Scalping Outside the Dawnland

In Pennsylvania … it was the frontiersmen who issued the first clear call for a scalp bounty. Just after the devastating Indian raid on Lancaster and Berks counties, in November, 1755, at a public meeting held to plan defense, they demanded such a bounty. [261]

Thereafter, the promise of money for the scalps of Indigenous people, paid by Pennsylvania’s government and private individuals, became a major incentive for settlers.

Had it not been for the handsome rewards offered for scalps by the white men’s governments, the vindictive and gruesome practice might never have spread. It did spread, however, over most of the United States….

Precisely in the age of the scalp bounty, the elimination of the Indian problem came to mean the elimination of the Indian. [262]

At the end of 1755, just weeks after expiration of payment for scalps of Penobscot people under the Phips Proclamation, Massachusetts Governor William Shirley wrote to Sir Thomas Robinson, “… one of his Majesty’s principal Secretaries of State,” about “the present Devastations made … by the Indians within the Province of Pensilvania, under [Deputy Governor Robert Hunter Morris’s] Government.” [263] Seemingly bragging, he underscored that Massachusetts had established a very different

system of treating the Indians from that of Pensilvania : before I left the Government War was Declar’d against all the Eastern Indians except the Penobscots, and since I left it, they sent to demand of the Penobscots to bring their Old Men, Women and Children into the Province, there to remain, during the War with the Indians, as Hostages for their fidelity, and on their Refusal to do it, the Government hath Declar’d Warr against them : and then at a time when a fifth part of the Province’s fighting Men were Engag’d in other parts of the Kings Service. [264]

Soon thereafter the “[deputy] governor of Pennsylvania, Robert Hunter Morris, became convinced that the only way to fight Indians was to seek out and destroy their towns,” [265] and the Pennsylvania Assembly met. Their deliberations on February 20, 1756, help us understand the historical context.

Through the winter of 1755-56, Indian attacks along the frontier and negotiations to regain their allegiance took place simultaneously. The Indians were dependent on the white man, and had to choose between the French and English; hence in the face of growing French power, their associations with the English became more and more difficult… Governor Morris sought to confront increasing Delaware hostility with strong military force.… [266]

Morris’s Councilor James Hamilton helped convince the Governor that large scalp bounties “were the only way to clear our Frontiers of … Savages, & ... infinitely cheapest in the end.” Hamilton later became Lieutenant Governor and Superintendent of Indian Affairs at Fort Detroit, Province of Quebec, from 1775 to about 1782. During the Revolution, Hamilton served the British and became known as the “hair buying general” for his alleged monetization of scalp bounties against Native and continental forces.

On April 14, 1756, Morris declared war through a Proclamation targeting the Delaware Tribe, though “friendly Indians” were exempted. In it the deputy governor appropriated a remarkable amount of money, £60,000, and appointed a commission to figure out how the money would be spent. The Proclamation was printed in Philadelphia by “B. Franklin and D. Hall.” That would be Benjamin Franklin and David Hall, printers and business partners.

Whereas the Delaware Tribe of Indians, and others in Confederacy with them, have, for some Time past, without the least provocation, and contrary to their most solemn Treaties, fallen upon this Province, and in a most cruel, savage and perfidious Manner, killed and butchered great Numbers of the Inhabitants, and carried others in barbarous Captivity, burning and destroying Habitations, and laying waste the Country… I HAVE THEREFORE… and do hereby declare the said Delaware Indians, and all others… to be Enemies, Rebels and Traitors to His Most Sacred Majesty. AND I do herby require all His Majesty’s Subjects of this Province, and earnestly invite those of the neighbouring Provinces to embrace all Opportunities of pursuing, taking, killing and destroying the said Delaware Indians… AND WHEREAS the Commissioners appointed with me to dispose of the Sixty Thousand Pounds, lately granted by Act of General Assembly for His Majesty’s Use… agreed to pay out of the same the several Rewards for Prisoners and Scalps herein after specified ; FOR every Male Indian Enemy, above Twelve Years old, who shall be taken Prisoner… the Sum of One Hundred and Fifty Spanish Dollars or Pieces of Eight. FOR the Scalp of every Male Indian Enemy, above the age of Twelve Years, the Sum of One Hundred and Thirty Spanish Dollars Pieces of Eight. FOR every Female Indian, taken Prisoner… and for every Male Indian Prisoner under the Age of Twelve Years… One Hundred and Thirty Pieces of Eight. FOR the Scalp of every Indian Woman, produced as Evidence of their being killed, the Sum of Fifty Pieces of Eight…. [267]

The murderous impact of the 1756 proclamation can be inferred from this story in the Pennsylvania Gazette. Much like James Cargill’s massacre of Penobscot at Owl’s Head Bay the year before, this illustrates indiscriminate targeting of all Indigenous peoples, regardless of their status as “friends” or “enemies.”

According to Peter Silver, while the ethics and efficacy of scalp bounties were debated by various factions in Pennsylvania, it incentivized poor farmers and country dwellers to take active revenge against Native attacks and sustain their morale on the Indigenous lands which they occupied. Scalp proclamations also facilitated displacement of Native peoples from desired land and allowed officials to place blame on enraged colonists for demanding bounties. Despite the fervor unleashed by these bloody proclamations, only eight recorded scalp bounties were officially claimed by private individuals and paid from Pennsylvania government coffers in this period. However, the proclamations did encourage a wave of indiscriminate killings of Native people who were not engaged in armed resistance to settler colonial domination.[268]

In September, 1756, Colonel Armstrong marched from Fort Shirley, Cumberland County, with 300 militia to Kittanning, Pennsylvania. The English burned a Native village and took 12 scalps, including an Indigenous Captain Jacob, his wife and “The King’s son.” An additional 30-40 were killed.[269] The Province of Pennsylvania chose to extend the 1756 bounty another year.

