Headhunters

Claire, like myself, had many jobs, and like me, couldn’t talk about most of them. But for a period of time she was a recruiter — she found “the right people for the right job.” Like everything she did, she was very good at it. In fact management wanted her to stay in that position permanently…. but that’s another story. 

The reason that I mentioned it was because in that position she was referred to as a “headhunter.” That and the fact that I saw a program on headhunters on TV the other night convinced me that the topic for today should be — headhunters. 

As opposed to Claire’s job, the term headhunter usually conjures up the practice of cutting off an enemy’s head and keeping it — and that’s been going on since the Stone Age.

Who came up with the brilliant idea to cut off their enemy’s head and keep it? According to the program I watched, headhunting might be barbaric, but there was (maybe) a good reason for doing it. Aboriginal Australians and tribes such as the Dayak in Borneo believed that the head contained the victim’s spirit or soul. They believed that taking the head took the essence of a person’s soul as well as his strength.

During the Qin Dynasty, Chinese soldiers carried the heads of conquered enemies into battle to frighten their foes. The heads also served as proof of their kills, which enabled the soldiers to be paid.

At the end of the TV program, the preview of the next episode indicated that headhunting wasn’t always associated with war — the ancient Celts incorporated it into fertility rites and other ritualistic practices. Unfortunately, I think I missed that next episode. 

It turns out that once you’ve got the head, it doesn’t take long for it to begin to decompose — that’s a problem for headhunters. Some headhunters kept only the skull — they cleaned and boiled the head to remove all the tissue and brain matter. Some cooked and ate parts of the head, and others preserved the heads — some of which are still in existence today.
In New Zealand, Maori headhunters removed the flesh from the skulls of their enemies, then smoked and dried it. That process preserved distinctive tribal tattoos, and made it possible to identify the deceased. Some of those heads were eventually sold to Europeans for private collections or museums.

Some of the best-preserved heads come from the Jivaro tribe of South America. These are shrunken heads — known as tsantsa. (The dictionary defines tsantsa as a shrunken head, specifically one prepared by a Jivaro Indian.) They are unique among headhunting trophies because of the way the Jivaro preserved them.
After killing and decapitating an enemy, the Jivaro cut and peeled the skin from the skull in one piece and discarded the skull. Then they turned the skin inside out and scraped it to remove the tissue. the skin was then boiled for as long as two hours to shrink it to about one-third its original size. After sewing the eyes closed and skewering the mouth shut, the Jivaro filled the skin with hot rocks, being careful not to burn it, and molded the skin as it cooled so it retained its features. Finally, they removed the rocks, filled the skin with hot sand, and finished the process with a smoking technique. What resulted was a small, hard, dark mass that was recognizable as a human head. I’m not sure about today, but a number of years ago, the Jivaro sold replicas of tsantsas to tourists. A friend of mine had one  — not sure if he still does.

There is evidence that some Allied soldiers took skulls as trophies and souvenirs during World War II, and there are at least rumors of similar practices during the Vietnam War. In 2001, the Borneo Dayaks practiced headhunting during conflicts with another ethnic group, the Madurese. Even today, reports of headhunting still surface occasionally, so if you find yourself in some remote location, it might be wise to “keep your head about you.”
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