By: David R. Topper

Note: This story is the sequel to Mud: Shtetl to Shoah, published in the Winnipeg Jewish Post & News, September 2023, pp. 34-38. As in Mud, the format is a dialogue between me and my imaginary female pseudonym, Dee Artea (pronounced D-R-T, my monogram). In Mud I used quotations from the tales of Sholem Alechem about Jewish life in the Shtetls (villages) of Eastern Europe before the Shoah (another term for the Holocaust), with “mud” being a symbol of their often bleak and wretched life – where, nonetheless, the Yiddish author found humour. Now here in Scalped is a parallel story and a parallel author (Black Elk) – and a parallel genocide.

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On an otherwise pleasant summer day, I’m sitting in the gazebo in my backyard, reading a book of poetry by Robert Frost. My live-in friend, Dee, walks in carrying a book, with a finger between two pages. Just as she opens her mouth to say something, I blurt out this question.

What comes to mind if I say the word “scalped?

Uh, I think of the Native Americans (what we used to call Indians) scalping white men and probably members of other enemy tribes.

Here’s another question. What comes to mind when you hear these words: Pioneers, Settlers, Gold Rush, the 49ers?

I see this is quiz day, eh? Well, I think of the push westward in the USA starting in the second half of the 19^thcentury, mainly in California, I believe – at least for the Gold Rush. Gold was discovered around 1849, and so the miners, pioneers, and settlers were called 49ers.The San Francisco football team uses this moniker. It is usually thought about in the context of heroic individuals taking a chance, pursuing a dream. Often spoken in terms of civilizing the empty wild west. But I’m quite sure the Native people living there at the time didn’t see it that way. Which bring me to the book I’m―

Ah, you know what! I’m old enough to remember several TV shows in the 1950s spewing this propaganda into our living rooms. Also, speaking of San Francisco: with the Gold Rush, its population skyrocketed from around 1,000 to 20,000 in one year!

So, does this have anything to do with the Frost poetry book you’re reading, which I came to ask you about – before you quickly tossed your questions at me?

Actually, it does, in a roundabout way. But first I have to confess something.

Ah, oh!?

Well, relax. Not that kind of confession. As you know, my story on the Shoah (also called the Holocaust) in Eastern Europe, which you had a key role in reading and editing for me, was published in the Jewish Post & News in the September High Holiday issue in 2023. It was a difficult story to tell, as is everything associated with that horrific event. But with your help, I got – or we got – through it and I vowed to try never to get obsessed with the topic again.

So, you broke your vow? I’m―

No and yes. No, I’ve not revisited the Shoah. But, yes, I have become obsessed with genocide. But another one, about 100 years before in the USA, involving the decimation of the Native Americans.

Well, I know there is a controversy as to whether what happened to the Native American population from colonization to the present constitutes genocide as defined by the United Nations. The decimation of the population through disease from Europe (smallpox, measles, and so forth) was a ticking-time-bomb waiting to go off, when these two isolated “worlds” eventually met – one way or the other. In this case, it was the Europeans coming to America. I’ve read that it’s been estimated that the population of North America before contact was up to 20 million Natives. This plummeted by 95% with the spread of imported germs, to which the Indigenous population was not immune. A terrible thing, but no one’s fault.

You’re right, and I know that, of course. But I’m speaking of a specific place and time – California, from around 1846 to 1873. Did you know that what happened during those Gold Rush/49ers days is something that I would call a deliberate act of genocide against the Native Americans?

I know that during the Mexican-American war of 1846-1848 California broke from Mexico and became part of the USA. I would assume that as that mass of westward migration took place, the Native Americans originally living there were pushed out of the way, hence losing their traditional hunting, fishing, and gathering grounds. I’m sure there were occasional cases of downright murder.

More than occasional cases. In 1846 the Native population was about 150,000, whereas by 1873 it was only 30,000 – an astonishing 80% decline. Now some of this was due to disease. But the numbers are too high to attribute it only to diseases that were rampant in their community.

