A jaguar woman whose speech is like fire. With a clouded gaze and a hand armed with a dagger, this is her. Like stars, obsidian of the black sky, loops of light, moonlight, starlight, all night long. She is the soul of the forest bush. She is a waterfall that no one has seen. She is the place where the sun rests. Spread the universe in all directions and bring it into the house.
Jack Crimmins, Jaguar Woman
Indians ... They are familiar to us from the books of Reed and Cooper. Their sonorous nicknames - Hawkeye, Swift Deer, Big Serpent, made our hearts beat faster in anticipation of another feat. Who doesn't know Winnet, St. John's wort, Osceola or Chingachgook? And what woman didn't want to be the squaw that a real man would defend? Or maybe you were more attracted by the image of the beautiful Pocahontas and you imagined yourself running with the wolves?
What are they, Indian women?
Since the discovery of the New World, Indian women have been rated as beauties, according to the diary of Columbus's first travel: "They are all, without exception, tall and well-built. Their facial features are correct, their expression is friendly."
History knows the Great Woman - the leader of the Crow tribe in the upper Missouri, they wrote about her that “her lifestyle, along with bold exploits, raised her to the pinnacle of honor and respect ... The Indians were proud of her and sang praise songs for her, composed after each of her When the council of all the leaders and warriors of the tribe was convened, she took her place among them, being considered the third in rank among the 160 present. "
Among the steppe tribes “women often took part in the raids and were glorified. One of them became the heroine of W. Schultz's book "Running Eagle, Warrior Girl" ":" Some Native American women were excellent at wielding weapons and fought on an equal footing with men. They earned ku (a sign of the highest military valor) and had the right to wear sacred headdresses made of eagle feathers. Such female warriors were known among the Sioux, Assiniboins, Blackfeet. And the famous female warrior from the Crowe tribe even became a military leader and one of the leaders of the tribe. ... The Cheyenne had a society of Warrior Women. It was composed of unmarried girls, usually the daughters of the leaders of the tribe. "
I especially like the amazing names of Indian women - Midday Sky Woman, Thunderbird Cloud Woman, Middle Earth Woman, Ever Standing Woman, Little Seagull, Little Moonfish, White Bird, Big Star, etc. Agree that these are very sonorous and exalted names.
And Indian women were also engaged in handicrafts, how could we go without it? With the discovery of America, the demand for beads has increased significantly. Its direct consumer was the local population - the Indians. Indian women used beads to decorate suede, as a decoration for national clothes, to create necklaces, bracelets and other decorative items. At that time, these were not quite usual beads for us, but rather beads of various sizes. These beads have accompanied the Indians since childhood: they were also used to make original “rattles” that were hung at the cradle for decoration.
Native American women learned to work with beads from the age of 7 or 8: the mother taught her daughter beadwork. Education was compulsory, since this was required by the status of a woman who had to be hardworking, since she was responsible for the life of the family and the tribe. The girls first embroidered doll dresses, gradually improving their skills, moving on to the clothes of adults. Almost all the clothes of men and women were adorned and decorated, from moccasins to headdresses. But everyday clothes were more modest than festive ones.
I would like to pay special attention to the Indian mother-woman. Interesting observations belong to travelers who visited areas of North America in the second half of the nineteenth century, where Indian tribes lived. They stated the fact of easy pregnancy and painless childbirth in native women. More than once they had to see how a woman in labor, stopping a horse at a gallop, and stepping aside, spread a cape in the snow and calmly gave birth to a child. Then, wrapping the newborn in rags and not experiencing the slightest symptoms of postpartum depression, the woman again mounted a horse and caught up with her fellow tribesmen, who often did not even notice that she was giving birth.
Later, scientists explained this phenomenon by the fact that, within the framework of difficult living conditions and the need to survive in harsh natural conditions, women do not allow themselves to show birth fears and complexes, which ensures an easy course of pregnancy and a mostly painless delivery. From a psychological point of view, this is explained by the presence of a strong psychophysical preparation aimed at the ability to mobilize one's will at the right time.
As you can see, Native American women have many virtues and undoubtedly they have a lot to learn. All I can do is wish you to always be a Bright Star, a Sharp Owl and to stop your horse of good luck at a gallop.
