Note 275 — Chapter VIII

"The modern scalping-knife is of civilized manufacture made expressly for Indian use, and carried into the Indian country by thousands and tens of thousands, and sold at an enormous price. In the native simplicity of the Indian, he shapes out his rude hatchet from a piece of stone, heads his arrows and spears with flints, and his knife is a sharpened bone or the edge of a broken silex. His untutored mind has not been ingenious enough to design or execute any thing so savage or destructive as these civilized refinements on Indian barbarity. The scalping-knife, in a beautiful scabbard which is carried under the belt, is generally used in all Indian countries where knives have been introduced. It is the size and shape of a butcher's knife with one edge, manufactured at Sheffield perhaps for sixpence, and sold to the poor Indians in these wild regions for a horse. If I should ever cross the Atlantic, with my collection, a curious enigma would be solved for the English people who may inquire for a scalping-knife, when they find that every one in my collection (and hear, also, that nearly every one that is to be seen in the Indian country, to the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Ocean) bears on its blade, the impress of G.R."—Catlin's American Indians, vol. i., p. 236.