I first ran across this accusation on a history channel documentary (see quote below). They simply stated it happened after a major battle. I find this very, very hard to believe. Sure, there was brutality on both sides. The Indians believed a killed foe could come after them in the after life. Mutilating the body (gouging out eyes, dismembering limbs) ensured the foe would be harmless in the afterlife. Nearly all Custer’s men were mutilated. I’m sure a few white Europeans collected Indian scalps. Things like that happen in war.
But, carving out a dead woman’s vagina? Even the Nazi SS aren’t accused of anything like that. Cecil did a column on the human lampshade myth. At most, there might have been one made at a concentration camp. Cecil felt it probably was a myth. The Nazis murdered a lot of people, but they didn’t routinely skin their victims.
Has there been any attempt to verify this story about vagina’s stretched over saddle horns and scrotum coin purses? Any families find an old wrinkly coin purse in great-granddads personal effects?
To accuse an American Military unit of something like this requires some kind of proof. A lot of brave men served and died honorably. The cavalry was one of the first military units that allowed Blacks. Blacks today are very proud of the Buffalo Soldiers.
I heard this story on a History Channel Documentary. Here’s another online source.
I guess that battle hearkened back to more brutal battles of history. You read that the Barbarians sacked and pillaged Europe. Or Genghis Khan conquering vast lands.
It’s easy to forget the human depravity that can be unleashed by undisciplined troops. Mass murders, rapes, and other atrocities used to be the spoils of war. Once in awhile it still happens if the military commanders allow it.
Is there a cite for this belief? Which Indians held it? How would that justify cutting off genitalia, or cutting fetuses from wombs? (Both of which acts were sometimes carried out by Indian attackers.) Frankly, I suspect there’s a lot of post hoc rationalization going on for atrocities committed by the Indians.
There were atrocities committed on both sides, and there’s no good excuse for either in my view. Atrocious behavior is atrocious behavior, whether or not it is covered in some gossamer veil of religion.
(Note: the foregoing is not intended to be hostile to the OP – just hostile to the idea that religion can justify atrocity.)
There’s a couple of History Channel specials on Custers Last Stand. They know the bodies were dismembered because some were reburied a few decades ago. The bones showed a lot of blunt force trauma from hacking. There’s also eyewitness accounts from soldiers that originally buried the remains.
One of the Indian experts provided the theory that Indians thought they would have to fight their kill victims in the after life. If the victim’s body was dismembered then it would be like that in the after life. I’m not an expert, and am only reporting what was stated in one of the specials.
I was fascinated by the special that traced the battle from ballistics. Archeologists found a bunch of bullets in the dirt. They mapped the location of each bullet with GPS. Then with ballistics they could trace each guns use during the battle. Some of those guns were at multiple places. Meaning the Indian owner engaged in multiple skirmishes throughout the day.
They also found the cavalry lines. The places where troopers dismounted, knelt in rows and fired. Some of those locations had hundreds of spent casings. The troops were so shook up that they had abandoned any disciplined fire. They were firing as fast as possible in all directions.
An addition to what he told you. Even if you get the settings right, they wouldn’t have helped in this case, since the correct spelling, “cavalry”, and the incorrect spelling, “calvary”, are both real words, and would pass a spell check. Spell check only helps if your typo/misspelling converts a real word into a non-real (i.e. not in the spell check word-list) word.
Regarding your other post:
I’ve always wanted to do something like that on an old battlefield. Take my metal detector & GPS and map out all the concentrations of metal I find (not digging them up, just locating them) to see if the resulting map tells you anything the historians don’t already know. Do you happen to know of a written piece on the web about what was in the documentary?
Gary Jennings’s 1980 novel Aztec is, I’ve read, very well-regarded for the extensive research he did before writing it. I remember in the book that some Spanish conquistadors cut out the genitalia of Aztec women with whom they’d slept but who they thought were scheming to murder them, and stretched it around the base of their helmets, with the clitoris as a “button” at the front.
I did spell cavalry right in the message. It’s not a word I use very often.