Upstander Project created the bounty rewards archive as a public learning and teaching resource to accompany the Bounty film project. The database includes 2,438 entries and represents several years of extensive archival and documentary research into scalp bounty acts and claims made by colonial governments and settlers in the northeastern Dawnland (later called New England), between 1675-1765.
In this online archive we present evidence about land and cash bounties granted to thousands of soldiers, militias and settler colonists (and/or their heirs), who participated in, and/or profited from, wars and bounty expeditions, resulting in scalping, killing, capturing and/or enslaving thousands of Indigenous children, women, and men.
More than £9,000 (millions of dollars in today’s U.S. currency) was paid from public treasuries of the colonial governments of Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Nova Scotia, and hundreds of thousands of acres of land were granted to thousands of individuals and groups who hunted Indigenous peoples and then petitioned to found settler towns. Use the search box below to find the names of townships, killers, captors, claimants, heirs, militias and soldiers. You can also search by the year of the attack.
Due to the limitations of archival records from this time period, we cannot say with certainty in all cases which individuals actually scalped/captured Indigenous peoples and which participated without scalping or capturing yet still profited from the violence. Wherever possible, specific information, citations and sources are included in the Award Note and Source fields. This archive also excludes any bounty claims made in colonies or states outside the Dawnland (see above for regions included), as well as bounties claimed after the 6th Anglo-Abenaki aka French and Indian War (1754-1763).