Are you saying there was deliberate murder to account for the rest?

I am saying, and I will show you, that the deaths were part of a premeditated policy from different levels of the US government, to eliminate the Native population which was seen as being in the way of the expansion westward of pioneers, settlers, miners, and others seeking land or gold; and believing that it was just the downright destiny of the white race. Overt racism can be documented. The Native people were deprived of their land rights. But worse, they were treated like wild animals, often shot on sight, without provocation. Or they were enslaved, sold to the highest bidder, and worked to death. Women and girls were sold as sex slaves. All this happened just as slavery was ending in the southern states after the Civil War.

Oh my God, why don’t I know about this? I see why you call this the furtive genocide. What about specific killings? I’m thinking of those cases in “Mud,” such as the killing van roving across Latvia in 1941 and committing mass murder. Eventually, exterminating all the Jews in the country.

Yes, it was not furtive at the time. Not at all, unlike today. Indeed, not only was federal policy responsible for the genocide but local newspapers encouraged the murder of the Native population, which in turn fueled vigilantism. The newspapers documented the individual killings, and so today these papers are the source of much of the details and data about the slaughter. You can read the reports of shootings, stabbings, hangings, beheadings, and lethal beatings of the Natives who got in the way of the white man’s “manifest destiny.” Of course, the thousands of rapes were not in the papers. But the scalping reports were.

Scalping? Not just by the Natives? Oh, your original question to me. A trick question, eh?

Yes, a trick question. In fact, there was little scalping done by Native tribes at this time. Virtually all scalping was done to the Natives. Not only to men and women, but children too. And they got paid for the scalps. Can you imagine taking money for the scalp of a child?

You know, David, I’m having that sick-in-the-stomach feeling I had when we were talking about some of the detailed reports of the Shoah. Is that why you’re reading Frost? To try to clear your mind of an obsession with genocide? If so, it didn’t seem to work.

Yes, you’re right. It didn’t work. Not at all. In fact, it drew me back into the genocide. Uh, do you know the Frost poem, The Gift Outright, which I just happened to be reading?

No, why?

Well, it’s famous because at John F. Kennedy’s inauguration in 1961, Frost was on the podium with the other dignitaries, and he was asked to read this poem.  (I’m old enough to remember that event – although you may see it on YouTube.)  It’s memorable because it was a bright sunny day, and as Frost began to read his introductory notes, he couldn’t focus on the paper; and so he scrapped that part of his speech and went straight to the poem – which he recited from memory.

I didn’t know that. But how is this at all relevant to the genocide?

What’s relevant is the poem itself. Listen to both the opening and closing verses:

            The land was ours before we were the land’s

            She was our land more than a hundred years

            Before we were her people. She was ours

            .           .           .           .           .          

            To the land vaguely realizing westward,

            But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,

            Such as she was, such as she would become.

Ah, David, I see. A gift from God, no less. The Manifest Destiny thing. Virgin land, so to speak. But it’s not true. It wasn’t empty or even “unstoried,” to quote Frost’s neologism. It was occupied by hundreds of different tribes of indigenous cultures. And full of buffalo, that’s for sure. You know there are reports of buffalo herds so thick that it took hours for them to pass. And stories. Yes, Indigenous stories, orally handed down from generation to generation. In fact, I’m reading them right now. They are in my hands.

I know, Dee. I noticed you’re holding my copy of the book Black Elk Speaks, which I first read in the 1970s, when it was popular among the counterculture. I assume you were going to say something about this book, when I interrupted you with my scalping question.

