Preface, introduction and Endnotes

2008, Alan C. Hood & Co, Inc, Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, pages xi-xxi, 199-225

A reading of the front and back matter of George Franklin Feldman’s account of our forgotten history, we find the inspiration of his wide-ranging work in a trip in the American Southwest he took alongside a female college student, who insisted—and got her professor to back her up—that American Indians never engaged in head hunting. I was immediately reminded of Inca skulls caps cleaned and used as drinking vessels by their Indian enemies and of head-shrinking Amazonian tribesmen.

He marks Keeley’s War Before Civilization as an inspiration, and does not suffer the same roadblocks Keeley did in his investigation. Indeed, Mister Feldman does not deal with bizarre little known episodes but with well known Indian practices. In the footnotes one finds nice tidbits, such as the Comanche rules for gang raping white females captured in raids.

Feldman demonstrates a palpable gusto for “the underside of our history” and is far from averse to bringing to light ancient hatreds that were supposedly not held by the innocent, vegetarian, noble, savages of modern liberal myth. He does border—in my opinion—on appeasement—perhaps hoping for broad distribution of his book, when he makes certain to remind the reader what savages the Puritans were and that Europeans were burning Jews by the thousands before their discovery of North America. He—alone among writers I am familiar with—proposes that the European invader actually ended one of the longest wars in human history, by ending the hitherto endless tribal warfare that had made aboriginal North America a place where one in three men, women and children died a violent death, as evidenced by arrowheads imbedded in spinal columns and other grisly—and profuse—archaeological evidence.

Specifically, the author points out that the area of the North Great Plains, where The Liver-Eater plied his deadly trade, were the scenes of tribal exterminations identical in conduct to those described by Del Gue in his controversial account of Liver-Eating Johnson’s life. Prior to the main text the author reminds the reader that Indians and Europeans were “equally matched in barbarity,” a statement that proved correct for hundreds of years.

I will be using the 13 savage profiles presented within Cannibalism, Headhunting and Human Sacrifice in North America to support my various ancient combat investigations. This is a quick, entertaining read. I know I can read the entire book in an afternoon. But, lacking an afternoon, I shall content myself with reading a chapter at a time on the bus.