning the practice of scalping. The journalist, Paul Brock, insisted that the Mohawk leader Joseph Brant (né Thayendanegea, 1743 – 1807) imparted this historic fact to his family, who, throughout the centuries, have told it to anyone who would listen – the info he relayed to them was that scalping was an English import, not native to the Americas. The article goes on to explain that this was one of those cases in which the pupil surpassed the teacher and proceeds to list all the many ways the native population had inflicted scalping upon all her various enemies throughout North America.

“Strangely, scalping was never popular anywhere but in North America. The South American Indians preferred to take the entire head, and this is still the custom among a few tribes today. Further north, the Incas took scalps, but they also took the entire body, using the hide in the manufacture of drumheads.”