The same month as this bounty extension was issued, Sergeant Fent and a Catawba ally brought in two Shawnee scalps to Fort Duquesne, Pennsylvania.[271]

Pontiac’s War or Pontiac’s Rebellion (named after the Ottawa leader) was launched in 1763 by a confederation of tribes primarily from the Great Lakes region, the Illinois Country, and the Ohio Country, outraged over the postwar policies of British General Jeffery Amherst and other British Officers. Warriors from numerous tribes joined the uprising in an effort to drive the British soldiers and settlers out of their territory.[272]

At the time, the colonial military had in its ranks a number of viciously opportunistic and unprincipled soldiers, including Lieutenant Jonathan Dodge of New England, a vigilante scalp hunter who robbed and killed many unarmed Native children, women, and men, as well as his fellow soldiers. In 1763, two Delaware Natives were passing through a place known as Wetterholt’s territory, Pennsylvania, after trading goods near Bethlehem. One Native man, Mahala, decided to spend the night at Fort Allen, while his companion slept in the woods by a river. Dodge and fellow militiaman Jacob Warner deceived the commander of the fort, saying they wanted to go out and look for a lost gun. Instead, they tracked and killed the sleeping Delaware man, scalping him and taking his goods back to the fort after throwing his body in the river. Dodge and Warner recounted an elaborate story of their heroism, about encountering several hostile Natives and engaging in a pitched battle. They then sold the scalp privately, to a Philadelphian man, who paid them eight pounds. This way of following innocent Native people who had visited trading posts, taverns, or other known locations was a common tactic used by scalp hunters, such as Dodge and Warner in Pennsylvania.[273]

That same year, toward the beginning of Pontiac’s War, other Native people who were not engaged in armed resistance were scalped in Paxton, Pennsylvania by Samuel Murray and a group of six local militia, who claimed the Natives were robbers. Murray brought the three scalps to Governor Hamilton in Philadelphia to claim a bounty payment. Although Hamilton suspected that the victims were killed under suspicious circumstances, he felt obliged to award the bounty, declaring,

It is not certain … that those Indians had any intention of murdering the inhabitants at that time, yet as they were taken in an act of Felony, but particularly that We may not Damp the Spirit of Enterprize against the Savages in the beginning of the war, we have come to a resolution to allow … ten pounds for each scalp.…[274]

Hamilton’s issuance of a scalp-bounty award immediately resulted in Murray’s formation of a militia company of approximately 150 men. This group planned to attack Native villages in the summer on the Great Island in Susquehannah’s West Branch, mostly occupied by allied Munsee who were led by the Delaware head man, Nutimus. The scalp-bounty hunters claimed that this island was harboring enemy Natives, along with another village upriver, Wyalusing, led by Papunhang, a Munsee pacifist. Murray and his vigilantes likely knew that most of the Native men and villagers had already left for hunting season and that the chances of armed resistance were slim.

When the militia reached Fort Augusta, the commander attempted “to persuade us not to go over as the Munsey Indians were friendly,” according to Murray.[275] Nevertheless, Murray and his bounty hunters proceeded to the island after dark, where they found the remnants of a fire and decided to turn back to the fort. On their failed retreat, they blindly walked into a firefight, where four militia were killed. In the panic and confusion which followed, the men stumbled through the woods all night in the wrong direction. 

When daylight broke, one group of about sixteen reached the Bethlehem path where they found several Natives who had just left the trading post and were eating breakfast. The militia ignored their pleas of, “don’t shoot brothers, don’t shoot,” killing, scalping, and looting the four innocent victims.[276] When one man skinned a victim to make a pair of leggings, he saw another jump up, still alive, with part of his bloody scalp hanging over his face. When the militia returned to the fort, parading victoriously the four scalps, rifles, and pilfered goods, no one knew they had been taken from innocent passersby. They were received as heroes, publicly heralded by Elder, Shippen, and other newsmen and officials as the “Pextan and Shippensburg brave Boys, who lately defeated … about 50 naked, black painted Serpents”[277] (referencing the name of a Native leader known as the Snake).

John Harris of the Pennsylvania press sent celebratory letters to Philadelphia, praising the bounty hunters. Shippen wrote that he hoped this would lead to an increase in bounty payments and further wars of attrition against all Natives in the region:

I wish a reward of £50—P scalp were offered … but it may be one half of the money would do; however, I hope that £100 will be immediately sent up for the 4 scalps now brought In. The young fellows are in high Spirits​​ and resolve as soon as possible to take another trip—Five hundred pounds will go farther in the above way than ten times as much in the common way….— let a hundd. pounds be sent up for ye voluntiers 4 scalps which I expect will come to me first…— If the voluntiers hear that the Scalps are to be paid for, they would … go out a little way to meet the Indians who will most certainly come down very soon….[278]

Here is a first hand account from the Pennsylvania Gazette, 1763, in which one of the militia fabricated a heroic tale of a pitched battle with "a large party of Great Island warriors."

In the end, Hamilton granted £25 pounds per scalp to the Munsee Hill volunteers and as encouragement to those who followed suit. Hamilton did nothing to stop further attacks on allied Native groups, advising the Munsee and others to evacuate the Great Island, blaming frontier settlers who sought revenge for previous attacks on whites by other Delaware groups.[279]

During Pontiac’s war, white militia, some of them organized by Reverend John Elder and known as the “Paxton Boys,” indiscriminately murdered many more unarmed Native people. In the winter of 1763, a scalp hunting party of about 50 attacked a Conestoga Native neighborhood around Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Two of eight members of a Conestoga family managed to escape, while six others were killed and scalped, their bodies left amidst the rubble of their cabins, which the militia burned down. Those Conestogas still alive were locked in the county workhouse, supposedly for their own protection. Several days later, fifty or sixty militiamen rode to the jail, which they broke into, killing and scalping the families inside, including three adult couples and eight children. Here is a first hand account of the massacre by William Henry of Lancaster.

