The Bounty Teacher's Guide

The Six Anglo-Abenaki Wars

Lesson Three: The Six Anglo-Abenaki Wars

What is the relationship between the taking of the land and the taking of the scalps?

This lesson is designed for grades 6-8 and 9-12 but can be adapted for upper elementary levels. The full lesson may take 5-6 class sessions to complete, though it can be shortened.

Lesson Three covers the period between 1675-1760, spanning what are known as the Six Anglo-Abenaki Wars. These conflicts (with the exception of the first, which we refer to as Pometacomet’s Resistance/King Philip’s War) were largely fought between colonial English and French forces for control of what is today northern New England and Eastern Canada. Both sides deployed divide-and-conquer strategies, recruiting Indigenous allies and fighters with promises of payments and protection. Wabanaki and other Indigenous peoples mounted campaigns of resistance against increasing settler colonial encroachment, dispossession, punitive laws, and violations of vital resources, including hunting, fishing and subsistence lands.

During this period, no fewer than 79 official bounty acts/proclamations were issued for scalping, killing, or capturing Indigenous children, women and men by the colonial governments and settlers of Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, Connecticut and Nova Scotia. These acts resulted in at least 131 recorded claims, comprised of 89 for cash and 42 for land, made by countless individuals and their heirs who served in military campaigns, took part in bounty expeditions or were engaged in armed conflicts with Indigenous Peoples. The highest number of scalp bounty acts/proclamations (24) issued by Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut and Nova Scotia took place during the fifth Anglo-Abenaki War (1744-1749).

There were incalculable thousands of Wabanaki captives, killings, and victims of scalping during this period when thousands of soldiers and militia rangers participated in bounty expeditions. Bounty acts issued, for killing and capturing Wabanaki children, women, and men, resulted in payments and land grants of over £9,000 and hundreds of thousands of acres granted to countless individuals and their families.

The content of this lesson provides raw material for students to engage in additional activities to distill and analyze key patterns and issues.

In addition, this lesson includes research proving that land all over the Dawnland was granted to individual soldiers who fought Wabanaki people and to those who scalped them. It also shows that land was granted to groups of soldiers (and their heirs) who fought Wabanaki people and scalped them to establish settler towns.

The Compelling Question to Support Inquiry

What is the relationship between the taking of the land and the taking of the scalps?

This lesson is designed for grades 6-8 and 9-12 but can be adapted for upper-elementary levels. The full lesson is
recommended to take 4-5 class sessions to complete, though it can be shortened.
‍
Note: The Compelling Question, Desired Outcomes, Supporting Questions, Words and Terms, C3 Standards, NMAI
Knowledge 360 Essential Understandings, Useful Resources to Support Inquiry, and Things to Consider are
applicable to Lessons Two, Three, and Four.

In Lesson Three readers learn about different understandings of the relationship between people and the land, acts of scalping and beheading in England, monetization of scalping by Europeans in North America, scalping and mourning war practices among some Indigenous peoples, the role of land dispossession in settler colonial societies, different interpretations of early deeds, influence of the Doctrine of Discovery, influence of Boston-based land speculators, scalp acts and bounty rewards, and Wabanaki attempts at diplomacy in the 1640s.

Desired Outcomes for Lesson Three

Lessons Two, Three, and Four are interrelated. In these lessons, students will examine historical evidence that may be used to make or refute the case that genocide happened and continues to happen against Native peoples in the U.S. and explore the connection between genocide and settler colonialism. The Deeper Dive sections in lesson three are designed to help teachers differentiate between essential understandings and rich additional sources and content.

At the end of the lesson students will be able to

Use historical documents to develop an argument that supports or refutes the claim of genocide when applied to bounty acts and proclamations;

Critically analyze settler colonial narratives about key historical events and contemporary policies of genocide

Name and describe their own place in the system of settler colonialism

Explain the relationship between land dispossession and the targeting of Indigenous people through bounty acts and proclamations.

Supporting Questions

What ideas, beliefs, and structures are in place today that might help explain why bounty acts and proclamations have remained hidden for so long? Who does this serve? According to popular media portrayals of U.S. history, who scalped whom?

What ideas, beliefs, and structures would have been required by European colonial settlers to defy and resist official orders and financial incentives to scalp Indigenous peoples?

