History has never been gentle. In fact, at times, it was completely brutal. There were wars, famines, plagues, and such.
And then there were times when people endured incredibly horrible punishments in life, unbelievable in many cases. What’s even harder to grasp is that some individuals lived through ordeals most of us couldn’t imagine.
Take scalping. Most people associate it with frontier warfare and a hard, painful death—the old picture of “Indians” scalping “settlers.” But very few realize that some victims actually survived it.
One case was a man named Herman Ganzio. In 1876, he told The Michigan Argus that he remembered a “red-hot, stinging pain” as attackers pulled at his scalp. He woke up later to find it still partially attached. Yes, he lived to tell about it—and his hair eventually grew back. There are other accounts, too, including Robert McGee and Josiah Wilbarger. Both survived despite staggering blood loss and additional wounds. Their stories became cautionary tales passed from town to town.
Then there was tarring and feathering. I can’t even imagine. It was a punishment meant more for humiliation than death. During the American Revolution, it was used on suspected Loyalists, who were often dragged out as a public spectacle.
Years later, Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormon Church, left a chilling description of his own assault in 1832. He wrote of being held down as his clothes were torn away. The attackers smeared hot tar across his skin until he looked “as though… covered with blood.” Then came the feathers. His friends spent the entire night scraping it off.
Sometimes the cruelty came from the state itself. Willie Francis, sentenced to die in Louisiana in 1946, lived through a botched electric-chair execution. He later described the sensation as “a hundred thousand needles and pins.” His lawyers argued that a second attempt was unconstitutional, but the courts disagreed. He was executed the following year. Can you imagine the mental pain and suffering he must have lived with during that year?
And then there were punishments whose purpose was simple terror. There was, and in some places still is, flogging and waterboarding, among many others. Survivors spoke of suffocation, salt rubbed into wounds, and days spent in dark confinement.
These stories are hard to read. But I bring them up because they remind us that, in some ways, our society has progressed beyond such things. Despite how harsh this world can feel at times, humanity has learned a great deal.
More than anything, this is a reminder of how important it is never to go back.
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“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
— George Santayana
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“Of all the tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.”
— C.S. Lewis
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“Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.”
— H.G. Wells
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“Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are.”
— Benjamin Franklin
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