Head hunter

This is about the aborigine tribes. For other uses, see Head hunter (disambiguation).

Head hunter is a term used to describe various African and South American tribes that supposedly decapitated their enemies and stuck the disembodied heads on pikes. It is a generic and stereotypical view, and often used in cartoons and comedy films.

Headhunting among the Taiwanese aborigines was suppressed during the Japanese occupation of Taiwan about 1930. Headhunting was also suppressed among the Igorots about the same time by the US authorities in the Philippines. Headhunting and piracy were also fought during the dynasty of James Brooke and his descendants in Sarawak on the island of Borneo, in the hundred years before World War II. It is believed that a Rockefeller scion was taken by headhunters in Irian Jaya as recently as 1961. Among these groups headhunting was an act of manhood; in the remote areas the taken heads are correspondingly prized. The South American tribe Jivaro also practiced Head hunting in order to shrink the heads and keep them for religious purpose and then for selling it to outsiders, notably tourists.