Morbid Fact Du Jour for July 5, 2016

Today’s Shrunken Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

The Shuar, a tribe living in the tropical rainforest of the Andes and the Amazonian lowlands in Ecuador and Peru, shrunk heads by removing the dead man’s skull, and all the flesh and muscle from the skin, before filling it repeatedly with hot pebbles and sand until it was only a little larger than a man’s fist. To the Shuar, these practicalities served to harness the extraordinary power of their victim’s soul and were part of complex ceremonies that lasted many years.

However, in the 1880s, as the trade in rubber and cinchona bark, which provides the active ingredient for the anti-malarial drug quinine, spread into Ecuador, more European settler communities came to the area. The settlers exchanged cloth, machetes, steel lance heads and shotguns with the native Shuar people, in return for local pigs, deer, salt and shrunken heads. But when the settlers began to keep their own cattle, and so eat their own beef, the demand for Shuar pigs and deer declined, and eventually it was only the shrunken heads, or else the Shuar’s own labour, that settlers were interested in. The Shuar who wanted goods like cloth and machetes could trade with local missionaries who offered these things more cheaply than commercial traders, but the missionaries would never sell guns. This meant that the only way to get a gun was to sell a head, and so the ‘heads for guns’ trade became established in South America.

When visitors come to see the shrunken head collection at the Pitt Rivers Museum, what they are really seeing is a story of the white man’s gun. Guns not only provided an economic incentive for the Shuar raiders, they also proved to be the best means for taking heads in the first place. Guns and steel knives were far more efficient weapons for head-taking than spears made from wood and stone, and they gave the Shuar a distinct advantage during headhunting raids. Europeans and Americans bought heads, and they supplied the equipment the Shuar needed to take heads quickly and in greater numbers. Guns were used to take heads, which were, in turn, exchanged for more guns. Well into the twentieth century it was commonly acknowledged that the price of one shrunken head was one gun. There is the story of a Shuar leader who traded some heads for guns, promptly used the guns to ambush another Shuar war party, and used those heads to trade for more guns.

Culled from: Severed: A History of Heads Lost and Heads Found

What an absolutely shameful example of capitalism run amok!  And yet… can you blame them?  What delightful trinkets!

 

Punishment at Joliet Prison, 1895

Among the common punishments in American prisons in the 19th century was restraint. In this example, the prisoner was chained by handcuffs to a prison door. How high up the hands were shackled and how long he was made to stand was determined by the offense. Talking and breaking lockstep were among the infractions that resulted in various forms of restraint or isolation. This artistically composed photograph was issued by Illinois’ Joliet prison in 1895 to document the advanced forms of the criminal justice system practiced at the institution.

Culled from: Deadly Intent: Crime and Punishment Photographs from the Burns Archive

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