I saw a number of people running down the street towards the gaol … [where] we met from twenty-five to thirty men, well mounted on horses, and with rifles, tomahawks, and scalping knives, equipped for murder. I ran into the prison yard, and there, O what a horrid sight presented itself to my view!- Near the back door of the prison, lay an old Indian and his women, particularly well known and esteemed by the people of the town, on account of his placid and friendly conduct. His name was Will Sock; across him and his Native women lay two children, of about the age of three years, whose heads were split with the tomahawk, and their scalps all taken off. Towards the middle of the gaol yard … lay a stout Indian, whom I particularly noticed to have been shot in the breast, his legs were chopped with the tomahawk, his hands cut off, and finally a rifle ball discharged in his mouth; so that his head was blown to atoms, and the brains were splashed against, and yet hanging to the wall…. This man's hands and feet had also been chopped off with a tomahawk. In this manner lay the whole of them, men, women and children … : shot-scalped-hacked-and cut to pieces.[280]

The militia group, which called themselves “Legion,” vowed to commit more murderous acts against Natives under protection of the government, whose Quaker patronage was deeply resented by poor rural whites. Native people were terrorized by the militiamen. As lawless posses vowed to attack Philadelphia, killing any Natives harbored there, they sent a clear and menacing message to any officials who supported Native residents.[281]

On January 27, 1764, Reverend Elder wrote to John Penn, Esq. (grandson of Pennsylvania’s founder, William Penn), Lieutenant Governor and Commander in Chief of the Province of Pennsylvania.

The storm which had been so long gathering, has, at length, exploded. Had Government removed the Indians, which had been frequently, but without effect, urged, this painful catastrophe might have been avoided. What could I do with men heated to madness? All that I could do was done. I expostulated; but life and reason were set at defiance. Yet the men in private life are virtuous and respectable; not cruel, but mild and merciful. The time will arrive when each palliating circumstance will be weighed. This deed, magnified into the blackest of crimes, shall be considered as one of those ebullitions of wrath, caused by momentary excitement, to which human infirmity is subjected.[282]

Another proclamation issued by John Penn, Esq. (grandson of Pennsylvania’s founder, William Penn), Lieutenant Governor and Commander in Chief of the Province of Pennsylvania, targeted the Delaware and Shawanese Tribes in 1764, four years after the end of the sixth and final Anglo-Abenaki War.[283] The bounty stipulated the following compensation for those not on the government payroll: “every male above the age of ten years captured, $150 (Spanish dollars or Pieces of Eight); scalped, $134; every female, and males under ten captured, $130; females above age ten scalped, being killed, $50.” Soldiers on the government payroll were awarded half these amounts.

As anti-British sentiment grew and led to the Revolutionary War, hostility toward Native peoples and disdain of their societies was again stoked with the revival of scalp bounties. Colonists seeking independence especially disliked some tribal nations that signed treaties and deeds with the English monarchy. To incentivize settler rebellion against the British monarchy, Benjamin Franklin devised “Prints to Illustrate British Cruelties,” including an image of “Savages killing and scalping the Frontier Farmers and their families” as commanded to do so by English officers. [284]

In 1777, at the height of the American Revolution as colonists declared their willingness to fight and die for freedom, Pennsylvania issued an additional bounty act. [285] In the years that followed, settlers organized scalp-bounty outings that resulted in rewards paid to scalpers. In some cases, Tories, loyal to the British monarchy, gained Native allies to attack the rebel colonists and their Native allies. [286]

In Warren County, Pennsylvania, a 1777 scalp bounty was issued by Tories at Fort Niagara by Sir John Johnson and Colonel Guy Johnson, along with John Butler, who organized Butler’s Rangers. Senecas, Cayugas, Onondagas and Mohawks made a treaty with the British at Oswego, to fight with them throughout the war.[287]

In the autumn of 1777, near Kittanning, Pennsylvania, a scouting party of Westmoreland County militia took the scalps of five Natives.

From 1778 to 1782 there was scarcely a family within the limits of our present county that had bread sufficient to subsist on from fall till spring. Their live stock was destroyed and stolen. With all their vigilance in watching the enemy there was scarcely a week that some depredation was not committed. Men, women and children were taken prisoners and carried away, and nothing was heard from them for months or years, and often they were never heard of again.
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This apparently never-ending war induced the authorities to offer and from time to time to increase the bounty on scalps of Indians.

Reference has been made heretofore to a scalp bounty paid regularly by the English. The fact is abundantly proved by the archives of New York and Pennsylvania, and the history of the Revolutionary period; and, it may be said, the thrilling, blood-curdling stories told by novelists of the present day are by no means without ample foundation. [288]

The Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania asked Colonel Lochry to authorize bounty payments. On May 1, 1779, Lochry shared his thinking.

I have consulted with a number on this head, who all seem of opinion that a reward for scalps would be of excellent use at this time, and would give spirit and alacrity to our young men, and make it their Interest to be constantly on the scout. [289]

Not long after on April 22, 1780, yet another bounty proclamation was issued in Pennsylvania.

To help organize the capture and scalping of Delaware people, “Joseph Reed. Esq., President, And the SUPREME EXECUTIVE COUNCIL, of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania,” sent a letter to Colonel Samuel Hunter, the county lieutenant, with the promise of exorbitant payment.

