Headhunting
Headhunting refers to the practice of removing and preserving a person's head, historically linked to various cultural, religious, and military rituals across the globe. It has roots in beliefs that the head contains the "soul matter" or essence of life, and was often seen as a means to display strength, enhance fertility, and reinforce social hierarchies among Indigenous communities. The act has been documented from prehistoric times in regions such as Oceania, Southeast Asia, Mesoamerica, and parts of Europe, with early practitioners including Celtic Britons and the Dyak people of Borneo. Headhunting served purposes ranging from avenging murders to intimidating enemies during conflicts.
While the practice largely declined with the spread of monotheistic religions in the 19th century, references to headhunting can still be found in modern contexts, where it has been used for shock value in warfare or as a form of terror, particularly by extremist groups. In contemporary times, headhunting is more associated with acts of violence perpetrated against individuals rather than traditional communal rituals. The legacy of headhunting reflects complex cultural histories and the transformation of ancient practices into modern terror tactics, illuminating how such rituals have evolved or diminished over time.
Headhunting
Headhunting is the act of removing, then preserving, a person’s head. It was practiced as a religious ceremonial ritual and as a means to reinforce hierarchical relationships within and between Indigenous groups and communities. Anthropologists uncovered headhunting for religious or military reasons from prehistoric times all around the world. One theory suggests headhunting developed from cannibalism. Polytheistic animistic beliefs may have motivated headhunting cults. The "soul matter," or essence of life, was believed to reside in the head. Removing it gave strength to the headhunter. Some of the early headhunters included Celtic Britons and Celtic peoples, animists in India and Myanmar (formerly Burma), and the Dyak people of Borneo. Headhunting waned when monotheism became popular. Preachers and missionaries denounced headhunting as they spread Christianity. Headhunting was also a means of demonstrating military prowess over enemies. It was useful for its shock value to mortify and demoralize enemies. It is still used for this purpose in the twenty-first century.
Background
One of the earliest incidents of headhunting is recorded in the Christian Bible’s Book of I Samuel 17:51: "David ran and stood over him. He took hold of the Philistine’s sword and drew it from the sheath. After he killed him, he cut off his head with the sword. When the Philistines saw that their hero was dead, they turned and ran." Anthropologists and other scholars suggest headhunting was one among several rituals that may also have included human sacrifice, slavery, and cannibalism. They found the act of headhunting in Oceania, Southeast Asia, West and Central Africa, West Germanic areas, Mesoamerica through North America, Hawaii, and west to the Pacific Islands, including New Guinea. Headhunting was not uncommon until the nineteenth century in Montenegro, Croatia, Herzegovina, Ireland, and parts of Scotland.
Animists were polytheists who believed living and inanimate objects possess souls or spirits; animals, plants, and people have a spiritual essence. The head is the source of all life. Indigenous people of Myanmar beheaded enemies, believing the power and soul matter of their enemies were transferred to them. Removing the head allowed enemies to capture "soul matter." Headhunting ensured soil fertility, enhanced warriors’ strength, and provided communal protection for Dayaks of Borneo, who held a festival to honor the new heads. Headhunting was a "blood credit" to avenge a murder. Dowries could be paid with heads because they demonstrated the man was brave and capable of protecting his family. Headhunting enemies scared others off, letting the Dayak expand their territories. Headhunting was abandoned in 1874.
China’s early monarchy conscripted unfree labor that earned promotions and bonuses collecting heads of enemies. Qin soldiers frightened their enemies by carrying the heads on full display, hanging around their waists into battles to demoralize enemy armies. In the battles between Japan and Korea in the sixteenth century, Japanese chroniclers reported that their soldiers engaged in headhunting campaigns, yielding more than 185,000 Korean heads and 30,000 heads from men, women, and children.
The explorer Michael Rockefeller is believed to have lost his head to an Indigenous group in New Guinea in 1961. The Indonesian government sanctioned headhunting in the 1960s to scare out the communist-sympathizing Chinese migrants. Headhunting Tribes in the Amazon region shrunk heads to capture the enemies’ spirits. They compelled the dead to serve the victors, and shrinking the heads prevented the dead from taking revenge. Shrunken heads were being sold and traded into the 1930s.
Headhunting Today
During World War II, according to military historians, the Allies encouraged the Borneo to behead Japanese invaders. A shrunken head of a Jewish or Polish captive in the Buchenwald concentration camp was presented as evidence in the Nuremberg Trials of Nazi war criminals. The commandant of Buchenwald gave a shrunken head to his wife as a trophy, a token of the fine work they were doing committing mass murder. Headhunting for religious and military purposes barely exists in the twenty-first century. Beheadings take place as a means of punishment and for shock value against specific individuals rather than communities. These include criminals, political prisoners, military enemies, and as a means to encourage forced conversions.
Philippine terrorists beheaded kidnapped captives to spread fear among Catholic civilians and government officials. In 2016, they took a Canadian and a Norwegian prisoner and sent their heads to their government. Headhunting is a favorite means of instilling fear of Mexican drug cartels. In 2014, forty-nine headless bodies were left on a highway to terrorize police and locals into cooperating with the cartels.
In the early twenty-first century, news reports and social media platforms were replete with stories and images of headhunting by ISIS (the Islamic State) terrorists operating in Syria and Iraq. ISIS added a twist to headhunting. Their executioners beheaded captives while still alive, videoed the ghastly events, and posted them on social media. Islamic terrorists did this to Jewish journalist Daniel Pearl in 2002. Their modern-day take on headhunting became a "brand" for them, according to one analyst, a visceral symbolism to strike fear in Westerners and ISIS enemy combatants. In one incident, ISIS shared images of more than fifty heads spiked on fence posts. What separates all modern-day headhunters from Indigenous headhunters living in remote villages is the means of war: automatic weapons versus spears and using social media to spread fear and shock and mortify and demoralize their enemies.
Bibliography
Arhem, Kaj, and Guido Sprenger. Animism in Southeast Asia. Routledge, 2016.
Douglas, Lawrence. “The Shrunken Head of Buchenwald: Icons of Atrocity at Nuremberg.” Representations, no. 63, 1998, pp. 39–64, doi.org/10.2307/2902917. Accessed 28 Nov. 2024.
Feldman, George Franklin. Cannibalism, Headhunting and Human Sacrifice in North America: A History Forgotten. Alan C. Hood & Co., 2008.
Gillies, Rob, and Jim Gomez. "Philippine Police Examining If Head Is from Canadian Hostage." The Washington Post, 13 June 2016, www.washingtonpost.com/world/philippine-authorities-say-severed-head-is-from-canadian-hostage/2016/06/13/ad60b28a-3196-11e6-95c0-2a6873031302‗story.html. Accessed 28 Nov. 2024.
Heimann, Judith M., and Susan Ericksen. The Airmen and the Headhunters: A True Story of Lost Soldiers, Heroic Tribesmen and the Unlikeliest Rescue of World War II. Tantor Media Inc, 2014.
Pappone, Anthony. "The Last Head Hunters, Konyak Tribe Warrior." Behance, 6 April 2013, www.behance.net/gallery/8009669/the-last-head-hunters-konyak-tribe-warrior. Accessed 28 Nov. 2024.
Zech, Steven T., and Zane Kelly. "Off with Their Heads: The Islamic State and Civilian Beheadings." Journal of Terrorism Research, University of St. Andrews, 2015. doi.org/http://doi.org/10.15664/jtr.1157. Accessed 28 Nov. 2024.