The Bounty Teacher's Guide
The Sixth Anglo-Abenaki War
Sixth Anglo-Abenaki War (1754-1760)
aka the Seven Year’s War, French and Indian War
During this conflict, the governments of Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Nova Scotia issued at least 14 bounty proclamations, including the 1755 bounty that is centered in the documentary film, Bounty. At least 31 known cash and land bounty claims were made during this time. In addition, there were at least seven known land grants awarded to militia and ranger companies for their service, which became new townships established in Wabanaki homelands throughout the Dawnland. For a detailed list see e-timeline.
Although the sixth and final Anglo-Abenaki War was partly fought in the Ohio Valley, most of the fighting took place in New England where Governor William Shirley used rumors of French maneuvers on the Kennebec River to garner enough fear and support to construct Fort Halifax above Norridgewock at Winslow. Many Penobscots withdrew from the St. Georges area when both the Massachusetts Bay Colony and the French demanded that they take up arms against other Wabanaki groups.
In 1759, English forces defeated the French at Quebec, ending the long struggle for control of North America. During the next few years Wabanaki family bands reoccupied tribal grounds on the upper Penobscot, Kennebec, and Saco rivers.
Governor Bernard banned white hunters and trappers from the upper Penobscot and sent surveyor Joseph Chadwick to mark the limits of English settlement at the falls above the Kenduskeag, but over the following years theft, murder, poaching, land encroachment, and a burst of white settlements up the river valleys undermined the aspirations of Wabanaki people to return to how their ancestors lived.
In the following section, we will dig into the bounty proclamations issued in the 1750s.
Scalp Proclamations in the Dawnland, 1750s
There were 79 bounty acts and proclamations in the Dawnland between 1675 and 1759. In this section, we will look at just two enacted in 1755, one signed by Governor William Shirley in June and the other by Lieutenant Governor Spencer Phips in November after the expiration of Shirley’s proclamation. We will explore their wording and meaning and how Shirley’s Proclamation led directly to Phips’s. There is much to be learned from these documents, which speak loudly to the present from the omitted past. It is worth noting that the town of Shirley, Massachusetts was named for William Shirley.
The precise wording of scalp-bounty proclamations merits careful examination, for it reveals the intent of the signatories and the narrative they crafted about their purpose and intended targets. Whether from the colonial era or after Independence, the choice of language to describe the “enemy” and justify the bounty, as well as the rewards stipulated by the proclamations, deserve scrutiny, as in the one signed by Governor William Shirley in “His Majesty’s Province of the Massachusetts-Bay” in June 1755. [179] To help prepare for the reading of the acts and proclamations, we will examine letters exchanged between Wabanaki leaders and colonial officials.
The historical archives in Massachusetts and Maine are filled with letters written by Wabanaki leaders, as well as acts, claims, letters, and other declarations written by colonial judicial and military officials in Boston. These documents, when used chronologically, demonstrate how Wabanaki people struggled to maintain control of their homelands, voice their demands, and negotiate diplomatically, as well as the workings of colonial-era governments as officials convened meetings, kept minutes, issued declarations, passed laws, and publicized agreements.
In the archives, there is evidence that colonial authorities, military officials, and Wabanaki leaders exchanged at least two-dozen letters in 1755. There is also a hand-written document of a vote taken on June 9, in which the Massachusetts House declared war on the Arresaguntacook and all other tribes east of the Piscataqua River, except the Penobscot. This declaration is a precursor to the Shirley proclamation, which can be found on the following page.
Transcription of Shirley Proclamation, June 1755
WHEREAS the Indians of Norridgewock, Arresaguntacook, Weweenock, and St. John’s tribes, and the Indians of other tribes inhabiting in the Eastern and Northern Parts of His Majesty’s territories of New-England, the Penobscot Tribe only excepted, have, contrary to their solemn Submission unto His Majesty long since made and frequently renewed, been guilty of the most perfidious, barbarous and inhuman Murders of divers [sic] of his Majesty’s English Subjects for many Months past ; and the said Indians have fully discovered an inimical, traiterous and rebellious Intention and Disposition ;
I have therefore thought fit to issue this proclamation, and to Declare the Indians of the Norridgewock, Arresaguntacook, Weweenok, and St. John’s Tribes, and the Indians of other tribes inhabiting in the Eastern and Northern Parts of His Majesty’s territories of New-England… to be Enemies, Rebels and Traitors to his Most Sacred Majesty: And I do hereby require his Majesty’s Subjects of this Province to embrace all Opportunities of pursuing, captivating, killing and destroying all and every of the aforesaid Indians, the Penobscots excepted…
…I do hereby promise, That there shall be paid out of the Province’s Treasury to all and any of the said forces, over and above their Bounty upon Enlistment, their villages and subsistence, the Premiums of Bounties, following, viz.
For every Male Indian Prisoner above the Age of Twelve Years, that shall be taken and brought to Boston, Fifty Pounds.
For every Male Indian Scalp, brought in as Evidence of their being killed, Forty Pounds.
For every Female Indian Prisoner, taken and brought in as aforesaid, and for every Male Indian Prisoner under the Age of Twelve Years, taken and brought in as aforesaid, Twenty-five Pounds.
For every Scalp of such Female Indian or Male Indian under Twelve Years of Age, brought as Evidence of their being killed, as aforesaid, Twenty Pounds.
Guidance for Teaching
1. Do a close and careful read of the document in its original format; refer to the transcript if needed. Highlight words or sentences that stand out to you, and jot down what you think they mean.
2. Write down questions you have about the content of the document. Reflect on your experience reading the document and note any thoughts you have.
3. Choose one thing to share that stands out for you in the wording of the document. Note what you learned and what you want to learn more about.
4. Upper level students can use either of the following tools to analyze the document: Stanford History Education Group’s Historical Thinking Chart or Library of Congress Teacher’s Guide: Analyzing Primary Sources
5. Team up with four other students and share your notes. Discuss what you learned; what questions you have; and what you think is the central idea of the text.
Which, if any, of the Ten Stages of Genocide are reflected in the wording of this proclamation?
What, if anything, can you infer from the wording of the scalp proclamation about the motives of its author?
Digging into the Shirley Proclamation: letters
As noted above, the Shirley Proclamation named and targeted four tribal nations (Norridgewock, Arresaguntacook, Weweenock, and St. John’s Tribes). Evidence of the proclamation’s staggering impact can be inferred from the fact that the Norridgewock, Arresaguntacook, Weweenock, and St. John’s Tribes are not today part of the Wabanaki Confederacy. [179] While there used to be over twenty tribes in Wabanaki territory, today there are five. Norridgewock survivors of the Shirley Proclamation took refuge with Penobscot Nation and the Passamaquoddy Tribe; some St. John’s survivors went to live among the Maliseet. Their descendants are the keepers of countless stories of survivance.
The targeting of Wabanaki people by those who hunted them for their scalps lasted for five months under the Shirley Proclamation, but the violence unleashed against the tribal nations it named continued for decades and, if we consider the wording of the proclamation, it could be deemed ominously effective insofar as three of the four targeted tribal nations no longer exist as such.
While the Shirley Proclamation explicitly protected the Penobscot, with that came an expectation of allegiance on the part of English colonial authorities, which the Penobscot did not fulfill according to the English. This can be seen in letters written between the Wabanaki leaders, colonial authorities, and military officials in 1755. Penobscot leaders wrote the following letter to Governor Shirley on June 27, 1755, three weeks after his war/bounty proclamation, assuring the governor and council of their willingness to fight, if their women and children are supported.