Yes, I was. Oh, so interesting. Black Elk (whose dates are 1863-1950) was a Lakota “medicine man” or “holy man,” and a cousin of the famous Crazy Horse. He fought in June 1870 in present-day Montana in the Battle of the Little Bighorn (or Custer’s Last Stand, as it’s also called). Much later, in December 1890 in South Dakota, he was one of the few survivors of the Wounded Knee Massacre, when the US Cavalry killed over 250 Lakota men, women, and children. Black Elk Speaks was published in 1932 and is based upon a series of interviews with him over several days by the poet – yes, back to poetry again – John Neihardt.

Of course, as I recall, this then raises the question: how much in the text is the voice of the real indigenous man and how much was embellished by the non-native poet?  Since its publication, the book has gone through various phases: emulated, derided, revalued, and so forth.

Yes, David, I know that. In fact, I’m also reading a book by Brian Holloway about the legacy of Neihardt’s book, and I’ve come to a conclusion about this issue. I look at it this way. It is clear that Black Elk wanted his story to be told, indeed, to be recorded, the way the “Wasichus” (that’s the indigenous word for “the white man”) was able to do. Holloway says that Black Elk “took pains to transmit fact and feeling to Neihardt, whom he regarded as receptive.”

Moreover, I would add this, Dee. All major religions are based on texts, texts written ages ago, containing stories recorded after-the-fact to preserve the truths that the followers believed. Look at the Christian Bible. The four gospels were written about 60 – 100 years after the crucifixion. None is from an eyewitness. Yet they’re taken as genuine sources. So, I take Neihardt’s text seriously, since we have the word of a living (at the time) Lakota holy man.

Yes, you’re right. Plus, regarding the issue of Neihardt being a poet. As a 20^th century poet, Neihardt was familiar with free verse, so the prose text of Black Elk Speaks is Neihardt’s use of free verse to tell the holy man’s story – and hence, I would see it as a transition from the lyric to the narrative.

Ah, I like that idea. You know, I read somewhere that a theologian called Black Elk Speaks the major religious text of the 20^th century – and I’m inclined to believe him.

That’s one way to look at the book. But I have another way. Since much of it is a series of stories from Black Elk’s life, I see a possible parallel to Sholem Aleichem’s tales of shtetl life in Europe, before the Shoah, that we talked about in your story “Mud.” For example, there’s a very funny story called High Horse Courting. Although misogynist in essence, it’s a humorous tale of the young High Horse, who falls in love with a pretty girl and tries to court her by various subterfuges – all of which are futile; although in the end, in an accidental way, he ultimately gets the girl. I could almost hear Sholem Aleichem laughing with me.

What an interesting parallel. Two storytellers, born about four years apart, one telling Native stories of a tribe from the American plains, and the other telling Jewish/Yiddish tales out of a shtetl in Eastern Europe. Two cultures, two religions. Both making distinctions between the sacred and the profane. Both steeped in ritual as a part of daily life – and both lacking, at times, a sharp distinction between reality and dreaming.

David, allow me to quote from Black Elk, here where I have my finger: “I am related to Chief Crazy Horse, who was a chief because he had powers to see into the spirit world. That is, the real world that is behind this one, and everything we see here is something like a shadow from that world. I often entered this world in my dreams.” See, a parallel between the two storytellers. And both cultures, as I assume you will wretchedly show me, were victims of a brutal genocide. May I see what you have written so far? Will you send me a copy by email, so I can download it on my laptop?

Why, so that you can go through it with your intrusions and comments, as you did with my early draft of Mud?  Huh? … You don’t have to answer that.

`                       *  *  *

Well, of course, I did send it. And Dee did make her interjections, which I’ve kept. Why not? She is, in many ways, smarter than I am. So, here it is.

*  *  *

Oh, David, you need to hear this description of a ritual from Black Elk: “Standing in the center of the sacred place and facing the sunset. I began to cry, and while crying I had to say, ‘O Great Spirit, accept my offerings! O make me understand.’  As I was crying and saying this, there soared a spotted eagle from the west, who whistled a shrill and sat upon a pine tree east of me. To me, this was a sign.” But what does it mean?