A little about the feminine gender of the word "Indian": in all dictionaries of the Russian language "Indian" means both the feminine gender of the word "Indian" and the feminine gender of the word "Indian". There is no word "Indian" in the dictionaries of the Russian language, but it is sometimes found in the translated literature, besides it is more logical, since does not require clarification, unlike the word "Indian", where it is necessary to clarify, I mean a North American Indian or a resident of India. Therefore, the issue uses both concepts - "Indian" and "North American Indian".
(42 photos total)
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A source: mirtesen.ru
1. North American Indian (Indian) from the Iroquois Seneca tribe
2. North American Indian (Indian) of the Iroquois people
3. North American Indian (Indian) from the Taos people
4. North American Indian (Indian) from the Taos people
5. North American Indian (Indian) from the Sioux group
6. North American Indian (Indian) from the Dakota people
7. Shaman and Crow warrior (absaroka)
8. North American Indian (Indian) from the Apache people
9.North American Indian (Indian) from the Apache people
10. Modern Apache girl
11. North American Indian (Indian) from the Apache people
12. North American Indian (Indian) from the Apache people
13. North American Indian (Indian) from the Apache people
14.North American Indian (Indian) from the Mojave tribe
15. North American Indian (Indian) from the Mojave tribe
16. North American Indian (Indian) of the Cree people
17. North American Indian Cheyenne (Cheyenne)
18. Modern Cheyenne Girl
19. Cherokee woman with child
20. Modern Cherokee Girl
21. Modern Blackfoot Girl
22. Navajo Native American Indian
23. Navajo Native American Indian
24. Navajo Native American Indian
25. Modern Navajo Girl
26. Modern Navajo Girl
27. Modern Navajo Girl
28. North American Hopi Indian
29. North American Hopi Indian
30. North American Indian (Indian) from the Teva people
31. Arikara North American Indian
32. North American Indian (Indian) from the Zuni people
After the discovery of the American continents and the development of new lands, which were often accompanied by the enslavement and extermination of the indigenous population, the Europeans were amazed at the methods of the Indian struggle. The tribes of the Indians tried to intimidate the strangers, and therefore the most cruel methods of reprisals against people were used. This post will tell you more about the sophisticated methods of killing the invaders.
"The battle cry of the Indians is presented to us as something so terrible that it is impossible to endure it. It is called the sound that will make even the most courageous veteran lower their weapons and leave the line.
It will deafen his hearing, his soul will freeze. This battle cry will not allow him to hear the order and feel ashamed, and indeed retain any sensations other than the horror of death. "
But it was not so much the battle cry itself, from which the blood in my veins froze, that frightened, but what it foreshadowed. Europeans who fought in North America sincerely felt that falling alive into the hands of monstrous painted savages meant a fate more terrible than death.
This led to torture, human sacrifice, cannibalism, and scalping (and all had ritual significance in Indian culture). This was especially conducive to stirring up their imaginations.
The worst part was probably roasting alive. One of the British survivors of Monongahela in 1755 was tied to a tree and burned alive between two bonfires. The Indians danced around at this time.
When the agonizing man's groans became too insistent, one of the warriors ran between the two fires and cut off the hapless genitals, leaving him to bleed to death. Then the howling of the Indians ceased.
Rufus Putman, a private in the Massachusetts provincial army, wrote the following in his diary on July 4, 1757. The soldier, captured by the Indians, “was found fried in the most sad way: his fingernails were torn out, his lips were cut off to the very chin from below and to the very nose from above, his jaw was exposed.
His scalp was removed, his chest was cut open, his heart was ripped out, and his ammunition bag was put in his place. The left hand was pressed to the wound, the tomahawk was left in his intestines, the dart pierced him through and remained in place, the little finger on the left hand and the small toe on the left foot were cut off. "
In the same year, Jesuit Father Roubaud met a group of Ottawa Indians who were leading several English prisoners through the forest with ropes around their necks. Soon after, Roubaud caught up with the fighting party and pitched his tent next to their tents.
He saw a large group of Indians sitting around the fire and eating fried meat on sticks as if it were a lamb on a small spit. When he asked what kind of meat it was, the Ottawa Indians replied: it is a fried Englishman. They pointed to the cauldron in which the rest of the severed body was boiled.
