Indians in the Curriculum:
20 Handouts for Middle and High School
History and Social Studies
By Kerry Dunne

Handout 10 Activities: Scalping, Fact and Fancy

Background:

By Philip Martin in Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years, pp. 58-59, edited by Bill Bigelow and Bob Peterson, 2nd edition, Rethinking Schools, www.rethinkingschools.org/, Milwaukee, 1998, 189 pp.

Study and Discuss:

1.     Was scalping unique to Indians? Where else was this practiced? To what extent?

2.     Why has scalping become a stereotype of Native Americans?

3.     Why did Europeans and Euro-Americans seek to perpetuate the myth of indigenous Americans as savages?

4.     Look at the document included at the end of the article. Where was this published? By whom?

5.     What was the reward for turning in a Native scalp?

6.     How does this contradict the stereotype about Indians and the use of scalping?

Resources 10: Scalping, Fact and Fancy