Earlier this year, Santa Fe Museum of Spanish Colonial Art published a handsome, heavily illustrated book: Converging Streams, Art of the Hispanic and Native American Southwest. It focuses on the borrowing by peoples of a single aspect of culture.

From a long study of New Mexico's history, I can recall numerous instances in which Indians and Hispanics assimilated cultural elements from each another.

My reading of Converging Streams brought to mind an odd example that I discovered several years ago. It involved the performance of an Indian-style scalp dance among the people of Manzano, a Hispanic village on the east slope of the Manzano Mountains. The event apparently occurred sometime in the 1860s.

As a result of a winter Apache raid in the area, some men of the community had organized a pursuit. Overtaking the Native Americans in the wild Sierra Oscura, the next range to the south, they fought a sharp battle, during which they killed a number of the offenders.

The Manzaneños then whipped out knives and quickly lifted the top-knots of their fallen enemies. These trophies, dripping blood in the snow, were then tied to the leather strings of each man's saddle.

Three days later, the party rode into Manzano. The people rejoiced and the partially dried scalps were attached to a long pole to be paraded through the village.

According to the account, a special dance was held that night, "in the manner of the Pueblo Indian scalp ceremony."

Within their villages, the Pueblos maintained sacred scalp societies, tied to ancient myths and integrated into religious rituals. The dried scalps were usually kept in a kiva alongside other ceremonial objects.

At Santa Clara Pueblo, for instance, a formal Women's Scalp Society existed as a kind of "women's auxiliary" for the Men's War Society. However, variations in practice occurred from one village to another.

A brief description of the return of warriors carrying fresh scalps comes from Acoma. The men would arrive singing and would climb the steep trail to the summit. At the top, behind the 17th-century mission church, women waited to greet them. The scalps were carried on a pole.

In the early colonial period, when the Pueblos often engaged in fighting among themselves, they did not hesitate to scalp one another.

Gen. Diego de Vargas, while putting down an uprising at San Ildefonso in 1694, wrote in his journal that one of his own Pueblo allies scalped a fallen Pueblo rival. Then, the victor and his companions in celebration danced and sang war songs around the victim's body.

The situation at Isleta is worth a glance because, in all likelihood, it was the source from which Hispanic Manzano, located not far beyond the mountains, borrowed its scalping ritual.

Sometime in the mid-19th century, a party of Americans camped overnight on Isleta's outskirts. The party was awakened at a late hour by a clamorous shouting, firing of guns and the ringing of bells from the village.

Several campers volunteered to go learn what all the noise was about. Entering the pueblo, they were surprised to see the streets and plaza lit up. People rushed about "fantastically dressed," all dancing and singing with great glee.

Three of the participants carried long lances, from which dangled the scalps of Navajo warriors. The Americans were told that a woman and five children of Isleta had been kidnapped by a Navajo band.

With the aid of soldiers, Isletans chased after the culprits, attacked them, freed the captives and brought home the trio of scalps. This had produced the wild and uproarious nighttime celebration.

There are obvious parallels between the scalp ceremonies here and at Manzano, even though the particulars of both are fairly thin. The one thing that can be said with certainty is that the group witnessed and then adopted elements of the Pueblo scalp ritual, and Hispanicized it in the process.

The subject represents one more intriguing — albeit shadowy — fragment of New Mexican folk culture.

Historian Marc Simmons is author of numerous books on New Mexico and the Southwest. His column appears Saturdays.