Nearby sat eight prisoners of war, terrified to death, who were forced to watch this bear feast. People were seized with an indescribable horror, similar to that experienced by Odysseus in the poem of Homer, when the monster Scylla dragged his comrades off board the ship and threw them in front of his cave to be devoured at their leisure.
Roubaud, horrified, tried to protest. But the Ottawa Indians did not even want to listen to him. One young warrior told him rudely:
- You have French taste, I have Indian. This is good meat for me.
He then invited Roubaud to join their meal. It looks like the Indian was offended when the priest refused.
The Indians showed particular cruelty to those who fought with them by their own methods or almost mastered their hunting skills. Therefore, irregular forest guard patrols were at particular risk.
In January 1757, Private Thomas Brown of Captain Thomas Spykman's unit of Rogers' Rangers, dressed in green military uniform, was wounded in a battle on a snowy field with the Abenaki Indians.
He crawled out of the battlefield and met with two other wounded soldiers, one of them was named Baker, the other was Captain Spykman himself.
Tormented by pain and horror because of everything that was happening, they thought (and it was very foolish) that they could safely make a fire.
The Abenaki Indians appeared almost instantly. Brown managed to crawl away from the fire and hide in the bush, from which he watched the unfolding tragedy. The Abenaki began by stripping Spykman and scalping him while he was still alive. Then they left, taking Baker with them.
Brown said the following: "Seeing this terrible tragedy, I decided to crawl as far as possible into the forest and die there from my wounds. But since I was close to Captain Spykman, he saw me and begged, for heaven's sake, to give him a tomahawk so he could commit suicide!
I refused him and persuaded him to pray for mercy, since he could live only a few more minutes in this terrible state on the frozen ground covered with snow. He asked me to tell his wife if I live to the time when I return home, about his terrible death. "
Shortly thereafter, Brown was captured by the Abenaki Indians, who returned to the place where they scalped. They intended to put Spykman's head on a pole. Brown managed to survive in captivity, Baker did not.
“The Indian women split a pine tree into small chips, like little spits, and drove them into its flesh. Then they built a fire. After that they began to perform their ritual ceremony with incantations and dances around it, I was ordered to do the same.
According to the law of preservation of life, I had to agree ... With a heavy heart, I played fun. They cut the fetters on him and made him run back and forth. I heard the unfortunate man begged for mercy. Because of the unbearable pain and torment, he threw himself into the fire and disappeared. "
But of all Native American practices, scalping, which continued into the nineteenth century, attracted the greatest attention of horrified Europeans.
Despite a number of ridiculous attempts by some complacent revisionists to claim that scalping originated in Europe (perhaps among the Visigoths, Franks, or Scythians), it is clear that it was practiced in North America long before Europeans arrived there.
Scalps played a significant role in North American culture, as they were used for three different purposes (and possibly served all three): to "replace" the dead people of the tribe (remember how the Indians always worried about heavy losses incurred in war, therefore, about a decrease in the number of people), in order to appease the spirits of the lost, as well as to alleviate the grief of widows and other relatives.
French veterans of the Seven Years' War in North America have left many written memories of this gruesome form of mutilation. Here is an excerpt from Pushaud's notes:
"Immediately after the soldier fell, they ran up to him, kneeling on his shoulders, holding a lock of hair in one hand, and a knife in the other. They began to separate the skin from the head and tear it off in one piece. They did this very quickly. and then, demonstrating the scalp, they uttered a cry that was called "the cry of death."
Here is the valuable story of a French eyewitness who is known only by his initials - JCB: “The savage immediately grabbed his knife and quickly made cuts around the hair, starting from the top of the forehead and ending with the back of the head at the level of the neck. Then he stood up with a foot on the shoulder of his victim, lying face down, and with both hands pulled the scalp by the hair, starting at the back of the head and moving forward ...
After the savage removed the scalp, if he was not afraid of being persecuted, he got up and began to scrape off the blood and flesh that remained there.
Then he made a hoop of green branches, pulled the scalp over it like a tambourine, and waited for a while for it to dry in the sun. The skin was dyed red, the hair was gathered in a knot.
The scalp was then attached to a long pole and carried triumphantly on the shoulder to the village or to whatever place was chosen for it. But as he approached every place on his way, he uttered as many screams as he had scalps, announcing his arrival and demonstrating his courage.