Since colonial times, white society has been scalping the Native Americans. It is acknowledged in government documents and in newspaper accounts. Even going so far as to explicitly speak of, and I quote, “a war of extermination against the aborigines.” The accounts are often horrific. Difficult even to read. But I must tell this story. It needs to be told, and not forgotten. It is the Holocaust of the Indigenous cultures of the Americas.

 Black Elk believes some of the chiefs signed treaties giving away land because the Wasichus gave them whiskey and got them drunk. “I have heard this. I do not know. But only crazy or very foolish men would sell their Mother Earth. Sometimes I think it might have been better if we had stayed together and made them kill us all.”

Listen: “About 20 or 30 miners, all armed with rifles, revolvers and bowie knives, would start out on a road into the Indian country, discover a village, take it by surprise, rush upon it, and shoot, stab and kill every buck, squaw, papoose.” … “Vigilantes attacked and killed 4 or 5 men and one squaw …. The vigilantes killed 17 more men and one woman. … [Later] 25 of the Indians had been killed. … [Later again] they killed and scalped some 20 or more Indians.” (1850)

“And so when the soldiers came and built themselves a town of logs … my people knew they meant to have their road and take our country and maybe kill us all when they were strong enough.”

Listen: Some bloodless robberies near Cottonwood by Native Americans “led to the genocidal massacre of about 30 Nomlaki, Wintu, or Yana people. Soon thereafter, whites seeking to punish them massacred 40 Indians, returning with 14 Indian scalps tied on a string. … Shasta City authorities now institutionalized Indian killings by offering five dollars for every Indian head brought to them. … Several mules laden with 8–12 Indian heads were turned in to the precinct headquarters. … Head and scalp bounties officered new financial incentives to indiscriminately murder California Indians, mutilate their bodies, inventory their deaths, and ultimately carryout genocide.” … “[Members of the Modoc tribe] allegedly stole 40 mules and horses at Yreka. Veteran Indian hunter John Ross then led 20 men and surprised them in Butte Valley, killing 15 Modocs and taking 7 scalps. …They were ordered to kill every Indian belonging to the Village. [They returned] with the scalps of 2 Indians. … Indian agent Redick McKee reported to Governor Bigler that after the killing and robbing of two white men on Eel River, whites commenced an indiscriminate attack upon the poor, defenseless, and wholly unsuspecting Indians.” … “McKee kept Californians informed of genocidal attacks [in letters to newspapers. After reporting two attacks he] concluded that in these two genocidal massacres some 30 or 40 Indians were killed and 2 whites wounded. …The attack was wholly unlooked for by the Indians, who from the date of the Treaty at Scott’s Valley had been perfectly quiet and inoffensive.”  … “Yet, a war of extermination was declared by the whites against the Indians.” (1851)

“I was ten years old that winter, and that was the first time I ever saw a Wasichus. At first I thought they all looked sick, and I was afraid they might just begin to fight us any time, but I got used to them.”

Listen: “It was not an uncommon thing for the whites to shoot an Indian just for the fun of seeing him jump.” The whites even went so far in their cruelty and downright viciousness by doing the following. They would impale the feet of Native boys, rub salt in their wounds, and then watch them twist in pain for hours – all the while laughing at them. A sick and depraved form of entertainment.

Makes you sick, doesn’t it, David? And to think: the whites saw themselves as a superior race, calling the Native Americans “savages.”

