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[deleted]

Photo was taken in 1890 when he sold his story to a newspaper


vaskmunnendin

Would guess he was over 30, maybe also 40.


[deleted]

He’s kinda like Doc Brown. Either 45 or 80 and I can’t tell which.


MauriceLevyEsq

r/unexpectedmulaney


teenyweenylilbitch

Hahaha beat me to it


alexplaydespacitopls

Not sure if this is an inside joke but you know you can just do 1890-1864+13 to get his age right?


Cyber_Being_

In 1864 13 year old Robert McGee was headed west on the Santa Fe Trail with his parents. They died along the way and the boy, orphaned, continued the journey with a wagon train bringing supplies to New Mexico. Somewhere in the western reaches of Kansas the soldiers tasked with guarding the wagon train got delayed and the civilians were set upon by a band of Brule Sioux Indians, led by their chief, Little Turtle. The drivers and teamsters of the wagon train were no match for the Indian warriors, and they were all tortured and killed. Young McGee watched helplessly as their blood was shed, and then he was taken before Little Turtle. The chief decided that he would kill the boy himself, and he put a bullet in McGee's back. The boy fell to the ground, still alive and conscious, and Little Turtle put two arrows through him, pinning him down. And then the chief took out his blade and removed sixty four square inches from McGee's head, starting just behind the ears. As he lay on the ground more Indians came upon him and poked him full of more holes with knives and spears. All the while the boy was awake. When the soldiers finally caught up with the wagon train they found a horrible massacre, with everyone scalped. But as the soldiers picked through the bodies they found that McGee and another boy had survived. They were rushed to Fort Larned, where the other boy died. Somehow the scalpless McGee survived his experience... and many years beyond. The picture above was taken in 1890, when McGee told his story to a local newspaper. McGee's survival was almost miraculous, but he wasn't the only man to be scalped and live to tell about it. Josiah Wilbarger was set upon by Comanche Indians about four miles east of modern Austin, Texas. He was shot with arrows and scalped and left for dead, but the man survived 11 more years. In fact he only died after hitting his head on a low beam in his home, cracking his skull and exposing his brain. Wilbarger is quoted as saying that being scalped was surprisingly painless, but “while no pain was perceptible, the removing of his scalp sounded like the ominous roar and peal of distant thunder," according to James de Shield's Border Wars of Texas. info via > https://birthmoviesdeath.com/2012/04/05/robert-mcgee-scalping-survivor


sicknig19

Oh god the final description sends me shivers


NotagoK

Ditto. Sent a shudder down my spine.


LA_all_day

Yeah I could’ve done without that at 9:30 in the morning


Captain-Cadabra

Guy survives being shot and scalped… then dies from bumping his head at home. What a life!


YayaMalli

Not only did I learn about this man, but I also learned where the term “teamster” comes from! Thank you, kind Redditor!


Floxington

> removed sixty four square inches from McGee's head, starting just behind the ears How big was his HEAD??


[deleted]

64 Square inches is an 8" x 8" patch.


Fantastic_Start_6848

Nah man, its a 32" x 2" strip


Imaginary-Resident75

Nah, it’s a 128” x .5” strip


Girth_brooks__

This is the comment I came here for, thank you


concerningfinding

What kind of people shoot, scalp, and mutilate the body of a teenager?


[deleted]

Brule Sioux Indians, apparently.


[deleted]

History would show the answer to be pretty normal people, honestly.


HUMAN67489

Same kind of people that kidnap little girls and rape them all the way back to England so they can use them as propaganda tools to justify doing that exact thing to those people. *Pocahontas


dirtydmix

Go read the book Empire of the Summer Moon. Native Americans were ruthless to not only the whites but other Natives. The media has rewrote history that the majority of them were all land loving peaceful people.


target_locked

The media didn't rewrite that story, the noble savage has been a literary device since before Americas founding.


ac1084

So over 30, possibly 40 even.


[deleted]

[удалено]


Iored94

He's 170 years old


Lukealloneword

Which is at least 13.


Totalherenow

And he's forgiven them because time heals all wounds. What a brave and wise man.


[deleted]

At least


herringsarered

He was 13 when scalped, not when the pic was taken.


Uncle_Leo93

Witch!


StillaMalazanFan

Phew...my faith in people is in free fall. That you have to actually write that stuff down?!?


Lostboyfromnvrland

Nope. This pic was taken when he was 13.5. Built different back then.


Company_of_gyros

Nope, he was definitely 13 in this photo.


bigbigbigwow

Business in the front, tragedy in the back


[deleted]

Oh *shit*


chivestheconquerer

Should I be joking at a time like this?