Sometimes on one pole there could be up to fifteen scalps. If there were too many of them for one pole, then the Indians decorated several poles with scalps. "
There is no way to underestimate the brutality and barbarity of the North American Indians. But their actions must be seen both within the context of their warlike cultures and animist religions, and within the larger picture of the general brutality of life in the eighteenth century.
Urban dwellers and intellectuals who were in awe of cannibalism, torture, human sacrifice and scalping enjoyed attending public executions. And under them (before the introduction of the guillotine) men and women sentenced to death died an agonizing death within half an hour.
The Europeans did not mind when the "traitors" were subjected to the barbaric ritual of execution by hanging, drowning or quartering, as in 1745 the Jacobite rebels were executed after the uprising.
They did not particularly protest when the heads of the executed were impaled on stakes in front of cities as an ominous warning.
They tolerated hanging on chains, dragging sailors under the keel (usually this punishment ended in a fatal outcome), as well as corporal punishment in the army - so cruel and severe that many soldiers died under the whip.
European soldiers in the eighteenth century were whipped to obey military discipline. American native warriors fought for prestige, glory, or the common good of a clan or tribe.
Moreover, the massive looting, looting and general violence that followed most successful sieges in European wars surpassed anything that the Iroquois or Abenaki were capable of.
Before the Holocaust of terror, such as the sack of Magdeburg in the Thirty Years' War, the atrocities at Fort William Henry fade. In the same 1759 in Quebec, Wolfe was completely satisfied with the shelling of the city with incendiary cannonballs, without worrying about the suffering that the innocent civilians of the city had to endure.
He also left behind devastated areas, using the scorched earth tactics. The war in North America was bloody, brutal, and terrifying. And it is naive to regard it as a struggle of civilization against barbarism.
In addition to the above, the specific question of scalping contains an answer. First of all, Europeans (especially irregulars like Rogers' Rangers) responded to scalping and mutilation in their own way.
Their ability to descend to barbarism was aided by a generous reward of £ 5 per scalp. It was a tangible addition to the ranger's paycheck.
The spiral of atrocities and oncoming atrocities rose dizzily upward after 1757. Since the fall of Louisburg, the soldiers of the victorious Highlander Regiment have been chopping off the heads of all Indians in their path.
One eyewitness reports: "We killed a huge number of Indians. Rangers and soldiers of the Highlander Regiment did not give any mercy to anyone. We scalped all over the place. But you cannot tell the scalp taken by the French from the scalp taken by the Indians."
The epidemic of scalping by Europeans became so rampant that in June 1759 General Amherst had to issue an emergency order.
“All reconnaissance units, as well as all other units of the army under my command, despite all the opportunities presented, are prohibited from scalping women or children belonging to the enemy.
If possible, they should be taken with you. If this is not possible, then they should be left in place without causing them any harm. "
But what good could such a military directive be if everyone knew that the civilian authorities were offering a bonus for scalps?
In May 1755, the Governor of Massachusetts, William Sherle, gave 40 pounds sterling for the scalp of a male Indian and 20 pounds for the scalp of a woman. This seemed to be in line with the "code" of degenerate warriors.
But Pennsylvania Gov. Robert Hunter Morris showed his genocidal tendencies by targeting childbearing sex. In 1756 he appointed a reward of £ 30 for a man, but £ 50 for a woman.
In any case, the despicable practice of awarding scalps backfired in the most disgusting way: the Indians went to cheat.
It all started with an obvious deception when the American natives set about making "scalps" from horse skins. Then the practice of killing so-called friends and allies was introduced just to make money.
In a reliably documented case in 1757, a group of Cherokee Indians killed people from the friendly Chikasawi tribe just to get a reward.
And finally, as almost every military historian has noted, the Indians became experts at "breeding" scalps. For example, the same Cherokee, by all accounts, became such craftsmen that they could make four scalps from every soldier they killed.
It is difficult to reliably convey the awe with which educated Europe looked at the tribes of the Indians of North America.
"The battle cry of the Indians is presented to us as something so terrible that it is impossible to endure it. It is called the sound that will make even the most courageous veteran lower their weapons and leave the line.
It will deafen his hearing, his soul will freeze. This battle cry will not allow him to hear the order and feel ashamed, and indeed retain any sensations other than the horror of death. "
But it was not so much the battle cry itself, from which the blood in my veins froze, that frightened, but what it foreshadowed. Europeans who fought in North America sincerely felt that falling alive into the hands of monstrous painted savages meant a fate more terrible than death.