It is our earnest Desire that you would encourage the young Men of the Country to go in small Parties & harass the Enemy. In former Indian Wars it was frequently done & with great Advantage… The Council would & do for this Purpose authorize you to offer the following Premiums for every male Prisoner whether white or Indian if the former is acting with the latter 1500 dollars & 1000 for every Indian Scalp…. We most earnestly recommend it to you to revive that same Spirit & any Plan concerted with Secrecy & Prudence shall have our Concurrence & Support….[290]

Henry Young comments, “On April 22, finally, a schedule was proclaimed for the whole state, allowing $3,000 Continental for every Indian prisoner, or every Tory prisoner who had acted in arms with the Indians, and $2,500 Continental for every Indian scalp. At the time, $2,500 in paper was valued at $33 ⅓ in silver.”[291]

Researchers in the Pennsylvania Archives have uncovered the number of scalps of Native people that were delivered to the state and the names of those who received payment, although we have been unable to verify whether this is a complete list. The following quote refers to soldiers on the government payroll and not civilian militia scalping “expeditions.”

During the three-year period, according to Treasury records, the state acquired only a half dozen scalps. The rewards went to Captain Samuel Brady ($2,500 Continental), who had led a party of five white men and two Delaware Indians in a scalp raid toward Sandusky in the summer of 1780; to Captain Henry Shoemaker, to be divided among another party of volunteers; and to Captain Andrew Hood, Captain Alexander Wright, William Minor, and Adam Poe, all of western Pennsylvania. On April 2, 1782, an order on the state funds was drawn, to pay Adam Poe £12, 10s, for “taking an Indian scalp in the County of Washington, agreeably to the order of the board.[292]

In late September, the Supreme Executive Council instructed the lieutenant of Washington County to cease calling up militia.

In March of 1782, toward the end of the Revolutionary War, a militia group of 160 men from Pennsylvania led by Lieutenant Colonel David Williamson unleashed a premeditated massacre of ninety-six peaceful Lenape children, women, and men, Moravian Christian converts in Gnadenhutten and Salem, Ohio. After rounding up the Lenape villagers, a vote was held by the militiamen to kill them the following day.

The murderous mob divided men from women and children, locking them in separate buildings, where they spent a terrifying night praying and singing. The next day the militia also captured allied Moravians of Salem, marching them to Gnadenhutten. The militia then proceeded to systematically tie up, brutally club and scalp 39 children, 29 women, and 28 men. One witness described, “Many children killed … in their wretched mother’s arms….”[293]

Following the scalpings, the murderers piled corpses inside the mission buildings, which they burned down along with the village and other buildings in the area. Before departing, the murderers looted plunder of furs, pewter, tea sets, clothing and other goods, which required 80 horses to carry. Thomas, one of two Lenape boys who survived being scalped, lived to tell of the massacre. He described being left for dead under a pile of bodies in a basement of one of the buildings, as blood dripped down on him from the floor above.[294] According to Silver, this massacre marked a new phase in American-Indigenous relations.

For the mental model of Gnadenhutten, unlike that of the Paxton era massacres, was no longer an Indian attack but a slaughterhouse. The nakedness, the binding, the being taken by ones and twos–all were deliberately chosen to make the victims’ helplessness more vivid. This atrocity spoke. What it said was not about bullying, or warning away, or revenge, or taking things. Mostly–over and over–it was simply about killing, on a scale that could mean eradication. It was an action that echoed through the following decade’s debates. The men at Gnadenhutten were acting on a powerful distaste for Indians, as Indians, a feeling that in this instance was by itself so clearly pivotal and indiscriminate as to be worth labeling racist.[295]

The depth and breadth of hatred toward Native peoples exhibited in the killings at Gnadenhutten provide evidence of ethnic cleansing and genocide in Pennsylvania before and during the American Revolution.

[H]is Excellency, George Washington, having received intelligence that the British have called in all the savages, and that no more parties are to be permitted to be sent out against the frontiers. The Council, taking into consideration the proclamation of the 22d day of April, 1780, offering a reward for Indian scalps, and the reasons upon which the same was found no longer continuing, resolved March 21, 1783, that the same be made null and void, and ordered that notice of the revocation of this Indian scalp bounty be sent to the lieutenant of the County of Washington.[296]

What can be inferred from the repeal of this bounty proclamation in Pennsylvania toward the end of the American Revolution?

As mentioned in Lesson Two, in the late 1630s the Dutch in New York, under governor Willem Kieft, were the first to offer bounties for the scalps of Native peoples. A century later colonial authorities accused Native people of starting the practice of scalping and as retaliation, they issued a bounty for scalps and a reward for captives.

In 1746 a bounty reward of £10 was paid by the government of New York for a Mohawk scalp, killed by an allied Native, at the Plantation of Cornelius Van Beuren. A collection was made for additional funds, which amounted to approximately £20 more, in hopes that Native warriors would join the governor at Albany in war against the French. [297]

In 1755, the British enlisted 1600 Cherokee to fight on the English side against the French and Six Nations in the Ohio Territory, offering bounty rewards of £3 and £7 for every scalp of the enemy, granted by the Province of South Carolina. As further encouragement, the Government of North Carolina gave the Cherokee 300 steers. [298] Five years later, in 1760

the Province of South Carolina began offering an augmented bounty for Cherokee scalps to £35 to such as do not receive Pay. They have likewise resolved to provide Pay for four Captains to be appointed to command such Indians as will go out against the Cherokees, and his Honour the Governor has appointed the following Gentlemen Captains in that Service, viz. Joseph Wright of the Upper Creeks, Stephen Forrest of the Lower Creeks, --- Brown of the Upper Chickesaws, and James Adair of the Savannah, or Lower Chickesaws. [299]