Listen: After a Mr. J. R. Anderson and his cattle disappeared near Weaverville, County Sheriff Dixon organized a killing squad. “Every man was required to swear that no living thing bearing Indian blood should escape.” Surrounding the local Native American village at night, they attacked at dawn. “Each rifle marked its victim with unerring precession – the pistol and knife completed the work of destruction and revenge, and in a few brief moments all was over.” According to non-Indigenous sources, 140-200 or more men, women, and children were massacred. Indigenous sources say 300 were killed; for example, there’s the report from a man, who was a boy at the time, and who survived by crawling through a gulch. Dixon’s mob, who suffered one wounded man, returned to the town in triumph, with 147 scalps, and to the wild excitement of a large crowd. “Indian scalps were nailed to many door posts in that town for quite a while.”  (April 1852) 

Black Elk reminisces. “Summers were happy before the Wasichus came. I loved going fishing. I had great fun fishing. When we caught the first fish, we would kiss it and throw it back, believing it would help attract other fish. I don’t know if this helped or not, but we always got plenty of fish, and our parents were proud of us.”

Listen:  After massacring 35-50 members of the Modoc tribe, who were in the middle of a peace meeting and thus were caught off guard, Ben Wright, a Quaker Indian Killer (so named), and his men paraded into Yreka with “Indian scalps dangling from their rifles, hats, and the heads of their horses. Scores of scalps were thus flaunted to show to the admiring crowd, as cheers and shouts rent the air as they slowly rode through the dense throng.”  (1852)

“To reprimand a child for misbehaving we would say: ‘If you are not good the Wasichus will get you’.” I wonder if it worked.

Listen: Prospectors murdered two Indians who peacefully visited their camp near Trinity River. The next day they killed another Indian, while one prospector “straddled his companion and scalped him alive.” … Vigilantes led by Jim Crosby massacred 11 Modoc near the eastern shore of Tule Lake as well as Hot Creek Modoc men, women, and children before returning to Yreka with “a few scalps to show their friends.” … After so many atrocities were committed against his people, a Modoc leader pronounced at a council this declaration: “The Great Spirit put our fathers and mothers here. We have lived here in peace but cannot get along with the white people. They come along and kill my people for nothing. Not only men, but they kill our wives and children. It seems they will continue to hunt us like we hunt the deer and antelope.” At the time of these massacres, the Yreka Mountain Herald proclaimed: “Let extermination be our motto!” (August 8, 1853)

What do you think, David? Isn’t that proclamation from Modoc leader his “Gift Outright”? I see you have put it into italics. Worth reading again, and again, eh? Does it not fly in the face of Frost’s version?

Listen: A number of different tribes (Tolowa, Yuroks, Chetcoe, Winchuck, and others) rendezvoused in a spiritual pilgrimage to a site in Yontocket, near the Slough, south of the Smith River. It is a place sacred to the Indigenous – the centre of the universe in their cosmology – to celebrate, pray, and dance. Think of the Vatican for Catholics, Mecca for Muslims, or Jerusalem for Jews. What else? During the night, J.M. Peters and 33 others surrounded the place, and at dawn started firing at them. Waking up and responding with bows and arrows, the Native men were no match for the white fire power. Almost every man, woman, and child was massacred that day. Some eyewitnesses reported heads being cut off. The homes were set on fire and there were reports of the white men throwing Native girls and babies into the fires alive. The village was burned to the ground and the river was blood red. The number of deaths is unknown. Indigenous estimates range from 450 to 600. White sources say around 150. (The fall of 1853)

“We were in our own country all the time and we only wanted to be left alone. The soldiers came there to kill us, and many died. It was our country, and we did not want to have trouble.”