This led to torture, human sacrifice, cannibalism, and scalping (and all had ritual significance in Indian culture). This was especially conducive to stirring up their imaginations.
The worst part was probably roasting alive. One of the British survivors of Monongahela in 1755 was tied to a tree and burned alive between two bonfires. The Indians danced around at this time.
When the agonizing man's groans became too insistent, one of the warriors ran between the two fires and cut off the hapless genitals, leaving him to bleed to death. Then the howling of the Indians ceased.
Rufus Putman, a private in the Massachusetts provincial army, wrote the following in his diary on July 4, 1757. The soldier, captured by the Indians, “was found fried in the most sad way: his fingernails were torn out, his lips were cut off to the very chin from below and to the very nose from above, his jaw was exposed.
His scalp was removed, his chest was cut open, his heart was ripped out, and his ammunition bag was put in his place. The left hand was pressed to the wound, the tomahawk was left in his intestines, the dart pierced him through and remained in place, the little finger on the left hand and the small toe on the left foot were cut off. "
In the same year, Jesuit Father Roubaud met a group of Ottawa Indians who were leading several English prisoners through the forest with ropes around their necks. Soon after, Roubaud caught up with the fighting party and pitched his tent next to their tents.
He saw a large group of Indians sitting around the fire and eating fried meat on sticks as if it were a lamb on a small spit. When he asked what kind of meat it was, the Ottawa Indians replied: it is a fried Englishman. They pointed to the cauldron in which the rest of the severed body was boiled.
Nearby sat eight prisoners of war, terrified to death, who were forced to watch this bear feast. People were seized with an indescribable horror, similar to that experienced by Odysseus in the poem of Homer, when the monster Scylla dragged his comrades off board the ship and threw them in front of his cave to be devoured at their leisure.
Roubaud, horrified, tried to protest. But the Ottawa Indians did not even want to listen to him. One young warrior told him rudely:
- You have French taste, I have Indian. This is good meat for me.
He then invited Roubaud to join their meal. It looks like the Indian was offended when the priest refused.
The Indians showed particular cruelty to those who fought with them by their own methods or almost mastered their hunting skills. Therefore, irregular forest guard patrols were at particular risk.
In January 1757, Private Thomas Brown of Captain Thomas Spykman's unit of Rogers' Rangers, dressed in green military uniform, was wounded in a battle on a snowy field with the Abenaki Indians.
He crawled out of the battlefield and met with two other wounded soldiers, one of them was named Baker, the other was Captain Spykman himself.
Tormented by pain and horror because of everything that was happening, they thought (and it was very foolish) that they could safely make a fire.
The Abenaki Indians appeared almost instantly. Brown managed to crawl away from the fire and hide in the bush, from which he watched the unfolding tragedy. The Abenaki began by stripping Spykman and scalping him while he was still alive. Then they left, taking Baker with them.
Brown said the following: "Seeing this terrible tragedy, I decided to crawl as far as possible into the forest and die there from my wounds. But since I was close to Captain Spykman, he saw me and begged, for heaven's sake, to give him a tomahawk so he could commit suicide!
I refused him and persuaded him to pray for mercy, since he could live only a few more minutes in this terrible state on the frozen ground covered with snow. He asked me to tell his wife if I live to the time when I return home, about his terrible death. "
Shortly thereafter, Brown was captured by the Abenaki Indians, who returned to the place where they scalped. They intended to put Spykman's head on a pole. Brown managed to survive in captivity, Baker did not.
“The Indian women split a pine tree into small chips, like little spits, and drove them into its flesh. Then they built a fire. After that they began to perform their ritual ceremony with incantations and dances around it, I was ordered to do the same.
According to the law of preservation of life, I had to agree ... With a heavy heart, I played fun. They cut the fetters on him and made him run back and forth. I heard the unfortunate man begged for mercy. Because of the unbearable pain and torment, he threw himself into the fire and disappeared. "
But of all Native American practices, scalping, which continued into the nineteenth century, attracted the greatest attention of horrified Europeans.
Despite a number of ridiculous attempts by some complacent revisionists to claim that scalping originated in Europe (perhaps among the Visigoths, Franks, or Scythians), it is clear that it was practiced in North America long before Europeans arrived there.