June 27, 1755
Governor Shirley brother we salute you and all the counsel, we are glad that you have kept what we agreed upon. We always thought that the Canada Indians would bring us trouble, and what you desired of us we have done. You have told us that those that came against us in a hostile manner, we must join and go against them, let us know when we must do it, they have hurt us as well as you, and __ of our men are now come up to wait on you, which will be a proof of our sincerity and we expect that our wives and children will be supported at our village till our return, they that have hurt you already are gone off and will do it no more, and we shall always let you know truly when there is danger. There shall no damage be done on this side Pemequid. You must not think that we __, if you could see our heart you know that we are true. War will hurt us as well as you, therefore we are strong against it, if there should be war between England and France and we should come over to you, our women and children must be well used. We again salute you." Wombemando, Noodagunawit and Mesel on behalf of our tribe
In a letter dated July 5, before receiving news of the massacre of Penobscot at Owl’s Head Bay (near present day Rockland Harbor, Maine), which occurred on July 2 and will be discussed in the following pages, Phips replied to the Penobscot letter of June 27, in which the tribe agreed to ally with the English against rival tribes. Phips ordered that they all go to the Fort at St. Georges, under the protection of Captain Bradbury. Otherwise, he could not guarantee their safety at their home villages, as Shirley told them in a previous letter. Phips further demanded, "I expect that a competent number of your most able men do join with the English in avenging the wrongs we have received from the other tribes of Indians...." [181] He guaranteed them pay as soldiers and that their families will be supported during their service.
It is therefore expected that all those of your tribe that would not be reputed our enemies do appear at St. Georges (within such reasonable time as Captn. Bradbury and you shall agree upon) in order to join with the English in the war.... [A]ny further delay in this matter must be looked upon as a refusal to join with us and will constrain me to treat you as enemies in common with the other tribes...."
With these words, Spencer Phips, Lieutenant Governor of the Province of the Massachusetts Bay, set the stage for his proclamation in November, declaring war against the Penobscot.
Phips became the adoptive son of Sir William Phips in 1719. The elder Phips was born on the central coast of Maine and had been the first governor of the Province of the Massachusetts Bay (1692-94). William Phips was knighted after discovering significant treasure north of the island of Hispaniola in 1687. It was he who established the court charged with adjudicating the Salem Witch Trials. He and his wife adopted Spencer Bennett, who chose to formally take the name Phips. Spencer eventually became a landowner of significant holdings on the central coast of Maine. The town of Spencer, Massachusetts was named for Spencer Phips.
In the following section we provide evidence of scalpers and soldiers who fought Wabanaki people and were rewarded with land grants. The heirs of many soldiers also petitioned for and were granted significant land holdings.
Land for Soldiers and Bounty Hunters
There is an abundance of primary and secondary sources that provide evidence of the complicated process whereby European settlers dispossessed the Original peoples of their ancestral homelands in the place now called New England. Among the most valuable sources are the Massachusetts Acts and Resolves, the official publication of the Session Laws of the Massachusetts General Court from 1692 to 1959, and the Journals of the House of Representative of Massachusetts, which were digitized between 1919 and 1990.
Regarding the period that concerns us, there are 37 volumes containing detailed information about bills and laws, petitions and reports, and thousands of votes that impacted Native and non-Native people all over the Province of the Massachusetts Bay. The records in the Journals mention “unappropriated land,” a term used by colonial authorities to refer to all Indigenous homelands for which settlers sought deeds. These authorities allocated land to individual proprietors and to towns, based on court grants and approved purchases, in some cases, citing Native deeds (most of them contested). While the data on land grants to scalpers are likely incomplete, the Journals provide copious evidence of a large-scale and wide-ranging appropriation of land belonging to Wabanaki people and other Indigenous peoples to soldiers who fought in the six Anglo-Abenaki wars and other conflicts, and to their heirs. Notably, many of these claims were made and granted years and even decades after the conflicts, including to descendants of those who fought on the side of the English in the 1637 Pequot War and in the 1675 Pometacomet’s Resistance/King Philip’s War.
In 1730, the legislature of the Province of the Massachusetts Bay appointed a committee to grant a six-square mile township to each group of 120 claimants. By 1733, seven towns in Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts had been allotted, primarily to 840 heirs of “Narragansett Soldiers,” who gathered on Boston Common to receive the deeds. Several proprietors from each town served on a joint committee with 21 members. Narragansett Town #1 consisted of 16,224 acres, which became Buxton, Maine (near Falmouth/Portland) and was allotted to Joseph Gerrish, John Hobson, and John Gains from Ipswich, Massachusetts, home of Col. Appleton of the Essex County company. In 1737, the Massachusetts Bay House committee was appointed to consider further claims made by “Narragansett soldiers.” Two townships, each of six square miles, were awarded to 232 soldiers and heirs who served in the “Fort Fight,” or “Long March,” during Pometacomet’s Resistance. These individuals were not granted lands in the original seven “Narragansett townships.”[182] For the names of the other eight towns in Maine, Massachusetts and New Hampshire, see the e-timeline. Land grants were authorized to individual soldiers and to groups of soldiers who petitioned the colonial government for large tracts of land to found settler towns and cities in the Dawnland. Here we present a sampling of evidence about land grants approved for individual scalpers and groups of scalpers who participated in bounty-hunting expeditions and battles. More detailed information can be found about land grants to scalpers all over the Dawnland in Appendix A and the e-timeline.
Additional land grants were made to veterans of the battles that took place during the Fourth Anglo-Abenaki War.
Readers may recall the role of Colonel Johnson Harmon and his company during the attack on Norridgewock in 1724. Captain Jeremiah Moulton, who played a leading role in Harmon’s company during the attack, requested and was granted 100 acres of land in York County.
Readers may recall the role of Colonel Johnson Harmon and his company during the attach on Norridgewock in 1724. Captain Jeremiah Moulton, who played a leading role in Harmon's company during the attach, requested and was granted 100 acres of land in York County.
We also have the record of a 1727 petition by Richard Bourne, another captain who served in Johnson Harmon’s company. He was granted 100 acres, too.
There is another record indicating that Colonel Harmon was granted 200 acres of unappropriated lang in York County in 1727.
On November 30, 1727, Joseph Demmick requested and was granted 250 acres of unappropriated land for his service at Norridgewock, where he had been wounded. The land was to be for him and his five sons who do not have “any Lands upon which to settle them.”
In September 1728, Samuel Tarbell, John Goss, and 57 others petitioned the House of Representatives for a six-mile square tract of land as reward for their service fighting Native peoples.
To incentivize the founding of another settler town, on July 5, 1729, the House of Representatives of Massachusetts approved land grants to David Melvin, Thomas Richardson, and others who served under Captain Lovewell at Pigwacket, granting them six-square miles to establish a township together with 50 families on both sides of the Merrimack River near Pennacook.
A year later, David Melven [183] and William Ayer, who also served under Captain Lovewell, petitioned for and received six square miles of land to establish another settlement on each side of the Merrimack River for sixty veterans.
In February 1730, the House granted a petition for Narraganset land from heirs of soldiers who fought in what was referred to as the Narraganset War (First Anglo-Abenaki War, Pometacomet’s Resistance/King Philip’s War). The House ordered that groups of 120 people whose claims were approved each be allotted six-square miles to establish a township.
In June 1733, Jeremiah Pearley, John Bennet, Thomas Farmer, and others (72 total) who served under Captain Lovewell were granted a six-mile square township northwest of Rutland, Massachusetts.
In October 1733, Samuel Hunt and other veterans of the “Falls-fight,” including John Stoddard, Joseph Dwight, Charles Church, Samuel Danforth, and John Wainwright, petitioned for land near Deerfield, Massachusetts for their service in a fight near the Connecticut River in 1676, also during Pometacomet’s Resistance/King Philip’s War. [184] The land north of Deerfield was granted to them the following year.
In 1734, many petitions for land were submitted to seek rewards for fighting that took place in the early 1700s during the Third Anglo-Abenaki War. Here is an image of a petition made by Richard Kent, which resulted in a grant of 300 acres in the Massachusetts Province.