What is the long-term impact of scalp bounty proclamations on Indigenous peoples whose ancestors were targeted?

How is intent demonstrated, or not, in the wording of the bounty acts and proclamations of the seventeenth and eighteen centuries?

Do scalp acts and proclamations provide evidence of genocide? If so, what is your argument?

What is the relationship between the taking of the land and the issuance of bounty acts and proclamations by colonial and U.S. authorities?

What is the significance of the role played by those who outfitted and funded scalpers?

How would you describe the differing motivations and mindsets of scalpers?

What did you learn about U.S. history and the larger global context at the time the
scalp proclamations were issued?

Terms that Students Need to Know and Understand

Settler Colonialism

A type of colonialism in which the objective is the acquisition of indigenous territories and resources, which means the original peoples must be eliminated by whatever means necessary and replaced with colonial settlers (based in part on definitions by Dina Gilio-Whitaker and Patrick Wolfe)

Dispossession

To put out of possession or occupancy (definition from Merriam-Webster)

Perfidious

The quality or state of being faithless or disloyal (definition from Merriam-Webster)

Savage

1 From old French, it meant “wild,” “untamed,” or “natural,” and was associated with people who lived in forests, not in towns or burgeoning cities 2 old-fashioned + offensive : a person belonging to a primitive society 3 a brutal person 4 a rude or unmannerly or uncivilized person (based in part on definition from Merriam-Webster)

Bounty Acts and Proclamations

Laws that legalized the hunting, capture, killing and scalping of Native children, women, and men for a reward of money and/or land (definition from Upstander Project)

Bounty Claims for Cash

Bounty hunters delivered captives or scalps to government officials or private landowners who paid them cash as a reward for having ethnically cleansed the land of Indigenous peoples (definition from Upstander Project)

Bounty Claims for Land

Bounty hunters delivered captives or scalps to government officials or private landowners who paid them with grants of free land as a reward for having ethnically cleansed the land of Indigenous peoples (definition from Upstander Project)

C3 Standards for College, Career and Civic Resources

The C3 Framework for Social Studies State Standards is a powerful guide to help each state strengthen instruction in the social studies by establishing fewer, clearer, and higher standards for instruction in civics, economics, geography, and history, kindergarten through high school.

D2.Civ.1.6-8. Distinguish the powers and responsibilities of citizens, political parties, interest groups, and the media in a variety of governmental and nongovernmental contexts.

D2.13.9-12. Evaluate public policies in terms of intended and unintended outcomes, and related consequences.

D2.Civ.1.9-12. Distinguish the powers and responsibilities of local, state, tribal, national, and international civic and political institutions.

D2.His.10.6-8. Detect possible limitations in the historical record based on evidence collected from different kinds of historical sources.

D2.Civ.5.9-12. Evaluate citizensʼ and institutionsʼ effectiveness in addressing social and political problems at the local, state, tribal, national, and/or international level.

D2.His.10.9-12. Detect possible limitations in various kinds of historical evidence and differing secondary interpretations.

D2.Civ.10.9-12. Analyze the impact and the appropriate roles of personal interests and perspectives on the application of civic virtues, democratic principles, constitutional rights, and human rights.

D2.His.11.6-8. Use other historical sources to infer a plausible maker, date, place of origins, and intended audience for historical sources where this information is not easily identified.

D2.Civ.12.6-8. Assess specific rules and laws (both actual and proposed) as means of addressing public problems.

D2.His.11.9-12. Critique the usefulness of historical sources for a specified historical inquiry based on their maker, date, place of origin, intended audience, and purpose.

National Museum of the American Indian—Native Knowledge 360o Essential Understandings About American Indians

American Indian Cultures

Time, Continuity, and Change

People, Places, and Environment

Individual Development and Identity

Individuals, Groups, and Institutions

Power, Authority, and Governance

Production, Distribution, and Consumption

Civic Ideal and Practices

Useful Resources to Support Inquiry

1755 Spencer Phips Bounty Proclamation

James Axtell and William C. Sturtevant, “The Unkindest Cut, or Who Invented Scalping”

East West Street: On the Origins of “Genocide” and “Crimes Against Humanity,” Philippe Sands

Margaret Haig Roosevelt Sewall Ball, “Grim Commerce: Scalp Bounties and the Transformation of Trophy Taking in the Early American Northeast, 1450-1770”