Scalps played a significant role in North American culture, as they were used for three different purposes (and possibly served all three): to "replace" the dead people of the tribe (remember how the Indians always worried about heavy losses incurred in war, therefore, about a decrease in the number of people), in order to appease the spirits of the lost, as well as to alleviate the grief of widows and other relatives.
French veterans of the Seven Years' War in North America have left many written memories of this gruesome form of mutilation. Here is an excerpt from Pushaud's notes:
"Immediately after the soldier fell, they ran up to him, kneeling on his shoulders, holding a lock of hair in one hand, and a knife in the other. They began to separate the skin from the head and tear it off in one piece. They did this very quickly. and then, demonstrating the scalp, they uttered a cry that was called "the cry of death."
Here is the valuable story of a French eyewitness who is known only by his initials - JCB: “The savage immediately grabbed his knife and quickly made cuts around the hair, starting from the top of the forehead and ending with the back of the head at the level of the neck. Then he stood up with a foot on the shoulder of his victim, lying face down, and with both hands pulled the scalp by the hair, starting at the back of the head and moving forward ...
After the savage removed the scalp, if he was not afraid of being persecuted, he got up and began to scrape off the blood and flesh that remained there.
Then he made a hoop of green branches, pulled the scalp over it like a tambourine, and waited for a while for it to dry in the sun. The skin was dyed red, the hair was gathered in a knot.
The scalp was then attached to a long pole and carried triumphantly on the shoulder to the village or to whatever place was chosen for it. But as he approached every place on his way, he uttered as many screams as he had scalps, announcing his arrival and demonstrating his courage.
Sometimes on one pole there could be up to fifteen scalps. If there were too many of them for one pole, then the Indians decorated several poles with scalps. "
There is no way to underestimate the brutality and barbarity of the North American Indians. But their actions must be seen both within the context of their warlike cultures and animist religions, and within the larger picture of the general brutality of life in the eighteenth century.
Urban dwellers and intellectuals who were in awe of cannibalism, torture, human sacrifice and scalping enjoyed attending public executions. And under them (before the introduction of the guillotine) men and women sentenced to death died an agonizing death within half an hour.
The Europeans did not mind when the "traitors" were subjected to the barbaric ritual of execution by hanging, drowning or quartering, as in 1745 the Jacobite rebels were executed after the uprising.
They did not particularly protest when the heads of the executed were impaled on stakes in front of cities as an ominous warning.
They tolerated hanging on chains, dragging sailors under the keel (usually this punishment ended in a fatal outcome), as well as corporal punishment in the army - so cruel and severe that many soldiers died under the whip.
European soldiers in the eighteenth century were whipped to obey military discipline. American native warriors fought for prestige, glory, or the common good of a clan or tribe.
Moreover, the massive looting, looting and general violence that followed most successful sieges in European wars surpassed anything that the Iroquois or Abenaki were capable of.
Before the Holocaust of terror, such as the sack of Magdeburg in the Thirty Years' War, the atrocities at Fort William Henry fade. In the same 1759 in Quebec, Wolfe was completely satisfied with the shelling of the city with incendiary cannonballs, without worrying about the suffering that the innocent civilians of the city had to endure.
He also left behind devastated areas, using the scorched earth tactics. The war in North America was bloody, brutal, and terrifying. And it is naive to regard it as a struggle of civilization against barbarism.
In addition to the above, the specific question of scalping contains an answer. First of all, Europeans (especially irregulars like Rogers' Rangers) responded to scalping and mutilation in their own way.
Their ability to descend to barbarism was aided by a generous reward of £ 5 per scalp. It was a tangible addition to the ranger's paycheck.
The spiral of atrocities and oncoming atrocities rose dizzily upward after 1757. Since the fall of Louisburg, the soldiers of the victorious Highlander Regiment have been chopping off the heads of all Indians in their path.
One eyewitness reports: "We killed a huge number of Indians. Rangers and soldiers of the Highlander Regiment did not give any mercy to anyone. We scalped all over the place. But you cannot tell the scalp taken by the French from the scalp taken by the Indians."
The epidemic of scalping by Europeans became so rampant that in June 1759 General Amherst had to issue an emergency order.
“All reconnaissance units, as well as all other units of the army under my command, despite all the opportunities presented, are prohibited from scalping women or children belonging to the enemy.