As readers may recall, the Battle of Pequawket or Lovewell’s Fight occurred on or around May 9, 1725. While not officially part of the provincial military’s campaign, John Lovewell recruited volunteers to form a private squad of scalp-bounty hunters and rangers. These men chose Lovewell to lead them. Almost a decade later, Deliverence Read, whose late husband, Josiah, served under Lovewell, petitioned for land with the help of her attorney.
A large land grant was given to two men who joined Captain William Tyng’s militia and killed six Wabanaki at Winnipesaukee in 1703. Readers may recall the role of Tyng in the Third Anglo-Abenaki War, when he formed a militia known as the Snow Shoe Scouts because they wore snowshoes to hunt Wabanaki people in the winter. Among the Scouts were Ephraim Hildreth and John Shipley, who in 1735 were granted 23,000 acres (six square miles) of land on the east side of the Merrimack River, between Litchfield and Suncook (Lovewell’s town). It is worth noting that Wabanaki technology created the first snowshoes in the northeast, which the English copied. [185]
Also in 1735, nearly sixty years after their father fought the Wampanoag in the First Anglo-Abenaki War, otherwise known as Pometacomet’s Resistance/King Philip’s War, Thomas and Charles Church, sons of Benjamin Church, requested and received 600 acres “in unappropriated land of the Province” as a reward for their father’s service.
At the end of 1735, the House received a petition from Robert Hale, Esq., on behalf of heirs and representatives of Captain Thomas Lothrop, who had fought between Deerfield and Hatfield in 1675, when a hundred Indigenous people were killed. They requested bounty rewards equal to those received by English soldiers who fought against the Narragansett.
In closing, most of those who hunted and fought Wabanaki people and in some cases scalped them were lavishly rewarded with cash and land grants. Dozens of towns in New England were founded by soldiers (or their heirs) who, upon returning from one of the Anglo-Abenaki Wars, petitioned the provincial House of Representations for acreage.
Guidance for Teaching
The names of towns and cities, parks and public squares, lakes and rivers, and streets and highways all across the U.S. have an important story to tell. Some have Indigenous names, while others reflect the influence of colonial powers, such as England, France, Spain, and the Netherlands, or the presence of immigrants from countless regions. The process of naming and renaming is often fraught and its outcome either recognizes Indigenous history or reinforces the settler or immigrant narrative.
Ask students to conduct research into the history of the name of their town or city. They can begin with official town or city websites and Wikipedia articles, which they can analyze and critique. Students can then write a short essay in which they argue whether their source contributes to the erasure or un-erasure of Indigenous peoples.
To prepare them for this research, work with them to critique these excerpts from Wikipedia articles about the town of Wakefield, Massachusetts and a local body of water, Lake Quannapowitt.[186]
History [of Wakefield]
Wakefield was first settled in 1638 and was originally known as Lynn Village. It officially separated from Lynn and incorporated as Reading in 1644 when the first church (First Parish Congregational Church) and the first mill were established. This first corn mill was built on the Mill River on Water Street, and later small saw mills were built on the Mill River and the Saugus River.
Lake Quannapowitt (KWAN-ah-POW-it / KWAN-ə-POW-it), which was originally known as Reading Pond, has numerous nicknames today. Some area natives refer to the lake as "Lake Quannapolluted" due to their view of the state of health of the lake, but the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection handled only one isolated open case of contamination from the electric company that was remediated in 2008.
In the following section we offer a series of maps and encourage students to use their skills of observation and analysis to deepen their understanding of the movements of opposing forces throughout the vast region where the Original peoples lived and resisted attempts to exterminate them.
Maps That Tell Stories
Click on the photos or visit hyperlinks where provided to make it easier for students to examine the maps and then ask them to consider a series of discussion questions. Remind students that maps reflect the perspective and values of the mapmaker and that naming conventions often initiate or reinforce the attempted erasure of Indigenous peoples with the blotting out of their place names.
Guidance for Teaching
Once students have examined these or other maps listed below, ask them to hypothesize about any factors they think contributed to social tension and violence in Ckuwaponah-kik. Here are other maps students can choose from:
1. Wôbanaki Homelands map: 1704.deerfield.history.museum/maps/northeast.html
2. Interactive Time-Lapse Map Shows How the U.S. Took More Than 1.5 Billion Acres from Natives http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_vault/2014/06/17/interactive_map_loss_of_indian_land.html
3. https://native-land.ca/ and its teacher’s guide about how to use and interpret the maps:
https://native-land.ca/teachers-guide/
They can also listen to this NPR story about the Native American Nations map created by Aaron Carapella: http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2014/06/24/323665644/the-map-of-native-american-tribes-youve-never-seen-before examine his maps here:
http://www.tribalnationsmaps.com
Then ask them to consider the following discussion and research questions that can be posed and applied to maps, depending on the grade level of students.
1. Why do people make maps?
2. What factors can you identify that may make maps contentious?
3. In what ways can maps be useful as historical sources and in what ways can maps be misleading?
Select two maps and answer the following questions.
1. Do you know who created the map you selected? How would you describe their purpose?
Do you think the map is a reliable source? Explain your reasoning.
2. If you closely analyze the place-names on the map, what story do they tell? What did the mapmaker include? What did they exclude?
3. In what ways does the map help explain the historical context of this lesson?
4. What questions are you left with after looking at these maps?
We already learned about the brutality of Captain Benjamin Church during Pometacomet’s Resistance in 1675-76 and that of Harmon and Moulton in Norridgewock, Pigwacket, and Lovewell in 1724. Another infamous bounty-hunter bent on the destruction of Wabanaki people for personal profit was James Cargill from Maine. Trigger Warning: depictions of scalping and murder in the following section.
Merciless Scalp-Bounty Hunter: James Cargill
According to some scholars, there was a sense of inevitability to the appearance of James Cargill as an especially ruthless scalp-bounty hunter. At the time,
… Massachusetts had forged a fragile policy, too dependent upon the goodwill of the inevitable dissenters on both sides to maintain peace. So, when Indian-hatred, lust for bounties, mistrust of governments, and self-righteousness all combined in the one person of James Cargill of Newcastle (Maine), the Massachusetts government’s Penobscot policy easily cracked apart with no help needed from the Penobscot. [187]
In response to the June 1755 Shirley Proclamation, Cargill registered with the authorities his intent to organize a scalp-hunting expedition. In spite of Governor Shirley’s orders to spare Penobscot nation, Cargill headed east to Penobscot territory, where on July 2, 1755 he assaulted two groups. The first was a Penobscot family of three near the Weskeag River and present-day Thomaston, Maine. One of those killed was a Penobscot woman named Margaret Moxa, who was a knowledge-keeper and cultural mediator engaged in diplomacy between the Wabanaki and English.
One of the crew, more ruffianly than his fellows, civilized and Christian in name, but barbarous and brutal in fact, replied to the dying mother, “every nit will make a louse,” and at a blow, dashed out the infant’s brains before her eyes! Such was the cruel fate of Margaret Moxa—a savage—but a woman and a mother, as she returned from the fort, on one of her Accustomed errands of good will, to save her neighbors—the more savage white man—from impending perils….
The cruel fate of Margaret Moxa was deeply deplored at the garrison. “Never shall I forget the deep and unappeasable grief of the women of the fort,” said one, “when they saw the scalp of her whom they had long regarded as a delivering angel;” and the more humane and considerate loudly condemned the act of Cargill, and confidently predicted that its perpetrators “would never die in their beds.” The prediction was realized in the history of those in the company from about St. George’s river. [188]
Here is the account given by Captain Jabez Bradbury of what James Cargill and his men saw and did. As you will read, they bound Margaret Moxa’s husband, presumably before they murdered him.
