Note 35 — Part I Protecting the Frontier (continued 2)

The reason why an Indian will sacrifice everything to remove the body of one of his tribe or kin who has been killed, is to prevent the taking of his scalp. The religious belief of the Indians is that a man who is scalped cannot enter the happy hunting grounds, but is doomed to wander in outer darkness forever. For that reason he always scalps his enemy, so that when he himself reaches the happy hunting grounds he will not be bothered by a lot of enemies whom he has met and overcome during his lifetime. Naturally, it was a point of honor for him to get the bodies of his friends away, so that they might not be debarred from the Indian Heaven in the hereafter. Sometimes, however, the Indian did not scalp the body of a particularly brave man, for this reason: It is his belief that if he kills a man in battle and does not scalp him, that man will be his slave or servant in the happy hunting grounds, and although the victim still possesses capacities for mischief, the Indian sometimes risks all in the future glory that will come to him from holding in slavery a brave man, or a noted warrior, as a spiritual witness to his prowess. It is stated that the Indians never scalp the bodies of negroes and suicides. “Buffalo soldier heap bad medicine,” is their universal testimony when asked why they do not scalp negro troopers whom they have killed or captured. Perhaps they cannot scalp a woolly, kinky-haired black soldier, and that is the reason it is “bad medicine.” Suicide is “bad medicine,” too, for some unexplained reason.