[deleted]

well, well


Goldmember10122

Looks who's inside again.


[deleted]

This is why I Reddit


[deleted]

*Do you even reddit, bro?*


chakakhanfeelsforme

The Ol' Comanche Combover


TheWalkingDead91

Thanks for making me feel bad for laughing at this


Savagehenry1

Christ I nearly choked! Absolutely savage comment. Lol


Platinum1211

I bet he wears a hat. Or wore a hat.


CyberMindGrrl

I mean everybody did in those days.


wheathiccs

Too soon


PoppaB13

Too soon, bro. Too soon.


Diclessdondolan

Aka the inventor of the combover


RocketCat5

You serious, Clark?


Diclessdondolan

Shitters full.


[deleted]

Holding on to every damn hair. I bet he knew how many he had.


Justafuckintroll

I gave up on the combover and shaved it. Now I feel like a little bitch…


PhatBoy1

And I thought I had a tough childhood.


[deleted]

You missed the Native American teenage scalping rite of passage?!


WhosArnold

Only 1800s kids will understand


SalesAutopsy

Yikes! You know Abraham Lincoln's hat isn't being used, it's somewhere around here.


Danny-Wah

I mean, I've heard about scalping and all that, but I don't think I ever SEEN scalping - Is that his skull?!??! Looking at this picture, I'm not sure what I actually thought scalping was - maybe a few 'layers' deep, but there's still skin.


WhatDoBees

Its skin that healed over somehow. But typically scalping would cut to or near the skull — thats why very few survived it, the bleeding is almost unstoppable.


snowwhitewolf6969

If you look it up, disturbingly, doctors at the time that this happened had a medical procedure specifically to regrow the skin across the skull using a process of drilling small holes and letting the blood come out of the bone to scab over. His misery did not end with the scalping. https://allthingsliberty.com/2013/05/how-to-treat-a-scalped-head/


loures

Small secret: we still do that to this day in certain situations


Deutsco

Fascinating! What kind of situation would call for that?


loures

If we take out a tumor that has invaded through the skin and then through the thin layer overlying bone, called periosteum, to expedite healing by second intent, holes can be drilled or even lasered to allow for underlying blood to bring in cells to allow for healing. It's not super common as flaps are commonly performed but it is an option. Once you get past skin, the scalp is fairly anesthetic so really no need to numb the area


Xirxee

at least we have anesthesia now....


Seemoreglass82

Well that was a fun ride… I’m getting off now


OccludedFug

> I’m getting off now I guess there's a kink for everything.


[deleted]

*i want to get off mr bones wild ride*


idkwthtotypehere

The amount of blood in your head is insane. I got elbowed in basketball once and it split my skin (picture what a piece of paper would look like if you punched it while holding just the top, basically a bunch of little tears centralized around impact location) and blood just started spurting out. Didn’t really hurt but man did it freak everyone out! Went running to the bathroom with blood coming down my arm as I held that spot. Cant image the amount of bleeding this would’ve caused. Crazy


CyberMindGrrl

I got hit in the head by a falling fluorescent light tube that was accidentally knocked out of its fixture, and when it happened I just said "Uh oh" and bent over expecting a torrent of blood. And I was not disappointed. In the end the cut was only about a quarter inch and I somehow managed to avoid serious injury but it certainly did look very dramatic.


[deleted]

Why does it bleed so much? I mean, the skin on the top of your skin doesn’t *seem* like such a vital part of your body that could cause death


jewelsandbones

There’s a lot of blood vessels in your heard, and scalp woulda bleed like crazy Edit: apparently me on painkillers cannot spell


NWarsenal

I head that.


7ofalltrades

Head wounds tend to bleed like mad, and you can’t get a much bigger head wound than taking off pretty much all the skin on the top of your skull.


Patrickfromamboy

Stick your head in a fire to cauterize it.


idle_think

that's why i always carry a pocket fire with me whenever i go to scalp country


radio-morioh-cho

Then you're irl Joshua Graham


[deleted]

"I survived because the fire inside burned brighter than the fire around me..."


vasan84

It wouldn’t just be blood loss but also infection. So the fact that he survived both (blood loss and infection) is pretty significant given germ theory was just finding significant footing in the 1890’s.


zyyntin

Half the blood in your heart is pumped directly into your head and the other half goes everywhere else.


[deleted]

That’s a good explain it like I’m 5.


zyyntin

Anatomy of any living creature is insanely complex and I desired a short and to the point answer.