As I heard of thirty men out of Captain [Nickles’] company of marchers crossed the river. And in a few miles travel came up with an Indian, his wife and a child of two months old, without any arms / and I think he also was drunk for the persons that saw him after he was dead told me who it was, and that person they told me of always used to be Drunk when he came in, which is no new thing for Indians / and these very three Capt Cargill says he took to be a decoy. Those who were at the burying of said three Indians also told me that the man was fast bound. [189]
Then near Owl’s Head, Cargill’s hunting party opened fire on an encampment of Penobscot people who were returning from a peace council at the fort, killing and scalping nine of them. The acts leading to the deaths of twelve Penobscot that day became known as the Owl’s Head Massacre. It had taken “Massachusetts leaders several months to get enough Abenaki bands to agree to attend a peace conference at Falmouth, Maine (Me HSC 4:145-167).” Those efforts at diplomacy were undermined by Cargill’s unilateral actions and the ideology of exterminationism and state-sanctioned violence that drove him, making him indifferent to the tribe his victims belonged to. [190]
Deeper Dive: Cargill’s Bounty Expedition Journal, July 1-5, 1755
A memorandum of my transactions with my company of volunteers:
July 1st- Went from home with twenty two men with a design to March on the back of the inhabitants and got to BroadBay and stayed there all night.
July 2nd- Filled up my Company to thirty one men and set out to march all round the inhabitants of George’s to strive to come on some of the enemies lurking places and came out on the river about six miles below the fort and found there some canons and went over and marched about five miles and came up with three Indians and killed them and found their cannon and left nine men there and missed one man but found that he had refused to go any further so went on with twenty one men about five miles and about sunset came on some Indians and shot on them and killed nine of them and the rest run away so we returned to our men which we had left and rested all night.
July 3rd- Went to George’s and got some men from Captain Bradbury and Captain Wilkes and his company and some more men from Georges and went out and buried the dead and brought away our cannons and luggage and then concluded to take our provisions for to march and to go to the [north?] and so to go up Kennebeck or to Machias so I went to Captain Bradbury and demanded [stors?] and he refused to let me have any.
July 4th- In the morning called my men together and told them that I couldn’t get any stors for them there and so we divided our cannon and what small plunder we had got and so I told them to shift every man for himself and to set out for home.
A true copy per me James Cargill [191]
Read on for more on James Cargill, his four-year court case, and attempt to secure payment for the scalps of those he and his men murdered at Owl’s Head.
Deeper Dive: No Bounty Payment to Cargill for Scalping the “wrong Indians”
Humbly Showeth
That at the last Session of this Honble. Court he presented a Memorial containing a large detail of certain facts, the proof of which depended on a number of Evidence; Said memorial was committed to the Committee of the Honble. House & by them reported on debated and accepted, sent up to the Honble. Board for Concurrence, but this happened on the last day of the said Session, and so now was passed on by the whole court, since which this Court has been prorogued five several times and the Season advancing which will render it difficult to gett [sic] Evidence to Court, and as Capt. Sanders is now bound on a Voyage to those parts. Therefore your Memorialist humbly prays that said Memorial may be revived and acted on that so he may have the opportunity to Vindicate himselfe [sic] and be entitled to the Bounty of this Government agreeable to the Tenor of the Proclamation upon the Encouragement of which he acted, and is in Duty bound your Memorialist shall ever pray.
James Cargill [192]
On December 31, 1757, two and a half years after commandeering the Owl’s Head massacre, Cargill presented the scalps of his Penobscot victims to the Executive Council Committee in Boston, which recorded, “Capt. James Cargill this day delivered us Twelve Indian Scalps, including two small Ones, which were put into a tar barrel, and in our presence consumed.” [193]
Cargill petitions the General Court again on January 2, 1758 for a scalp-bounty payment for killing Margaret Moxa, her husband, and infant son.
To his excellency the Governor and the Honr’d His Majesties Council
May it please your excellency and honours
In pursuance of your order to me by Mr. Secretary [?] I have delivered to a committee appointed by the honorable [board?] the scalps of three Indians killed by me and my company on the 2 of July 1755 in consequence of a commission received from his Excellency Governor Shirley- On the encouragement given by this government as by publick proclamation issued by Governor Shirley: and the said committee did attend the consumption of the same by time, on Saturday last agreeable to your direction. I now humbly hope after such ample proof produced relating to them. That your Excellency and Honours will be pleased to comply with the votes passed by this Government on which I placed all that confidence that may be expected from the publick faith of this Government, and which in justice I esteem myself justly entitled to receive agreeable to the tenor of said proclamation
All which is humbly submitted
- By your Excellency and Honours
Most dutiful and humble servant
Boston Jan. 2, 1758 James Cargil
On January 10, 1758, Cargill is denied his bounty claim by the General Court, at the Council Chamber in Boston:
A petition of James Cargill setting forth that on the encouragement given by the General Court of this province by their vote of the tenth day of June 1755 for the Captivating and killing the Indian Enemy he obtained a commission from Governor Shirley bearing date the [blank] day of June aforesaid and that he with his Company killed twelve of the Indian enemy whose scalps he produced in Evidence thereof delivered them to a Committee of the Council in pursuance of an order therefor & that the said committee consumed the same to [ ] by virtue of said order, therefore praying that he may be allowed the bounty promised by the vote aforesaid.
The board took the same under consideration, examined the respective evidences and the matter being fully debated------- The question was put whether Captn. James Cargill & Company are entitled to any bounty for the Indians by them killed, as set forth in Captn. Cargill’s memorial? And it passed in the negative, inasmuch as it does not appear that the said Indians were such with whom this Government was then at War. [emphasis added]
At a Council held at the Council Chamber in Boston upon Tuesday the 10th day of January 1758. Sitting the General Court. Present his Excellency Thomas Pownall Esqu. Gov.
As a reverberation across time, it is interesting to note that James Cargill’s son, David, was part of a group in the late 1700s and early 1800s whose members pretended to be Indians while committing acts of sabotage and violence, apparently for the purpose of scapegoating the Original peoples for the harm. These settlers often targeted absentee proprietors, including elite Boston based speculators, who claimed lands which these vigilantes occupied after displacing Wabanaki inhabitants through murder, resource depletion, and campaigns of intimidation and terror.
At that time, more English colonial settlers flooded into northern New England, many of them the children of those who scalped and hunted Wabanaki people.
As economic pressures worsened, land proprietors and their agents, and the surveyors and sheriff’s deputies who acted for them, squeezed the masses of financially broke tenants and squatters on their lands to pay up or be evicted. The targeted tenants organized fierce para-military resistance, but hid their identities by an elaborate ruse, adopted from the Boston Tea Party. They devised costumes, lingo, and rituals in caricature of Indians. After making their commando raids as Indians, they returned, metamorphosed, to be white tenants again, blaming “Indians” for the mayhem. This so called “White Indian Movement” camouflaged identities but fooled no one. No Abenaki people were officially blamed. [194]
David Cargill’s role in the “White Indian Movement” invites teachers and their students to reflect on the intergenerational transmission of hatred and prejudice, and the weaponization of cultural appropriation. It also beckons us to ask what the younger Cargill and his fellows were attempting to convey about their relationship to the land and belonging to that place.
Guidance for Teaching
Deeper Dive: Timeline of Cargill’s Court Cases:
Acquittal and Penobscot Scalp Bounty Claim, 1755-1758
Cargill and James Dodge are paid £600 for the scalps of two Penobscots.
Cargill also asks that Captain Bradbury and Fletcher appear in Boston court.
The General Court dismisses the case and acquits Bradbury of charges brought against him by Cargill.
