How did this practice originate? Why the hair? Deposessing the enemy of his strength, à la Samson? (Would seem a little futile for those already dead, but some scalps were taken from captives, if I’m not mistaken and the ‘operation’ didn’t always prove fatal).
Any thoughts?
I don’t know how it started, but eventually they were used as trophies. Anyone can claim to have killed 20 enemies, but it’s hard to argue the point with someone carrying the scalps (which are easier to carry than, say, the whole head).
How about pinkies?
Hmmm. I dunno, “pinky-ing” just doesn’t sound as scary…
Is your victim dead or just wounded? Scalping makes death inevitable.
The oral histories of both the Lakota and Navaho tribes indicate that scalping was introduced to them by Europeans. A scalp was a bounty, an incentive for “exterminating” bothersome Indians. It was easier to bring a scalp to the settlement for payment than to drag an entire dead body. The Navahos were convinced the Spaniards were the source of this practice.
In 1862, a Santee Indian, Little Crow, wrote that he and his fellow warriors were shocked and horrified to see white soldiers scalping Indians. In ten years time, the Santees themselves had picked up upon this nifty little trick and were using it against their enemies (both whites and other tribes). It was considered a mark of great disrespect, as the body was defiled. (1)
Also in 1862, representatvies of the Navaho nation lodged a complaint with the US government, saying that the US Army was barbaric, because the soldiers condoned the practice of scalping. (2)
There was a story going around for a while that said that the Sioux did not scalp Custer’s body, out of their respect for him as a fellow warrior. While this story was popular enough to make it into several text books, it is almost certainly a myth.
My sources:
(1) "Big Eagle’s Story of the Sioux Outbreak of 1862, Minnesota Historical Society Collection
(2) US Office of Indian Affairs Annual Report 1867
Scalping plays a (minor) part in the film Nurse Betty, which is actually a pretty good film, marketing and the first ten minutes (when scalping comes into play) aside.
delphica: You really take this seriously, don’t you? Footnotes, and from seemingly credible sources at that!
It was mostly the joy of actually having the opportunity to trot out some notes from my thesis. I don’t think my advisor ever read the stuff I turned in. I’ve been waiting about seven years for this to come up in conversation.
P.S. Not everyone died after being scalped. The purpose of scalping was usually not to kill someone … in many cases the person was already dead because you had clubbed or shot him. Taking the scalp was merely a way to record the death. You would probably not take the entire scalp, usually a handful of hair and the skin it was attached to would work just fine. The removal was not usually surgical or precise, simply one strong hack with a blade (actually, you would start the cut with the blade, and then RIP). There were many cases where the scalp-ee was shot, scalped, and left for dead … and then went on to recover.
Many American tribes had ritualized and complex systems of captive-taking. In many cases where scalps were taken from captives, the scenario was that the attacker discovered the scalp-ee was not actually dead at all (this is starting to sound very Holy Grail-ish, “Hey, I’m not dead yet!”). Suddenly the victim is now a captive, which creates some rights and responsibilities on both sides.
Does my use of the word “scalp-ee” inject a note of light hearted jocularity into this discussion?
I like your style (a sense of humour to boot!). Glad to have been of assistance…
And glad to have you aboard.
Mind my asking what incited you to choose this specific topic as the subject for your thesis?
And would you hazard a guess as to how the word became to be used to mean buy cheaply and sell at inflated prices. Any useful footnotes here?
The thesis was called “Iconographic Representation of Historical Events in the Visual Arts of the Latkota” – aren’t you glad you asked? 
As the Lakota did not have a written language, their art work included many visual cues that would relay actual, specific, and detailed information to the viewer (if the viewer knew how to “read” it). For example, showing a dead guy falling off a white horse meant that 10 guys were killed in the battle … a brown horse meant 25 guys … so you might have a picture that shows two brown and two white horses, for a total of 70 dead. This involved reseaching a lot of oral histories, and thus a great deal of info about scalping and other battle practices.
No idea about why scalping now means to mark up tickets. I checked the Dictionary of American Idiom and it was completely unhelpful about the source of the expression. Could it be related to the injury of the high prices, like saying “man, I really got gouged on that deal” or “I paid for those tickets with a pound of flesh”?