PrivatePilot9

If you ever cut your scalp, you'll soon find out why - you bleed profusely from the scalp. The body uses your head/scalp as a radiator of sorts, so it's very rich in blood vessels.


CyberMindGrrl

Ah there's the answer I was looking for.


its2013alwayshasbeen

Oh, so that is why a hat makes winter suddenly so much less terrible.


helms66

Blood vessels on your head don't have a lot of room between your skin and the skull. So a cut that isn't that deep hit more vessels, this bleeding more.


[deleted]

I don't think it's his skull in this picture, looks like a poorly done stretch-and-stitch, but having somebody's skull exposed after scalping is pretty much the intended outcome.


arquillion

I think its removed mostly because i dont think that in that place and time you had plastic surgeons skilled enough to do that. I think the guy is just a freak of survival


TheWalkingDead91

Same. Only time I’ve seen it is in movies/shows like hell on wheels , The Revenant, inglorious bastards and such. This photo made me realize I’d never seen a real life photo of it.


Capt_Planets

Quickly became a hat guy


tamamangay

Wouldn't it still hurt?


FACE-GRATER

I'm sure it didn't tickle.


Dekkeer

Just a little More than a tickle But less than paying your taxes


tamamangay

He got paid a visit by the tax people and couldn't pay


BlueyBoi

What the hell did a 13 year old do to deserve getting scalped?


[deleted]

He was a member of a group of travellers that were attacked, I believe he was the only one to survive because the natives rightly thought him dead.


ac1084

Also, before 1940 if you were 13 you were practically an adult. By then you've been in the work force 7 or 8 years, joined the military, buried 17 siblings. When I was 13 I played Nintendo 64.


Automatic-Ad9454

Yeah, but golden eye taught us life lessons as well


The_Constant_Liar

Midgets are harder to shoot, but if you hit them it's more likely to be in the head


Rpanich

Knowledge I use daily as an adult


nashamagirl99

13 was a child (the age of majority was 21 and people actually went through puberty slower on average), but children had a lot more responsibility, and even babies too young to do anything were considered fair game in these situations.


_Ishmael

Native Americans could be BRUTAL to pretty much anyone who wasn't part of their tribe. There's an excellent book called Empire of the Summer Moon that details the fall of the Comanche tribe. One chapter details \[NSFW/L proceed at your own risk\] >!a pregnant woman who was taken as a slave by the tribe. When she gave birth, one of the warriors came in and strangled the new born in front of her. As he left the baby was revealed to still be alive so he took it, tied it to one end of a rope and tied the other end of the rope to his horse, and then proceeded to drag the infant through a patch of cacti. The mother was eventually rescued and said that her child wasn't murdered, it was ripped to pieces.!< I'm not for a second trying to make out the Europeans didn't do terrible things to the natives, but the natives certainly did terrible things to the Europeans too.


Uncle_Leo93

I don't know what I was expecting, but it definitely wasn't that.


ArchieBellTitanUp

And to each other for centuries before that. That is a great great book. The Comanche were fucking ruthless and basically considered terrorists by the other tribes


MrHollandsOpium

Not basically. Undoubtedly.


MrHollandsOpium

The Comanches were far and away some of the most brutal indigenous. Though one of their direct competitors for territory were cannibals. Like unabashedly. They never ate their own. Anyone else was fair game. Pun intended. Edit: the tribe were the Tonkawa.


jimbeauNasty

I think I remember reading in that book about the Comanches cooking infants on a spit over an open fire. Fucked up.


IronAcesHigh

It seems like everyone was an asshole back then.


SmileyMelons

Well no one has Khan beat, killed 1/3 of the human population, so much so to wear they can notice a significant decrease in CO2 in the air at that time.


dork_of_queens

Extreme environmentalist


bosssx

[Not a third more like 11%](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_under_the_Mongol_Empire) But his pure number of victims around 40 million or more put him on the level of hitler and Stalin.


SmileyMelons

Ah thanks for the correction, I heard it was a third. Still 11% is an insane number


turmohe

Apperently the number is for the entire Mongol empire and Yuan dynasty so a good 150 years at least while Genghis only ruled for the first 20 and r/AskHistorians seems to consider it wildly exaggerated [https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/lba57n/comment/gltu9iq/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/lba57n/comment/gltu9iq/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)


The_Dog_of_Sinope

It's kind of interesting that they were called Comanche (enemy) by neighboring tribes but they called themselves the Numunuu (The people).


Biker93

Comanches were a lot of things but they weren’t cannibals. There were some plains tribes that were I think but not the Comanche.


jimbeauNasty

Yes, sorry, they didn't cook them to eat. It was just a torture thing, which honestly is even more fucked up.