Letters exchanged between Penobscot and Phips
Following Cargill’s massacre of Penobscot at Owl’s Head, a series of letters was exchanged between Penobscot leaders and Lieutenant Governor Spencer Phips. In his July 10th letter, after having learned about the massacre, Phips appears more conciliatory and offers his condolences. On July 11, 1755, Cargill's arrest warrant was issued, and he was jailed in Boston for 24 weeks. Lt. Governor Phips and the Penobscot corresponded regarding the murders and what each was willing to do. Phips invited Penobscot to testify against Cargill for killing "friendly Indians," including Margaret Moxa and her family, and promised that Cargill would be brought to justice. [196]
Brethren of the Penobscot Boston July 10, 1755
...I received a most unhappy piece of news from St. Georges which occasions this second letter. I hear that twelve Indians have been killed by a party of English who were sent out after the St. Francois and the Norridgewock tribes but as the report goes fell upon some of your tribe. Whether or no the English knew they were of your tribe I cannot certainly say. I am afraid they did. I have taken measures that the commander and several other persons who are charged with being principally concerned be secured in order to a strict inquiry being made into this affair that so such as shall appear to be guilty may be punished according to law. I am at a loss what to say to you. My grief on this occasion is very great. ...There is a great God who governs every event. He has permitted this terrible affair and suffered a great Cloud to come over us.
Sometimes your young men have done cruel things to the English notwithstanding all the endeavors of your ancient men to the contrary. Our young men I fear have now done a very bad thing, not only against the mind of the government but against the express charge of the Governour who cautioned them to be very careful of hurting any of your Tribe. I hear of a rumour that revenge has already been taken by some of your People. How it is I have no certainty. Be it as it will the Government will do nothing unjust nor dishonorable
...I give you now my Solemn Promise that if any of you will come up in order to prosecute a complaint against the English who are said to have killed your People you shall not only be absolutely secure of your lives, liberties and a safe conduct out and home but shall be kindly treated and shall have all the Justice done for the Injury received which the law will give.
I have a tender sympathy with you and am
Your Friend and Brother Phips [197]
In a July 12th letter to Penobscot, Phips rescinds his demand that Penobscot take up arms alongside the English if Penobscot stay east of the St. George’s River and come to the fort for protection.
Brethren July 12, 1755
Since writing the foregoing I have secured the Captain of the party who has done you this Mischief and have taken measures to secure some other persons who were principally concerned in it: and I desire you would let your resentment sleep until we can concur together. You see how much you are exposed to danger while we are at war with the other Tribes of Indians; I therefore desire you would confine yourselves to the eastward of St. Georges River until we can see one another and I will give you Orders that none of our people shall do you any Mischief, so long as you continue quiet and suffer no mischief be done us on that side of the river. If you think it better to come in with your old Men, Women and Children you shall all be supported by us, and I shall not insist upon your young men going out with us against the other Indians as I proposed in my letter to you of the 5th instant. [198]
On July 16, the Penobscot leader Umbarius writes to Phips, after sending a diplomatic delegation to Boston, that they will return to Boston again after holding council. Captain Bradbury also writes to Phips to say that the Penobscot told him that some Penobscot men were missing and that the English should be put on alert. [199] On July 25, after receiving Phips letters, "Wambemando and sundry others of the Penobscot tribe" write that they do not wish to testify in Boston against Cargill but ask that justice be served.
Brother it is very true what you have said to us in your letter, but our hearts are very sore, We thought to answer your letter but are struck with a damp, you can't think how our hearts are broken. Brother we shall say nothing further about what has been done to us, but you might make it up as you think it proper. If you see cause to make it up do so, make it up, that's all we can say. Brother I tell you I have warned all the Indians not to come this way. You know how it is and must strive to keep up love and friendship, the sooner the better.[200]
On August 18, 1755, Phips writes a threatening letter to the Penobscot leaders, demanding that they come to Fort St. Georges or be declared enemies.
…and a war between us shall be the consequence, as I think it necessarily must, the blame will be upon you for refusing the only means of preventing and not upon us who make you these offers purely for your own sake and for the preservation of your lives for the suppositions and protecting you __ occasion a great burden and expense to us… [201]
That same day, Phips also writes to Captain Bradbury, ordering him to relay the government’s demands. He encloses pre-printed public war/bounty declarations to distribute if the Penobscot refuse:
You must let them know that I am obliged to the people under my government for the sake of the preservation of their lives and estates to revoke the orders which I have given to the several parties on the frontier not to march within certain limits and that I must leave them at large to pursue our enemies wherever they are to be found and that it will not be possible to distinguish the people of Penobscot from the rest and I do not apprehend that they can with safety continue any longer to come into trade with us or come to any of our forts or settlements on any other occasion or pretence. I shall in conformity hereto send you a number of printed orders revoking the former orders I have given. If the Indians determine to comply with the proposals and [leave?] pledges or certify for it in this case you are to keep private the printed orders I send you but if they shall not so determine you are then to acquaint them with these printed orders no other person except the interpreter be [?] present and to assure them that you will not suffer them to be made publick in less than eight days after the Indians departure from you and at the expiration of said ten days you are to [disperse?] the said orders in the most expeditious manner you can that they may be made publick on the several parts of the frontier. [200]
On September 6, 1755, Penobscot leaders write one last letter, reaffirming their allegiance to the English, and explaining to Phips why they cannot meet his demands:
Brother, the first time you wrote we like it well and understood there was to be a treaty here and we of Penobscot look forward for that which is best, we do not look behind, or on one side; you told us that you would do everything for the best, and that which is good, we have always strove for that which is best and you have always said that you would do the same. We think it might do well for some gentlemen to come here. We would have you strive further and we will strive for the best. The Pasamaquody [sic] Indians have done you no hurt, they want to trade here. we pray you to consider of it, they that are loving to each other will trade together; If we should come to live among you our Dogs will destroy your creatures, and when we are drunk we might sometimes treat you ill; you shall find us true and honest. We would have no lives taken away to satisfy for the wrong done us, but would have you make that matter up as you think best. We shall be glad of an answer as soon as you can. We all salute you and all the gentlemen. Squdook, Matiue, Kehooret, Sabadis [203]
Guidance for Teaching
We now learn more about the November 1755 Phips Bounty Proclamation, which is centered in the documentary film, Bounty.
Spencer Phips and his Proclamation: A Growing Threat to Penobscot in 1755
The minutes of the House of Representatives meeting on October 28, 1755 in the Province of the Massachusetts Bay, toward the end of the five-month mandate established by the Shirley Proclamation (June 25-November 25), shine a spotlight on the expiration of the proclamation and the seismic quarrel with Penobscot.
The present Posture of Affairs with Regard to the Indians is such as to make it necessary to provide for the Defence and Safety of our exposed Frontiers : And as the Establishment made in May Session for the Forces to be employed in the Eastern and Western Parts of the Province, will expire on the fifth of next Month ; I must earnestly recommend it to you, Gentlemen, to make further Provision for their Defence. Council Chamber
October 28 1755
S. PHIPS. [202]
At the House of Representatives meeting on October 31, 1755, a motion was introduced and passed.
On a motion made and seconded by divers [sic] Members, Voted, That the same Bounty [as stated in the Shirley Proclamation] be allowed for Scalps and Prisoners of the Penobscott [sic] Tribe, as for those of the other Tribes of Indians that this Government have declared War against ; [203]
The justification for this motion, which led to a declaration of war, is articulated here.
For as much as the Refusal of the Indians of the Penobscot Tribe to take up arms and to act offensively with us against the Arrasaguntacook [sic], and other Tribes of Indians that have been declared Enemies, Rebels & Traitors to His Most Sacred Majesty, as by the treaties subsisting between us and the said Penobscot Indians, they were obliged to do ; and upon divers [sic] Hostilities lately committed by them, this House has desired his Honour the Lieut. Governour and Command in Chief to declare them Enemies and Rebels... [204]
Lieutenant Governor Spencer Phips signed the proclamation in the Council Chamber on the second floor of the Old State House in Boston while Governor Shirley was in Wabanaki territory fighting Acadians.
