"Research in this volume was sponsored by the Society of Colonial Wars Fellowship in memory of Kenneth R. LaVoy Jr."-- Title page verso
Bibliographic Note:
Includes bibliographical references and index
Contents:
Introduction. Stories written on the body -- Pownced, pricked, or paynted : colonial interpretations, indigenous tattoos -- The "ill effects of it" : reading and rewriting the cross-cultural tattoo -- Pricing the part : economies of violence and stories of scalps -- Playing possum : scalping survivors and embodied memories -- Epilogue. Narrative legacies and settler appropriations
Summary:
"Studying the tattoos and scalping scars on early American bodies makes visible a world of signs: stories of alliance, alienation, conflict, and commodification. Body modifications in early America have often been dismissed as curiosities, yet the widely circulated stories and images of marked individuals-as this book demonstrates-were key to understanding the hopes and fears driving cultural boundary crossing in early America"-- Provided by publisher