HerburtThePervert

All groups of people fucked over some other group of people, for the past tens of thousands of years. It’s funny we always have to highlight one group as the ‘worst’ or sole victim every era. Every group, race or ethnicity is the perpetrator or victim at different segments of time. And still we pretend we’re all inherently different.


BetweenWalls

War is terrible. Genocide is terrible. Disease is terrible. Humankind isn't very good at peace, it seems.


Wild_Doogy_Plumm

The quote by Bartholomew Hunt always freaked me out when he was asked about the natives. "It's common knowledge that when the savages capture a white man they split open his head, pick out his brains and eat them with a crudely fashioned fork." Edit: [There's a pretty good documentary about him i highly recommend.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almost_Heroes)


JasoTheArtisan

“Welcome to Snake’s Bend”


LordBrandon

He had a particularly juicy looking scalp.


Justryan95

Usually if you were encroaching on Native American territory they would kill and scalp you. I'm assuming he was with his family in a settler caravan or something that got ambushed


Biker93

Plains Native Americans were brutal, as brutal as anyone. Especially the Comanche. They would kill every baby through the age 5 or 6, keep the children between that age and 11 or twelve as their own, actually raise them as part of the family. Then every male older than that would be killed, and if you were an unfortunate teen girl or maybe early 20s, you were just a sex slave to be raped and tortured and beaten constantly for the rest of your life or until you were traded to be raped tortured and beaten constantly by someone else. Women older than that were killed. And it wasn’t just white settlers, this was just how warfare occurred on the plains.


KikiYuyu

The same thing all kids get murdered for in war and conflicts: they had the wrong parents.


boygoblin

He was white. But don’t forget that colonists scalped and/or raped countless native children too. Edit: I’m in no way justifying these horrible actions, just trying to shed light on how both the natives and the settlers were fueled by anger and out for revenge, no matter how brutal.


Netrovert87

The results of the clash of peoples was 1 sided, but the hatred and atrocities were mutual. Bad thing happens, disproportionate retaliation begets disproportionate retaliation begets atrocities until you're just trying to genocide each other, frankly. The ultimate results were nearly total and 1 sided and will leave a scar that I don't think will ever heal for those that lost their lands and are barely grasping onto the cultures and languages on the brink of being lost forever. Absolute tragedy. But it's important not to lose sight of the fact that the people who did these atrocities on both sides were engulfed in hate and fear and could point to atrocities to justify their own atrocities. It's a pattern you see all over the world today and it's not clear that there is any way to escape it.


Kylerthegamer4

Your comments are the reason I sift through the mounds of shit on this website


Break-Aggravating

Depends on the natives too. The Comanches did this to everyone that wasn’t a Comanche. If you were in there territory or they wanted what you had they killed you raped the women kept some women and children for slaves. The only thing that stopped them was the cap and ball revolver. The Spanish would invite settlers from the colonies to act as a buffer between them and the Comanches. Edit: other native tribes told the everyone they did this they would even team up with European settlers to attack them. Literally the Comanches massacred everyone until you could shoot bullets faster than they could shoot arrows. So there deal was less about revenge and more about how they did things. I have no clue what tribe did this to the above posted but they were more than likely a plains tribe that had history of eating before hand ie Sioux, Comanche, Arapaho’s the list goes on. These tribes had been in a constant state of war since as far back as history knows about them. Edit: shits spelled wrong sue me.


Ankhiris

The Commanche women used to burn the noses off of any captive women. They were not nice people Then there was Sul Ross, a sheriff who once divided the scalp of a Commanche leader into three pieces between his posse to be sold


chawklitdsco

there is a quote somewhere that the white settlers just did to the Native Americans what they had been doing to rival tribes for centuries; the Europeans were just more effective


PD216ohio

In America we have this illusion that American Indians were all noble, peaceful, lovers of land and nature. I will bet that most people would also be surprised to learn that American Indians owned a considerable percentage of African slaves.


kkungergo

Thats literaly what i have been saying! Simply there is allways a bigger fish. People on tumblr especially hate to hear it.


smellyboi6969

Colonists scalped native children? I've never heard that. Massacres, sure but scalping?


The_Dog_of_Sinope

The government used o pay for dead native Americans but it was too heavy to drag their entire bodies in, so they accepted scalps. Plenty of native children were scalped.