It is worth recalling that while the Shirley Proclamation explicitly protected members of the Penobscot tribe, Phips subsequently targeted “the Penobscot Tribe of Indians” for the 25-day duration of his scalp-bounty act. Bounty hunters in Wabanaki territory were instructed to register with colonial officials at a garrison in Wiscasset, Maine before hunting Wabanaki people.
In the mid-1700’s several attacks on Wabanaki people took place, violating earlier peace treaties. One incident in particular occurred in Wiscasset, Maine. In what has been labeled the “Wiscasset Incident” (Ghere and Morrison 2001:378), one Wabanaki man was killed and two others wounded by a group of six Englishmen anchored at Wiscasset Harbor…. No one was ever convicted of murder….
A series of violent events followed the Wiscasset Incident and although the Penobscot Indians tried to maintain neutrality, Massachusetts declared war on them in 1755.[207]
Although historians will likely never ascertain how many Penobscot children, women, and men perished in 1755 due to the Phips Proclamation or exactly how much money colonial officials paid in exchange for the capture or scalps of Penobscot people, this proclamation is displayed in the tribal office of Penobscot Nation as evidence of their people’s survivance of attempted genocide.[208] Wabanaki children and adults have been knowledgeable about it across a dozen generations.
A couple of years later, the Province of the Massachusetts-Bay increased the bounty for the scalp of an adult male to £300, which would today be worth approximately $72,000.
Hunting Wabanaki people became very lucrative at times. By resolution in 1757, the Great and General Court of Massachusetts raised the bounty to 300 pounds [a1] in an effort to “rid the colony of the ‘Indian enemy’” (Seybolt 1930:527). At the time, this was a considerable sum. By way of example, Seybolt notes that the annual salary of a schoolteacher in Boston was 120 pounds. The disbursement of bounty occurred under the signature of Samuel Waldo, a brigadier general who laid claim to Penobscot land that eventually became present-day Waldo County. [209]
During the winter of that year, following issuance of the government’s most recent bounty act, a 150-man scouting expedition was authorized to range the upper Kennebec, Androscoggin and Saco Rivers. This severely disrupted seasonal subsistence practices and contributed to starvation, worsening the severe smallpox epidemic which may have killed two-thirds of the regional Native population. In the spring of 1757, the devastated Penobscot attempted to negotiate a peace treaty with Lieutenant Governor Phips, which he rejected. In May, Captain Bradbury warned a peaceful delegation of Penobscot and St. John that he could not trade with or protect them near Fort St. George. However, unsanctioned trade of furs for rum between other Natives and local white settlers led to the seizure of a Native man who was brought to the fort in hopes of claiming a bounty. The Native prisoner was released to Penobscot leader Neptune, who was enraged by this act and destroyed his flag of truce, claiming that a large group of Native warriors was ready to retaliate and attack the settlement. After leaving the fort, an unauthorized group of local vigilante militia set out to track Neptune. Encountering a group of sleeping Natives, they attacked them, killing and scalping one. [210]
According to Captain Joshua Freeman in his scouting journal in May 1757,
My men were very earnest to go - a party of ten or twenty - to learn if such a body was near; consented with order to report to blockhouse if any Indians were discovered, then the rest of us would join them for an attack before they did any harm. About 10 o’clock eighteen of my men went out from the blockhouse and at eleven o’clock they came back and brought in one scalp and gave me an account that after they were marching out towards the eastern shore about a mile from the blockhouse in the road they came across a pack upon which they discovered some Indians a little out of the road and fired upon them and killed one dead … and received their fire, - huzzas and yells in the darkness….[211]
Thirty years after the Shirley and Phips Bounty Proclamations were signed in Boston, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts compelled the Penobscots to let go of their lands.
In the years between the end of the Revolution and the admission of Maine as a state in 1820, the Massachusetts government steadily increased the pressure on Indian lands, until the native inhabitants of Maine were confined to reservations. In 1786, Massachusetts pressed the Penobscots to give up their lands. The Indians resisted, but in years following, as it became increasingly difficult for them to make a living, the Penobscots found themselves compelled to sell off more and more of their lands. In 1796, they signed a treaty yielding almost 200,000 acres in the Penobscot Valley. Other cessions followed, until the tribe was virtually denuded of land and confined to Indian Island at Old Town and other islands in the Penobscot River. [212]
These struggles over the land continue today . This passage should help readers begin to answer the compelling question: What is the relationship between the taking of scalps and the taking of the land?
Guidance for Teaching
A sentence that could be easily overlooked in the Phips Proclamation due to the appalling pledges of rewards for the lives and bodies of Penobscot women, children, and men, can be found toward the end of the document.
Given at the Council-Chamber in Boston, this Third Day of November 1755, and in the Twenty-ninth Year of the Reign of our Sovereign Lord GEORGE the Second, by the Grace of GOD of Great-Britain, France and Ireland, KING, Defender of the Faith, etc
After reading the Phips Bounty Proclamation, divide students into small groups and ask them to follow several instructions:
· Analyze the tone, mood, and rhetorical devices of this document;
· Make a list of three words that are new to you;
· Pick two historical facts that surprise you;
· Pick two historical facts about which you are curious;
· Choose a word or sentence that caught your attention;
· Given what you have read, how would you answer the compelling question of this lesson: What is the relationship between the taking of scalps and the taking of land?
Deeper Dive: A Story by Penobscot Culture-Keeper Jennifer Sapiel Neptune from 1755 [202]
Margaret had become a friend to the English women who resided in Thomaston at Saint George's Fort, making regular visits to them. The grief of the women at the fort upon learning the fate of their friend Margaret Moxa was reported in accounts to be "deep and unappeasable." The group of Penobscot men and the child traveling with them were returning from a peace conference at the fort.
James Cargill, of Newcastle, purposely led his expedition into Penobscot territory, even though the Penobscot were exempted at that time from the bounty proclamation issued in June of 1755 that targeted the Abenaki of the Kennebec region.
When Cargill and his group reported to the Fort the following day with the scalps, they were refused supplies and were reported to the authorities in Boston on massacre charges. Cargill was arrested and jailed.
In November of 1755, Lt. Governor Phips of Massachusetts declared war and issued a scalp bounty proclamation on the Penobscot for refusing to agree to move to English forts for surveillance as the English feared Penobscot retaliation. Instead, Penobscot people living in the area moved to territories further inland for safety. Cargill was released to fight in this war, and in 1757 he was acquitted of the massacre charges by a jury in York, Maine.
In 1758 Cargill, who had kept the scalps of the 12 murdered Penobscot people, attempted to turn them in for payment. Massachusetts government debated, and ruled to deny him payment. The report stated, "And it passed in the negative, in as much as it does not appear that the said Indians were such with whom this Government was then at War."
When I heard her story
I cried myself to sleep for weeks
I couldn't stop hearing her baby crying
and her anguished wails as she pleaded for life
from 31 men who had forgotten how to be human,
with hearts that hate had turned to stone.
We have stories about those who have lost their souls
Windigo, Chenoo, kíwahkʷe,
hearts of ice, with greed and hunger
that can never be satisfied,
cannibal giants, who prey on horror.
I think of the old Passamaquoddy story of the woman who was able to
turn a Chenoo back to human with her kindness, by treating him as a relative.
I wonder if Margaret thought of that story too
as she looked into their eyes for mercy and found none.
This blanket is my prayer of transformation,
Like my ancestors have done for the past 500 years
I will take the treaty cloth, the cloth of broken promises;
the silken ribbons of deception,
the glass beads of ill intent,
and like Margaret Moxa,
and those that reached out their hands before me,
I will attempt to stitch a prayer so powerful
that it creates a blanket that melts through ice veins,
and through generations with forgiveness,
so that those that hate find their hearts,
and all men turned Chenoo rejoin the human race.