Lisa Brooks, Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philipʼs War

“Raphael Lemkin as historian of genocide in the Americas,” Michael A. McDonnell and A. Dirk Moses

Colin G. Calloway, After King Philipʼs War: Presence and Persistence in Indian New England

Colin G. Calloway, Dawnland Encounters: Indians and Europeans in Northern New England

Brian D. Carroll, “” Savages” in the Service of Empire: Native American Soldiers in Gorhamʼs Rangers, 1744-1762”

Christine M. DeLucia, Memory Lands: King Philipʼs War and the Place of Violence in the Northeast

David L. Ghere and Alvin H. Morrison, “Sanctions for Slaughter: Peacetime Violenceon the Maine Frontier, 1749-1722” and “Searching for Justice on the Maine Frontier: Legal Concepts, Treaties, and the 1749 Wiscasset Incident”

Ralph A. Smith, “The Scalp Hunter in the Borderlands 1835-1850”

Rebecca Cardinal Sockbeson, “Cipenuk Red Hope: Weaving Policy Toward Decolonization & Beyond”

Rebecca Cardinal Sockbeson, “Honored and Thriving: The Squaw Law and Eradication of Offensive State Place-Names”

Bonnie D. Newsom and Jamie Bissonette-Lewey, “Wabanaki Resistance and Healing: An Exploration of the Contemporary Role of an Eighteenth-Century Bounty Proclamation in an Indigenous Decolonization Process”

Jean M. OʼBrien, Dispossession by Degrees: Indian Land and Identity in Natick, Massachusetts, 1650-1790

Jean M. OʼBrien, Firsting and Lasting Writing Indians Out of Existence in New England Indigenous Americas

Daniel N. Paul, We Were Not the Savages

Ian Saxine, Properties of Empire: Indians, Colonists, and Land Speculators on the New England Frontier

Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples

Rebecca Cardinal Sockbeson, “Indigenous Research Methodology: Gluskabeʼs Encounters with Epistemicide”

Gerald Robert Vizenor, Fugitive Poses: Native American Indian Scenes of Absence and Presence

Patrick Wolfe, “Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native”

Henry J. Young, “Scalp Bounties in Pennsylvania”

Things to Consider

Warriors from cultures all over the world and across millennia have scalped and beheaded enemy captives and mutilated their corpses.

During the English conquest of Ireland, the English beheaded and scalped their enemies.

Eighteenth-century Englishmen were highly hair conscious, and the removal of enemy scalps was a symbolic way of rendering them impotent. For the most part, English colonial officials preferred scalping or death of Native captives over their enslavement or imprisonment, whereas the French preferred imprisonment or enslavement of captives over their scalping or death.

Europeans introduced the monetization of scalping.

Some Indigenous people in what is now referred to as North America scalped other Indigenous people before the arrival of Europeans.

In the case of Native people who scalped, scalps were sometimes displayed and exchanged to reinforce alliances. Scalping of enemies was one aspect of “mourning war practices” whereby captives were either adopted to take the place of deceased loved ones, scalped to avenge those killed, or ransomed for goods. For some Native people, scalping served the dual purpose of reinforcing the honor of triumphant warriors and preventing an enemyʼs soul from reaching
the afterworld where it could cause harm. By separating a personʼs scalp from the rest of their body, it was believed the deceased lost the power to seek revenge.

Native warriors engaged in scalping on behalf of colonial powers who paid them and sought to enlist their loyalty to make up for a shortage of soldiers in their own fighting forces.

Much scalping was done by Europeans who targeted Native peoples to eradicate them from the physical and social landscape.

Once European settlers occupied parts of North America, they spread scalping and transformed it into a way for settlers to earn money and in some cases to get land.

To fixate on scalping as evidence of genocide without highlighting the agency, resistance, and survivance of Indigenous societies as they deal with new conditions created by settler colonialism, can feed deeply held beliefs about victimhood and the disappearance of Native peoples.

Although the impact of scalping was the extermination of some Native peoples and nations (for example there used to be at least twenty Wabanaki tribal nations and today there are five), it is worth discussing whether the intent of scalping was extermination, domination, or both.

Continue to the First Section of Lesson Three

The First Anglo-Abenaki War: Pometacomet’s Resistance