In nearby Maryland colony, scalp bounties authorized the hunting of Nanticoke, Lenape, and other First peoples for a century. A law passed in 1687, based on an earlier 1678 treaty named “Articles of Peace and Amity,” declared, as laid out by J.R. Norwood, that

an “enemy Indian” could be any who did not call aloud within three hundred paces of an “Englishman’s cleared ground,” or if they came across any English person in the “woods,” or who were “painted,” and did not immediately voluntarily call out and lay down their weapons. The Nanticoke Emperor Unnacocassimon was informed that any of his people neglecting to call out and make their sign of surrender by laying down anything deemed to be a weapon by an English colonist, could be killed by any of the English colonists. There was no requirement for any similar demonstration of intent by an Englishman toward an Indian (Maryland 2009b: 558-559). The ironic name of this treaty and subsequent law, which allowed any colonist to deem any Indian as an “enemy” if they did not immediately call out and disarm themselves, even in a wooded area, and even if the Indian felt threatened by the colonist, was “Articles of Peace and Amity.” The interpretation of hostile intent lay solely under the judgment of the Anglo/European colonist, who was then allowed to collect a bounty for the slain Indian’s scalp.[emphasis added] [300]

The Maryland General Assembly allocated £4,000 for bounties. Ultimately, the assembly paid out £230 of the allocated funds. [301]

… [A] 1763 act of the Maryland General Assembly determined that scalps of hostile Indians within the province of the colony were worth fifty pound and only required a sworn statement that the scalp was taken from an “enemy Indian” in order for the bounty to be paid (Maryland, 2009a: 417-418). No distinction was made between male or female, adult or child in the act. [302]

During the French and Indian War, the British and their allies scalped those they considered enemies, both Native and French. In 1754, when Virginia offered bounties of £10, only for Native scalps or prisoners, Major George Washington, while fighting Native people, sought payment for French scalps as well.

Two years later in April 1756, Major Washington wrote to Robert Dinwiddie, lieutenant governor of colonial Virginia, on behalf of Richard Pearis, requesting a bounty for the scalp of French officer Monsieur Douville. In May, Washington sent Dinwiddie a Native scalp. [303] It is worth noting that Washington learned many military tactics, such as stealth and high mobility, by observing Native modes of self-defense and warfare during the French and Indian War, and he later used these methods during the Revolutionary War.

In November, Washington wrote again to Lt. Gov. Dinwiddie, asking how the Catawabas would be paid for Cherokee scalps and whether salaried soldiers were entitled to the same scalp bounties as volunteers. [304] Once again we see the divide-and-conquer strategy as colonial authorities create incentives for Catawabas and Tuscaroras to scalp Cherokee and Shawnee.

The Maryland Assembly passed a scalp act in 1757, which promised 50 pounds for the scalps of “enemy Indians.”

Five years later, in August 1763, Col. Adam Stephen wrote from Annapolis, Maryland to Henry Lee, Esq., County Lieutenant of Prince William, in Virginia, about scalping:

I am sorry to acquaint you, that we are constantly harassed with Parties of Indians amongst us, either in Hampshire or Frederick. I am just returned from an Expedition towards the Allegheny, and round all the Frontiers of Hampshire, in which we have taken two Scalps, recovered three Prisoners, carried off by the Savages, and, according to their Information, and our own Opinion, killed five more Indians, that we could not scalp. [305]

During the American Revolution, British commanders encouraged scalping of “rebel” and allied Native fighters. Governor Henry Hamilton, British commander of Fort Detroit (within the borders of present-day Detroit, Michigan), who was accused of fomenting scalping in Virginia, justified such violent acts as part of “a deplorable sort of war, by which the arrogance, disloyalty and imprudence of the Virginians has justly drawn down upon them.” Hamilton became known as the “Hair-buyer General” due to his policy of paying Britain’s Native allies for the scalps of rebellious colonists. [306]

Hamilton and other British leaders were urged on by Lord George Germain in his letter of March 26, 1777, stating that “it is his majesty's resolution that the most vigorous efforts should be made, and every means employed that Providence has put into his majesty's hands for crushing the rebellion and restoring the constitution,” directing Governor Hamilton to assemble all the Indians he could at Detroit; to place at their head proper persons to prevent them from “committing violence on the well-affected and to employ them” in making a diversion and exciting an alarm upon the frontiers of Virginia and Pennsylvania. Hamilton was, at the same time, to employ all loyal subjects to join him in the enterprise, and to offer them a bounty of 200 acres of land if they served him until peace was declared. [307]

After the revolutionary war, the Virginia legislature charged Hamilton with inciting Native and British warriors to scalp rather than capture Americans, along with Phillippe Dejean, who abused prisoners. Authorities in Virginia also imprisoned British William La Mothe, of Detroit, “a captain of volunteer scalping parties of Indians and whites, who went from time to time under general orders to spare neither men, women or children.” [308]

During the war of 1812, the British and their allied Native warriors attacked American forces from Kentucky near Monrow, Michigan, killing and scalping hundreds of soldiers. Prisoners of war were brought to Detroit, where live captives were auctioned off for $10 to $80 and scalps were sold in the streets. [309]

Kentucky has been the traditional homeland of Indigenous peoples from five different cultural groups: Iroquoian, Lakota, Algonquian, Muckogean, and Yuchi. [310] In 1795, scalp-bounty rewards that targeted all Native peoples were offered by private citizens of Louisville and Jefferson County: “We the subscribers promise to pay the sum annexed to our respective names for every Indian scalp taken in the county of Jefferson, on the west of the main road leading from Louisville to Shepherdsville, within ten months from the date, 10th March, 1795.” [311] During the War of 1812, acts of scalping by British forces allegedly occurred in Kentucky and Michigan.

Roughly a century after the Shirley and Phips scalp-bounty proclamations in the Dawnland, there was a massive influx of European colonial settlers to Minnesota (the land of sky-tinted water, in Lakota), which became a state in 1858. At the time, Minnesota was the homeland of over a million Dakota people and Anishinaabe (Ojibwe or Chippewa). Between 1850-1860, the settler population swelled from fewer than 6,100 settlers to more than 172,000. [312] While the U.S. Civil War was bloodying battlefields in the southern and eastern states, the U.S. Dakota War broke out in 1862 and set the stage for a new wave of land seizures and settler terrorism against Dakota people.