May I have stitched a prayer so full of love, tenderness, and beauty
that it reaches back 266 years
and wraps the innocent in the love of the survivors;
and with such gentleness,
that it comforts the baby's cries.
Jennifer Sapiel Neptune
Penobscot Nation[214]
In the following section we learn about the participation of clergy in the encouragement of and profiteering from scalp bounty hunting of Wabanaki people in a church in southern Maine.
Deeper Dive: Clergy Hires Parishioners to Scalp
The Rev. Thomas Smith, who invested and profited in scaly bounty expeditions, wrote about the scalp bounty scheme, sponsored by the colonial Province of Massachusetts Bay, in a journal of his experience as the first ordained minister of an armed coastal outpost then called Falmouth Neck.
The journal is a benign tally of daily occurrences - births, deaths and sermons delivered - as well as a shocking record of the sustained bloody turmoil between English settlers forging a new colony and native people fighting to keep their homeland.
“People seem wonderfully spirited to go out after the Indians,” Smith wrote on Sept. 19, 1745. “Four companies in this town and many more in other towns are fitting for it. The government offer(s) four hundred pounds for the scalp of a man to those who go out at their own expense, and three hundred and ten pounds to those who have provision from the province.[215]
19. Sunday. Very thin meeting ; people fearing to come, partly by reason of what the Indians have done....
21. The Indians to-day (about ten) killed Mr. Foster and carried away his wife and six children. They killed several cattle. Our folks pursued them ; they say there were fifty.
23. I prayed with a company of young men (twenty-six) who are now going out under the command of Capt. Ilsley in pursuit of the Indians. May God give them success. [217]
According to a footnote in The history of Portland, from 1632 to 1864 [218], we read “Capt. Ilsley had fifty men in his company. They returned May 29, having sunk their boats in Sebago Pond. They made no discovery of Indians.” In 1759 Ilsley built an addition to the church and in 1761 erected a tall spire.
Subsequent journal entries record a chain of violence with the killing of numerous Wabanaki and settlers, as well as fevers that spread all over the parish, leaving people too scared to come to church. Rev. Smith
was one of a group of gentlemen who hired a squad of hardy parishioners to go on a “Scout or Cruse for the killing and captivating of the Indian enemy.” In return for supplying the bounty-hunters with “Ammunition and Provision,” the investors received “one full third Part of fourteen fifteenths of the Province Bounty for every Captive or Scalp, and of every Thing else they shall or may recover or obtain.” In his journal for June 18, 1757, the minister recorded, “along with pious thoughts, ‘I receive 165 pounds 3-3 … my part of scalp money.’” [219]
When ministers not only looked the other way but shared in the profits from Indian deaths, the moral barometer of America dipped dangerously low. [220]
In his journal entry for June 2, 1757, Rev. Smith records that bounty hunters Cox and Bayley “returned from their cruise after the Indians, bringing with them the scalps of two men whom they killed, two canoes and a quantity of oil, fish, and feathers.” [221] Scalps of human beings were recorded in Smith’s journal, alongside names of household items like oil and fish, as if they were all items on a shopping list. Smith profited directly from a portion of Cox’s bounty claim (£600 paid by the Massachusetts Treasury), earning an additional £165 and £33 in June 1757.[222]
–––– Maine Historical Society Description
The forefathers of Portland (previously Falmouth) hired mercenary scouts and paid bounties for “killing and captivating the Indian Enemy.” This contract promised a bounty “for every Captive or Scalp and of every Thing else they shall or may recover.” Those signing the agreement promised to furnish ammunition and provisions for the scouts and cruisers for 60 days.
Among signers are Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s great grandfather Stephen Longfellow II, and Thomas Smith, minister of the First Parish Church in Portland from 1724 to 1795. Another signer, Samuel Waldo, was the owner of vast land claims extending to the Penobscot River, as well as lumber and mill businesses and had an economic stake in removing the Wabanaki from their homelands.
The complete list of signers of the document were: Samuel Waldo, Benjamin Aite, Thomas Smith, Jedediah Preble, Stephen Longfellow, Benjamin Titcomb, Ebenezer Mayo, Thomas Moseley, Simon Gookin, John Cochs, James Milk, William Cotton, and Alexander Moss.
Smith continues to write about the major events from June 7, 20, 21, and 22, which convey his sense of the times.
We hear that Capt. Whitney was killed by a number of our men who fired upon a camp where he was, supposing Indians were in it.
Capt. Waldo came home from Boston and Brings the most melancholy tidings of the drought at the westward and that the small pox is in our forts and that it is feared a great French fleet is coming to America, upon which account all hearts ache at Boston and people appear quite discouraged and disconsolate.
We had a fast upon the occasion of the distressing drought. [223]
In 1755, Rev. Smith’s annual salary was 800 pounds. For the sake of comparison, at the time, the annual salary of a school master was 200 pounds. [224] Present-day congregants of the First Parish Church wrestle with the fact that payments from scalping Wabanaki people were used to finance the church.
Non-Native people all over the Dawnland continue to wrestle with the violent history of the places where they live and even the institutions they revere – a history that for many has been until recently unknown. Steve Atwood, a descendant of Isaac Ilsley and present-day resident and high school teacher in Portland, Maine, reflects on the actions of his ancestor, who in addition to participating in a scalping company, went on to become a delegate to the Massachusetts Convention that adopted the U.S. Constitution and a member of Congress.
When I read the [Phips Bounty] proclamation in detail, after I’d seen Dawnland and worked with the Dawnland Teacher’s Guide and started playing around with the lesson in there, after I used First Light as one of my course texts and had the students go through the Upstander Project learning resources, and after I’d attended a Wabanaki-REACH training, I turned to the blackboard and wrote: this is the value of the scalp of a 3 year-old and it was an emotional experience for me knowing that my ancestor participated in scalping to such an extent that he was noted in a primary source of the time. Now that I know this, it affects how I teach, the sense of responsibility I feel when teaching....
As someone who has lived in Maine and was educated here, it amazes me what I haven’t known. It’s hidden history and that is about erasure. Knowing what I do now about the prices for scalps of people of different ages and genders humanized the people who were killed for money because of the dirty work of extermination.... Our history is important, and it needs to be addressed. Knowing the truth isn’t going to destroy us. [225]
The process of reckoning with the past can be both a personal and a collective response to that which has been hidden. Teachers can help students learn about how to research their family history and then create space to explore what they can learn from their discoveries.
Guidance for Teaching
We will now focus on the historical context for a series of bounty proclamations that targeted the Mi’kmaq in the northern Dawnland.
Deeper Dive: Places Named for Those Who Claimed Bounties in the Dawnland
Deeper Dive: English Bounty Proclamations in Maritime Provinces
In 1749, far north in the Canadian Maritime provinces where the British ruled settler society, Lieutenant General Edward Cornwallis, also Governor of Nova Scotia, escalated the conflict with the Mi’kmaq by proclaiming a scalp bounty. This and subsequent proclamations led to campaigns of terror, during which Wabanaki, as well as Acadians, were attacked by British forces in order to fullfill colonial objectives to seize and claim land. Observe Cornwallis’s frame of reference and choice of words about Mi’kmaq struggles to defend their homeland.
Whereas, notwithstanding the gracious offers of friendship and protection made in His Majesty’s Names by us to the Indians inhabiting this Province, The Micmacs [both spellings, Micmac and Mi’kmaq, are acceptable although the latter is preferred by Mi’kmaq people] have of late in a most treacherous manner taken 20 of His Majesty’s Subjects prisoner at Canso, and carried off a sloop belonging to Boston, and a boat from this Settlement and at Chinecto basely and under pretence of friendship and commerce. Attempted to seize two English Sloops and murder their crews and actually killed severals, and on Saturday the 30th of September, a body of these savages fell upon some men cutting wood and without arms near the saw mill and barbarously killed four and carried one away.
