Scalping

Somewhere on the plains of western Kansas in the summer of 1864, a wagon train was carrying supplies to Fort Union, New Mexico. As they stopped for an evening meal, they were attacked by a group from the Brule Sioux Indians allegedly led by Chief Little Turtle himself. The soldiers charged with protecting the wagon train had been held up and consequently the wagon teamsters were entirely unprepared for such an attack. Every member of the caravan was brutalized and executed in various grisly ways. When a government scouting party found them, they discovered that Robert McGee, a 13 year old driver, had miraculously survived. He was whisked off to an infirmary where he gradually recovered and became one of the few people in history to have survived being scalped.

32 years later, in an effort to gain a pension, McGee waxed lyrical about the event to the Marshall County Democrat. He claimed that Chief Little Turtle “in a transport of fiendishness” had “knocked (him) to the ground by one blow of his tomahawk… took (his) own pistol and shot him…”, fired two arrows into his back and “others of the band in passing, cut him with their knives and poked holes in him”.
And then he was scalped. He even claimed that he later returned to fight against the Brule Sioux and in a strange coincidence bumped into Little Turtle dead on the battlefield and shot him dead.

Anyway, the point is the guy survived having his scalp cut off, grew a spectacular beard in recompense, and consequently looked like this.


Note: One of the other members of the exclusive “I’ve been Scalped” club, Josiah P. Wilbarger (scalped 1833), said it felt like hearing distant thunder.
Think about that.