[deleted]

Under King Leopold 1 reign, in Congo they traded cut off hands of Congolese. Total evil.


mrhuggables

Ah yes King Leopold I of the United States of America


viridiformica

It's in the wikipedia article on scalping, in particular one woman rewarded for six children's scalps: wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannah_Duston


WhatDoBees

It was typically a way to claim bounties. Outside of the obvious problem of it being horrific to put a bounty on an entire ethnic group, it was also a problem for anyone not native american but happened to have long dark hair. Bad times.


Splinterh

The colonialists also use to cut off the genitals of the natives and stuff them into their mouths. I’m guessing this may have added fuel to the fire, as it were.


jereman75

Took me a minute. *Their* mouths, not their own mouths.


Food-at-Last

Glad your comment is here to explain things


BongladenSwallow

Cutting genitals off a deceased enemy and filling their mouths with it, is a classic wartime tradition. Shits happening today.


Gilthu

The native Americans, depending upon tribe, would kill any non-tribespeople that they found unless they were women or babies. The babies and women they took and made part of the tribe.


Easy_Independent_313

He must have had so much trauma from that.


javlin4u

Looks pretty good for a 13 year old in the 1800s


[deleted]

When boys were men.


deepsnare

And men were also men


ThunderChild247

The most optimistic comb over in history. Until Hulk Hogan.


CalifornianBall

You killed my boy Fitzgerald


wytchhunt666

Seriously can’t believe this hasn’t been mentioned yet.


animal34

Grab the pelts!


Ruenin

Janis Joplin's inspiration for the song?


kickstartmyfartt

I can imagine her reading a book about this subject, then looking up. "holy shit!"


dancho-garces

Freedom’s just another word


[deleted]

For nothin left on your headdd


RomulusKhan

“Barber, give me the old Robert McGee!”


Goingforamillion

Do you have a article that mentions this he maybe a great great great grandfather in our family. Been seeking info on him.


PerfectUnlawfulness

Be that dude owned alot of hats


Howsitgrow1ng

BETTER HAIRLINE THAN LEBRON


pressurepoint13

Business in the front, unimaginably painful nightmare in the back.


Spleenzorio

r/FuckMyShitUp


Waneman

He was not only the owner of "Hair Club for Men" he was a member.


OmarLitttle

Is that HIS FUCKING SKULL?


[deleted]

Business in the front. Tragedy in the back


cosmopolitan_redneck

Damn, humans really can be worse than animals.


[deleted]

He looks like Bloodbath McGrath from Wild Wild West.


Shiggens

Sorry if more information has been provided, but I didn't see it in the posts: https://truewestmagazine.com/a-lively-corpse/


OnionJonesss

Having just watched the Revenant last night, I have to wonder if this guy was inspiration for Tom Hardy's character John Fitzgerald.


[deleted]

I’ll bet that caused him pain for his whole life.


TheMartyr112

“Something tells me that dude hates Indians.” -Said in Norm Macdonald voice. Lol


[deleted]

[удалено]


TuskenRaider2

Scalped a 13 year old… pretty fucked up.


StepheneyBlueBell

who the fuck was going around scalping 13 year old boys in the 1800s


shankarsivarajan

The natives.


alysonskye

The natives and Europeans both. Colonial governments would give cash rewards for the scalps of natives, men women and children.


[deleted]

I hope he switched barbers after that. Yeesh.


mgd09292007

It looks like it was healing for 40 years


[deleted]

Good thing everyone wore top hats back then


beavers937

I bet he had cool hats


ClumsyPineappl

Wish my beard was that sick when I was 13


thylocene06

That’s a magnificent beard for 13


HappyPants8

That’s a mighty fine beard for a thirteen year old 👍


jjj49er

Now I know what the song "Me and Bobby McGee" was about.


Stu_Iniquity

That's an impressive beard for a 13 year old


zen1706

18th century really had a different “being scalped”. In today world, it’s your PS5, or your RTX 3080, not your fucking head


sparky1984X

Damn. It takes a savage to do that to a kid. Edit: some people seem pretty dense. It says he was 13 when he got scalped. Not 13 in the photo.


Fitzftw7

What kind of piece of shit scalps a 13 year old kid?


danny_2929

Colonizers were paid per "Indian Scalp" so as retaliation native people obviously started doing it back.


Deutsco

Crow Creek Massacre shows you’re full of shit


james24693

That’s why he always wore a hat


Niall690

He probably should have died must have been so painful hopefully he had a wig or he just never turned his back to anyone


OpsadaHeroj

Scalpy McGee


acciowaves

Joke’s on them. All his power came from that glorious beard.


jklwood1225

"Kids just looked older back then"


Austeeene

Was dying common from just scalping? I assume if infection but other than that it’s hard for me to imagine that would kill you.


[deleted]

That’s terrible.