If possible, they should be taken with you. If this is not possible, then they should be left in place without causing them any harm. "
But what good could such a military directive be if everyone knew that the civilian authorities were offering a bonus for scalps?
In May 1755, the Governor of Massachusetts, William Sherle, gave 40 pounds sterling for the scalp of a male Indian and 20 pounds for the scalp of a woman. This seemed to be in line with the "code" of degenerate warriors.
But Pennsylvania Gov. Robert Hunter Morris showed his genocidal tendencies by targeting childbearing sex. In 1756 he appointed a reward of £ 30 for a man, but £ 50 for a woman.
In any case, the despicable practice of awarding scalps backfired in the most disgusting way: the Indians went to cheat.
It all started with an obvious deception when the American natives set about making "scalps" from horse skins. Then the practice of killing so-called friends and allies was introduced just to make money.
In a reliably documented case in 1757, a group of Cherokee Indians killed people from the friendly Chikasawi tribe just to get a reward.
And finally, as almost every military historian has noted, the Indians became experts at "breeding" scalps. For example, the same Cherokee, by all accounts, became such craftsmen that they could make four scalps from every soldier they killed.
Man is a curious creature. We all tend to be interested in those who are not like us, and to learn something new. Perhaps this is the reason why we love to travel, communicate with foreigners, learn the traditions and cultures of other nations. Let's try to figure out how Indian women differ from European and Russian beautiful ladies, and also find out how to call them correctly.
Who are the Indians?
Indians are correct to call representatives of all indigenous peoples of America. Very often this term is confused with Indians - the aborigines of India. And this does not happen by chance. The name was given to the inhabitants of America by the discoverer Christopher Columbus, and he, like most sailors of the 15th century, believed that India was located across the ocean. Interestingly, the Indian women impressed him from the very first meetings. In his notes, Columbus wrote that these ladies are distinguished by their tall stature and excellent physique, they smile a lot and are distinguished by natural charm.
Today, in the territory of modern America, there are about 1 thousand different Indian peoples. It is noteworthy that during the travel of Columbus there were more than 2 thousand of them.
Indian woman. What is the name of the correct representative of the fair sex among the Indians?
People who are not fond of the anthropology and culture of the indigenous peoples of America cannot always immediately recall the correct name of the local aborigines. With men it is even more or less clear: an Indian lives in India, and an Indian is a Native American. If you want to give the impression of being educated and literate, try to remember this distinction and not get confused.
So, with the men sorted out, but what are the women of the Indians called? It's simple: Indian. Curiously, this word is appropriate for the representatives of the Native American tribes, and for the beautiful ladies from India.
An interesting fact: today in the United States, against the background of mass propaganda of tolerance, the word "Indian" is practically not used, more often a more correct definition is used: "Native American".
What are they, real Indian women?
Modern culture in works of fiction about life in the Wild West most often gives all the main adventures to men. But in reality it is not so. Indian women are not only home keepers and excellent needlewomen. Many indigenous women in America were fearless warriors. And such a phenomenon as a woman-leader of a tribe occurs today. But still girls are still taught needlework and household duties from birth. Many tribes have elaborate traditional dress. Mother's daughters are intensively taught weaving, beading and other handicraft techniques from the age of 7-8.
The Indians, who have preserved their tribal identity, anxiously preserve all the traditions and customs of their people. It is noteworthy that many modern people lead a completely modern way of life, visit large cities and enjoy the benefits of civilization.
The life of modern Indian women
Today, Indians and white women are equal in rights. In many indigenous tribes, young girls are allowed to receive education away from home, a common occurrence and marriages with representatives of other ethnic groups. And yet, many Indian women prefer to lead a traditional lifestyle and not leave their native villages anywhere.
The culture of many tribes is striking in its originality. Here they still believe the predictions of shamans, respect the elders, live in large families, do not know evil and envy. Indian women are believed to be in very good health by nature. Traditional Indian families usually have many children. At the same time, pregnancy and childbirth in Indian women are easy and without problems, despite the low, by modern European and American standards, the level of medical care.
What is noteworthy: among the representatives of the Native American peoples there are many people who have achieved public recognition and world fame. Among the Indians and Indian women there are well-known figures of culture and show business, politicians, athletes and simply highly qualified specialists in certain fields.