Listen: “Between 1851 and 1854, the army tended to kill small proportions of those California Indians whom they attacked and to take higher quantities of prisoners. Civilians, vigilantes, and militiamen, however, tended to be more genocidal: shooting, beheading, burning, enslaving, and scalping most of those Indians they attacked.” …Vigilante killings continued throughout the year, but at a reduced rate. A rancher “boasted of having killed sixty infants with his own hatchet.”  The Cavalry “fired into a canoe, laden with old squaws and children, killing several of them.” They later captured “a couple of bucks and a couple of NICE squaws … reserved for future disposition.” In April, vigilantes murdered and scalped 6 Sinkyone people at Shelter Cove.” …  A rancher, Dryden Lacock, testified that he participated in many killing expeditions against the Indians, and estimated that between 1856 and 1860, they “killed thousands of Indians.” … “A report was brought from Eureka on Sunday morning that during the night nearly all the Indians camping on Indian Island, including women and children, were killed by parties unknown. … Little children and old women were mercilessly stabbed, and their skulls crushed with axes. … Infants, merely a span long, had their faces cloven with hatchets and their bodies ghastly with wounds. We gather from the survivors that 4 or 5 white men attacked the ranches at about 4 o’clock in the morning, a statement corroborated by people at Eureka who heard pistol shots at about that time. … Indian Island is scarcely one mile from Eureka … [and] the Indians on the Island are peaceful and industrious and seem to have perfect faith in the good will of the whites.” (1860)

“Wherever we went the soldiers came to kill us, and it was all our own country. It was ours already when the Wasichus made the treaty with Red Cloud that said it would be ours as long as grass should grow and waters flow. That was only eight winters before [now] and they are chasing us now.”

Listen: After one killing expedition, a reporter wrote: “Numberless scalps attest to their [i.e., the vigilantes’] prowess.”  Another wrote: “Nothing short of a war of extermination would seem to be practical, however cruel this may appear, in order to rid the country of such intolerable and dangerous pests in human form.” … In May, the citizens of Shasta raised money to pay for Indian scalps. On June 18, at Shelter Cove a posse of 15 men attacked a Sinkyone village as they slept. After all the men and women were killed, the children were put into a stockade for the night. But during the night a posse member “cut the throats of most of the children.”  (1861)

Listen: “On July 26, whites tied two Indians to a tree before shooting and scalping them at Chico.”  (1863)

Listen: “In November, vigilantes slew and scalped at least six Nongatl men near the Van Duzen River.”  (1868)

“I remember a sun dance and two warriors dancing together: One had lost a leg in the Battle of the Hundred Slain and one had lost an eye in the Attacking of the Wagons, so they had only three eyes and three legs between them to dance with.” Sholem Aleichem would smile at this.  

 Listen: “The last known large-scale massacre of California Indian people took place in 1871.” After a steer went missing, four ranchers near the headwaters of Mill Creek tracked some Yanas to a cave and murdered about 30 people right there. The children remained. One rancher reported that he could not bear to kill these children with his 56-calbre Spencer rifle. “It would tear them up so badly,” he said. So, he used his 38-calibre Smith and Wesson revolver. By this time, state and federal funds for the killing campaign were dwindling to a trickle.

You know, David, I found the symbolism of the circle a fascinating part of Indigenous culture. It’s everywhere. In the horizon surrounding us. In the dome of the heavens. In the dances and ceremonies. In the shape of the teepee. So, when their natural life ended and they were forced to live with the Wasichus, in the square houses, they got sick. Black Elk blamed it on geometry. They were missing their circle.

Dee, you’re changing the subject. Makes me think of Sholem Alechem? The circle as a symbol.

Stop, David. I can’t take it anymore. Too many atrocities. Enough. You made your point.  

Okay. But, now, what do you think of when you hear the word “scalping”?

As I said, you’ve made your point.

There’s more, much more. The litany of atrocities is mind-numbing. But you’re right.

This is enough.

Books

• Benjamin Madley, An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846-1873 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016).
• John G. Neihardt, Black Elk Speaks: The Complete Edition (Lincoln: University Nebraska Press, 2014).
• Brian Holloway, Interpreting the Legacy: John Neihardt and Black Elk Speaks (Boulder: University of Colorado Press, 2003). 

***

David R. Topper is a published writer living in Winnipeg, Canada. His work has appeared in Mono, Poetic Sun, Discretionary Love, Academy of theHeart & Mind, and elsewhere. Synchronized Chaos Magazine nominated his poem Seascape with Gulls: My Father’s Last Painting to Sundress Publications as a 2023 Best of the Net. It didn’t win.