On December 26, 1862, 38 Dakota men were hanged in Mankato, Minnesota in the largest one-day mass execution in United States history, which was ordered by President Lincoln. [313] Four months later, other Dakota were hunted by settlers for their scalps and forcibly removed from Minnesota and sent to Nebraska and South Dakota. Following the war, bounties were offered for Dakota scalps.

On July 4, 1863, in response to raids by Dakota in southern Minnesota, the state’s Adjutant-General, Oscar Malmros, issued a general order for the establishment of a mounted corps of “volunteer scouts” to patrol from Sauk Centre to the northern edge of Sibley County. The scouts provided their own arms, equipment, and provisions, were each paid two dollars a day, and were offered an additional $25 for Dakota scalps. A reward of $75 a scalp was offered to people not in military service; that amount was raised to $200 on September 22. Period newspapers described the taking of many scalps. [314]

Malmros’s general order resulted in bounty claims paid to several individuals who were involved in events that began two years earlier. In September 1862, Little Crow and his followers fled to Canada.

In June of 1863, short on food, horses, and provisions, Little Crow and a small party of family and close friends returned to Minnesota.

Late in the afternoon of July 3, 1863, while Little Crow gathered berries in a thicket northwest of Hutchinson with his son Wowinape, Nathan Lamson and his son, Chauncey, saw them and opened fire. The Lamsons were unaware of their victim’s identity until Wowinape, who had fled the scene, was captured by soldiers near Devil’s Lake some weeks later. Nathan Lamson later received a $500 check from the State of Minnesota; his son, Chauncey, also collected a bounty [for Wowinape as a captive]. [315]

On July 4, 1863, a group of settlers returned to the site of Little Crow’s death. They scalped the body, then took it to Hutchinson, where an Independence Day celebration was in progress. Debate ensued over whether the body was indeed Little Crow’s; during the debate, it was further mutilated.

The scalp was turned over to the authorities as proof that Indians were still in the area. After the body’s identity was confirmed, the scalp was tanned and displayed in in the adjutant-general’s office. In 1868, it was donated to the Minnesota Historical Society, which had already received Little Crow’s skull and some of his bones. The scalp, skull, and bones were exhibited at the Historical Society until 1915. Little Crow’s remains were finally interred in 1971 in a family plot near Flandreau, South Dakota. [316]

In 1864, two brothers, Simon and Oscar Horner, presented a scalp directly to General Malmros to collect a reward.

This painting, “Attack on New Ulm,” which depicts a settler’s view of an 1862 battle that he did not witness, reinforces the dominant narrative about the U.S.-Dakota War. The painting hung for many decades on the walls of the Minnesota Capitol.

The Attack on New Ulm depicts the Dakota raid on New Ulm. Painted by German immigrant Anton Gag in 1904, it includes several misnomers about the Dakota, including presenting the men in stereotypical buckskin and a feathered headdress. Critically, this painting was created 32 years after the battle. Gag himself didn’t arrive in New Ulm until more than a decade after the war. Still, this representation of the Dakota typifies representations of Native people from this period, most notably in the Minnesota capitol, where the only representations of the state’s Native people came from this period. [317]

The painting was removed in 2016 after the Minnesota Historical Society was pressured to conduct interviews with “Native Americans, historians, Western art experts and descendants of white settlers.” [318]

After gathering public input, MNHS’s Executive Council voted to remove the painting from the Capitol in December 2016, given it is not original to the building and represents a single painful moment in the complex history of the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862. [319]

Farther west, as the rush for gold and land swept into what is now called California, the narrative of annihilation can be heard in a California governor’s Second Annual Message to the Legislature.

Although these small and scattered tribes have among them no regular government, they have … some conception of their right to the country acquired by long, uninterrupted, and exclusive possession. They have not only seen their country taken from them, but they see their ranks rapidly thinning from the effects of our diseases. They instinctively consider themselves a doomed race…. This leads to war between them and the whites; and war creates a hatred against the white man that never ceases to exist in the Indian bosom.

That a war of extermination will continue to be waged between the two races until the Indian race becomes extinct must be expected.
- California Governor Peter Hardeman Burnett, January 7, 1851 [320]

The war of extermination against Indigenous people referred to by Governor Burnett took different forms in California, [321] among them massacres, forced assimilation, land dispossession, and scalping. Bruce Barcott writes, “Through the indiscriminate use of terrorism and murder, California 49ers [white men who came to California during the Gold Rush] carried out one of the most successful—and, until recently, largely unacknowledged—campaigns of ethnic cleansing the world has ever seen .”[322] Benjamin Madley views this as genocide.

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The organized destruction of California’s Indian peoples under US rule was not a closely guarded secret. Mid-nineteenth-century California newspapers frequently addressed, and often encouraged, what we would now call genocide, as did some state and federal employees.... [323]

Scalping was prominent in this extermination, and bounties were both privately funded and also state sponsored. Scalping was especially destructive during the Gold Rush and was used by wealthy settlers to incentivize local militias bent on earning revenue while killing Indigenous people. Madley quotes Hubert Howe Bancroft, an historian from the late nineteenth century. Bancroft’s description is chilling.

The savages were in the way; the miners and settlers were arrogant and impatient; there were no missionaries or others present with even the poor pretense of soul-saving or civilizing. It was one of the last human hunts of civilization, and the basest and most brutal of them all.” [324]

Violence spread in the vicinity of gold mines.

As prospectors poured into the homelands of Hupa, Karuk, Shasta, Tolowa, Wintu, Yurok, and others, they carried genocidal tendencies and tactics with them. Killings in and around the Northern Mines then spread in the context of state policies that gave Indian killers little to fear and much to gain. [325]

Madley goes on to provide contextualization of state-sponsored scalping.

During and after homicides in the mines, killers sometimes severed and collected the body parts of California Indians…. Modern white society tends to view scalping in US history as a predominantly American Indian activity. Yet whites also scalped many Indians in a tradition that stretched back to colonial times, and that policymakers sometimes codified as official, state-sanctioned scalp bounties. In California between 1846 and 1873, scalping was an almost exclusively anti-Indian practice, inflicted on California Indians. Scalping served as a way to inventory killing, collect macabre trophies, and express a profound disdain for victims. Collecting the heads of California Indians served similar purposes….

Shasta City “authorities” now institutionalized Indian killing by offering “five dollars for every Indian head brought to them.” Swiss Argonaut Carl Meyer recollected that “Human monsters of Americans made a regular business of getting these. A friend of mine who was in Shasta City at that time assured me that in one week he saw several mules laden with eight to twelve Indian heads turn into the precinct headquarters.” [326]

Given that in California in 1849, the average daily wage was 25 cents, the promise of $5 per scalp was considerable for day laborers. As seen in the preceding quotes, the violence was carefully documented.

California became the 31st state in 1850 and soon adopted statutes that forced nonwhites from the mining region.

The 49ers then enacted the Act for the Government and Protection of Indians, also called Chapter 133, which contrary to its name, stripped California’s Indians of nearly all legal protections.

Under Chapter 133, a white man desirous of Indian land needed only to present his request to a local justice of the peace, who would determine the minimum amount of land he reckoned a local tribe needed. After keeping a small portion for the Indians, the justice held the power to sell or grant the excess property to any chosen white man, who could, with the same magistrate’s position, kidnap Indian children and “adopt” them—or keep the youths as unpaid houseworkers and field hands until they reached the age of majority.[emphasis added]

Chapter 133’s most abhorrent clause stated, “In no case shall a white man be convicted of any offence upon the testimony of an Indian, or Indians.” With those 20 words, California effectively legalized the rape, robbery, and murder of any Native American within the boundaries of the state. [327]

In June 1859, The National Era, an African American abolitionist newspaper based in Washington, D.C., published an impassioned plea against scalping, the “Appeal of the American Indian Aid Association for Help,” and quotes the Tehama Gazette’s coverage of a new plan on the eastern border of Sacramento Valley “to chastise the Indians for their many depredations during the past winter. Some men are hired to hunt them, who are recompensed by receiving so much for each scalp, or some other satisfactory evidence that they have been killed. The money has been made up by subscription. There is very little need of Indian reservations in California in 1865.” The National Era continues.

This last paragraph can mean nothing else than that, according to the expectations of the writer, all the native inhabitants of California will be exterminated in some five or six years. More than 300 Indians mainly males, killed in our locality in a single month- possibly a majority of the fathers, husbands, and brothers of a tribe. And in another locality they are hiring men to hunt the natives like wild beasts, for so much a scalp! It does not appear that Government, State, or National, has anything to do with this. It is "our neighbors" who are doing it, and the bounty is "made up by subscription." [328]

The magnitude of atrocities committed in California through the combined actions of state and federal employees, and vigilante violence organized by private landowners, is incalculable.

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When gold was discovered near modern-day Denver in 1858, thousands of additional European settlers pressed into the homeland of the Cheyenne, Arapaho, Pueblo, Ute, and Comanche. The Pacific Railway Act of 1862 intensified its pressure on these Indigenous peoples and threatened their land. On August 11, 1864, a decade after the 49ers tried to exterminate the Indigenous peoples of California, the governor of the Territory of Colorado, John Evans, physician and businessman, called on “all citizens of Colorado ... to kill and destroy, as enemies of the country ... all hostile Indians,” and he organized volunteer militia by recruiting “Indian fighters.” Evans declared,

as the only reward I am authorized to offer for such services, I hereby empower such citizens, or parties of citizens, to take captive, and hold to their own private use and benefit, all the property of said hostile Indians that they may capture, and to receive for all stolen property recovered from said Indians such reward as may be deemed proper and just therefor. [329]

On August 11, 1864, Evans received authority from the War Department to raise a regiment of volunteers for 100 days’ service. The 3rd Regiment Colorado (US) Volunteer Cavalry was recruited to “pursue, kill and destroy all hostile Indians that infest the Plains.” [330] Cheyenne and Arapaho were divided over how to respond. There were numerous attempts at peacemaking and also attacks on settlers.

What ensued on November 29 became known as the Sand Creek Massacre. According to a timeline of events created by the National Park Service related to the massacre, the soldiers “murder/massacre over 230 Cheyenne and Arapaho, including 150 women, children, and elderly. They mutilate many of the bodies. One Arapaho Chief and thirteen Cheyenne Council Chiefs are among the dead.” The timeline also reports that on December 28, “The Daily Rocky Mountain News advertises a theatre production which will use “trophies taken from the field at Sand Creek.” [331]

After the Sand Creek Massacre, on December 22nd, Denver Rocky Mountain News reports that Cheyenne scalps have become so common that “every body has got one” and that people are eager to send them east.

On Christmas Eve, the Denver Rocky Mountain News printed advertisements in the Local & Miscellaneous section about a sword swallower alongside news of a “Cheyenne captive” and trophies on display. Another ad mentions a blanket taken from a “defunct Indian” at Sand Creek that was auctioned off to an army major.

Scalps and other parts of Native bodies were exhibited as trophies at that local theater and in saloons. [332] It seems that the extermination of Indigenous people was celebrated and socially acceptable.

Private individuals and townspeople issued several scalp bounties in Colorado. A “mass meeting in Denver” promised $10 for a scalp and in Central City $20 was offered. There are several references to these bounties in contemporary newspapers outside of Colorado. [333] Here is an article that appeared in a Vermont newspaper. Note the stipulation for “scalps with the ears on.”

In 1881, “An Act for the Destruction of Indians and Skunks” was narrowly defeated in the Colorado Legislature. It would have offered a bounty of $25 for the scalps of skunks and Utes. The bill was introduced shortly after passage of a resolution to expel the Utes from Colorado. [334] The bill was mentioned in a Georgia newspaper, which deemed it “remarkable.” [335]

Another article that appeared in a Chicago newspaper mentions the same Central City bounty [see Figure 121].

In 1887, more than two decades after the Sand Creek Massacre, a Montana newspaper reported that a “Battle Creek, (Mich.) citizen has among his collection of trophies the scalps of two Indians—one killed at the battle of Little Sandy, Col.”[336] It is worth pausing here to consider the meaning of this news item, which is listed as a curiosity alongside information about how the Japanese make cheese from beans and peas, a man’s attempt to steal a lightning rod, and a cat in Texas that takes delight in walking over the keys of a piano. It is little wonder that Native American mascots are still embraced by towns and sports teams across the United States! This kind of dehumanization and trivialization, all too common today, has deep roots.

Readers may be interested to know that in 2021, Colorado governor Jared Polis rescinded John Evans’s 1864 proclamation that called for citizens to kill Native Americans and seize their property.[337]

As settler colonialism continued to manifest what it considered its destiny, U.S. government treaties and purchases threatened increasingly vast expanses of Indigenous homelands, including those of Navajo, Puebloan, Apache, Caddoan, Atakapan, Athabaskan, Coahuiltecan, and Uto-Aztecan nations and peoples. In their attempt to “organize the territory” according to their interests, various U.S. government agents made deals, drew lines, named and renamed Indigenous space, waged war, and sought to “cleanse” the land of its original inhabitants. Scalp bounties played a role in this process.

Arizona, formerly part of the Territory of New Mexico, became part of the U.S. under the terms of the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and the 1853 Gadsden Purchase, and became the forty-eighth state in 1912. While it does not seem that Arizona offered a state-level bounty, there were several bounties offered by private citizens and landowners. Some scalp hunters went to northern states of Mexico whose officials had advertised in Arizona newspapers offering payment for scalps.

Searches of Arizona and New Mexico newspapers from the late 1800s yield a number of articles and public notices that reveal scalping there.  

On November 23, 1866, a town meeting in Prescott, AZ with “large attendance,” appointed Thomas Hodges to organize a militia company, with pay and scalping bounties offered. [338] A couple of years later, merchants from Prescott were reported to be travelling with mules decorated with scalps. Note the reporter’s comment about the “Peace Commissioners.” It is unclear what, if any, connection there is between Prescott’s scalping militia and the merchants who decorated their mules with scalps. [339]

In 1868, Tully & Ochoa Wagon Company reportedly paid its employees $150 per scalp, primarily targeting Apaches. The company, based in Tucson, Arizona, armed its wagon trains and was responsible for supplying army outposts in the region. [340]

In 1869, two men, T.W. Boggs and John McMahon, presented a scalp of a man they killed near Agua Fria, New Mexico to the Governor of the Arizona Territory, Anson Safford. [341]

In 1870 Governor Safford issued a proclamation for the arrest of white men who murdered and scalped a Hualapai scout who was travelling with them. [342]

A birth notice was placed in 1871 with the only details being the infant’s father, his birth weight, and a declaration that he “will soon be able to scalp an Apache.” [343]

Also in 1871, soldiers from Fort Bayard, New Mexico killed and scalped Apaches. That same year, U.S. soldiers led by Captain Kelly were “cleaning out that nest of Indians” and returning to town with, and publicly displaying (and even gifting) several scalps. [344]

A scalp bounty offered by the Mexican state of Chihuahua was advertised in an Arizona newspaper in 1880.

Another article mentions that several residents of Silver City killed and scalped four men and that one scalp was displayed on the wall of the Exchange Hotel there. [345] A scalp bounty funded by citizens of Silver City, New Mexico promised a reward of $100 in 1881.

In 1882, according to a notice in the Arizona Weekly Citizen, the town of Tombstone “offers a reward of $200 for twenty-five Indian scalps and ten dollars for every additional one.”[346] There is no mention of who paid the bounty.

The Daily Tombstone in 1885 announces that a Tombstone town meeting decided to “wipe out the frontier curse” by offering a $250 bounty for every Apache scalp brought to town. The article states “this will bankrupt the town” because “[h]unters from all over the country will flock to Arizona to bag a few Apaches.” It also supposes that scalpers may bring back the scalps of “peaceful Indians” or “white men who have coarse black hair.” The article also raises the possibility that Apaches may even scalp themselves and regrow their scalps with “hair restorative,” leaving us uncertain what level of satire this article is attempting.[347]

As readers can see below, a New York Times article in 1885, datelined Deming, New Mexico, reports on counties in Arizona that are “organizing in armed bodies for the purpose of going on a real old-fashioned Indian hunt, and they propose to bring back the scalps and obtain the reward. Word now comes from Tombstone, the county seat of Cochise County, that the reward … has been increased to $500 for a buck Indian’s scalp.” Given the origins of scalping in lower Manhattan in 1637, we are left wondering what a reporter from a prominent New York newspaper knows and thinks about a “real old-fashioned Indian hunt” and a “buck Indian’s scalp.”

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A group of miners and cattlemen in Sierra County, New Mexico offered a bounty of $50 for scalps in 1885. [348]

In early 1886, a horse breeder named H.G. Toussaint offered horses for the scalp of Geronimo and any other Apache. Geronimo, a legendary Bedonkohe Apache leader, warrior, and healer, fought against all who threatened the sovereignty and survival of his people.

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In May 1886, General Nelson Miles, hoping to attract both American and Mexican recruits on an expedition, offered $50 for the head of each Apache they killed and $2,000 for the head or capture of Apache leader Geronimo. [349] Geronimo spent the last two decades of his life as a prisoner of war.