... [W]ith the advice and consent of His Majesty’s Council, do hereby authorize and command all Officers Civil and Military, and all His Majesty’s Subjects or others to annoy, distress, take or destroy the Savage commonly called Micmac, wherever they are found, and all as such as aiding and assisting them, give further by and with the consent and advice of His Majesty’s Council, do promise a reward of ten Guineas [roughly £11] for every Indian Micmac taken or killed, to be paid upon producing such Savage taken or his scalp as in the custom of America [emphasis added] if killed to the Officer Commanding.[238]
The Lords of Trade, a group of policymakers for the British government, which recommended all colonies in America become Royal Colonies to bolster their position in trade against the French, had a different perspective, as can be seen by their response to Cornwallis’s letter in a memo dated February 16, 1750. “They approved of but were not overly enthusiastic about the course of action chosen, for they cautioned him”:
As to the measures which you have already taken for reducing the Indians, we entirely approve them, and wish you may have success, but as it has been found by experience in other parts of America that the gentler methods and offers of peace have more frequently prevailed with Indians than the sword, if at the same times that the sword is held over their heads, offers of peace and friendship were tendered to them, the one might be the means of inducing them to accept the other, but as you have had experience of the disposition and sentiments of these Savages you will be better able to judge whether measures of peace will be effectual or not; if you should find that they will not, we do not in the least doubt your vigour and activity in endeavouring to reduce them by force. [239]
Despite the cautions expressed by the Lords of Trade, the largest ever recorded bounty reward offered by the English for Wabanaki scalps and prisoners was issued by Nova Scotia Governor Cornwallis in 1750: £500/Wabanaki scalp or captive. Lieutenant Callender received the commission to organize a bounty expedition and recruited militiamen from Boston, who would go to Halifax. [240] We have found no evidence that anyone claimed the £500 bounty.
A few Days ago, a Fishing Schooner arrived here from theBanks, and by the People on board we are informed, that beingin Want of Provisions, they put into Louisburgh on the 28th ofMay past for a Supply, where they were informed by severalpersons, that some Indians had lately brought in 21 Scalps,from Canso, and that they received from the Governor £5Sterling, as a Reward for each Scalp. (By the vast Quantity ofProvisions carried to Louisburgh from this Continent, one wouldbe tempted to think, that the English take more Notice of St.Paul Advice to the Romans, Chapter 12. Ver. 20. than of anyother Part of his Writings, viz. 'If thine Enemy hunger, feedhim; if he thirst, give him Drink.') [241]
Readers might be surprised to know that Poor Richard’s Almanac, a yearly almanac published by Benjamin Franklin, included information about scalping and payment of scalp bounty rewards. It is also interesting to note that Wikipedia’s description of almanacs suggests they offered “a mixture of seasonal weather forecasts, practical household hints, puzzles, and other amusements.” [242] Teachers may want to ask students what they think about this description once they read and discuss the following text.
And, we do hereby promise, by and with the advice and consent of His Majesty’s Council, a reward of 30£ for every male Indian Prisoner, above the age of sixteen years, brought in alive; or for a scalp of such male Indian twenty-five pounds, and twenty-five pounds for every Indian woman or child brought in alive: Such rewards to be paid by the Officer commanding at any of His Majesty’s Forts in this Province, immediately on receiving the Prisoners or Scalps above mentioned, according to the intent and meaning of this Proclamation. [243]
These northern military campaigns and Cornwallis’ Nova Scotia bounty proclamations provide context for the five known scalp proclamations issued in Boston in 1755, during the Sixth Anglo-Abenaki War. Although William Shirley wasn’t head of all British forces during the Sixth Anglo-Abenaki War, he was the commander that captured Fort Beauséjour, built by the French in Mi’kmaq Territory on the border between Nova Scotia and Acadia. The fort fell to the British at the war’s outset in June 1755, the same month when Shirley issued a bounty proclamation. It is noteworthy that Shirley, along with Governor Lawrence and the Council of Nova Scotia, ordered the expulsion of the Acadians.[241] During the war, British rangers, under the command of John Gorham, Benoni Danks, and others, killed and displaced countless Wabanaki and allied Maritime Aadians from their homelands. Many top officers and officials profited directly from this violent dispossession, including Danks, who was granted tens of thousands of acres following the Acadian expulsion.[245]
We will now focus on how scalp hunters contributed to genocide in French Canada even if when they did not return from their “expeditions” with scalps.
Deeper Dive: How Scalp Hunters Caused Genocide in French Canada Even When Not Scalping
… any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
It is our contention that even when scalp hunters returned from scalping “expeditions” without scalps, their actions constituted genocide because of the serious bodily or mental harm they caused to members of the targeted group, and because they inflicted on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about their destruction.
We will now focus on the actions of officers such as Major Robert Rogers who was uncompromising in his assaults on Wabanaki settlements. In Rogers’s memoir, he describes the 1759 raid on Odanak, a French controlled mission village, also known as St. Francis. We will also learn about an Abenaki woman, Molly Ockett, who survived the Odanak raid and became a well-known cultural interlocutor and cherished healer.
Major Rogers, originally from Massachusetts, formed one of the first companies of rangers who scalped Native and French forces, as well as civilians. In 1759, Rogers attacked the Abenaki community and mission village of St. Francis/Odanak on the St. Lawrence River in Quebec (near Montreal). During this notorious raid, ordered by General Jeffrey Amherst, 132 soldiers under Rogers command launched a surprise night raid on Abenaki villagers who were engaged in festivities. This is the same Jeffrey Amherst who allegedly engaged in germ warfare when he ordered the distribution of smallpox infected blankets to Indigenous people during the siege of Fort Pitt (Pittsburgh) in 1763.[246]
A priest who later served at Odanak in the 19th century gave an account suggesting that “[t]he portion of Rogers booty is estimated at $933.00 and consists mainly of wampum and provisions.”[249]
On the difficult march back to Crown Point, three officers and 47 men in Rogers’s company died. Rogers’s account, boasting of killing hundreds of Natives at Odanak, was likely inflated in order to justify such heavy English casualties under his command. French accounts differ greatly, however, according to noted Abenaki ethnohistorian Gordon Day. Archival sources from internal French military documents suggest that Rogers’s Rangers killed a much smaller number, estimated at about 30, mostly children and women.
In the 20th century, historian Gordon Day interviewed Odanak resident Elvine Obamsawine, who provided an Abenaki oral history of the attack, which killed some of her ancestors. According to Obamsawine, an Indigenous soldier from Rogers’s company broke rank and warned a young girl from the Odanak village that the attack was coming during the evening festivities. The young girl alerted the Native celebrants, allowing many to escape before Rogers’s attack. This oral history corroborates French sources and helps explain why there may have been fewer casualties than Rogers claimed. However, many Odanak villagers may have ignored the young girl’s warning or learned about it too late, and were killed by Rogers’s troops and burned in their houses. According to Obamsawine,And the Indians at that time in the fall were dancing. Already the harvest was all gathered…. And they danced and sometimes celebrated late, dancing and sometimes going out because it was a nice cool night. And one a young girl … did not immediately go in. Then someone stopped her, he said don’t be afraid … I am your friend and those enemies … they are there in the little woods planning, that when all leave for home they would kill them all … and burn your village, and I come to warn you…. Some did not believe her because she was so young, she was a child. Some of them stopped and went home to see about their children and get ready to run away as soon as possible…. They gathered their children in the dark you can be sure … it was night at that time and they hid in a big ravine where no one could find them…. And there they hid, the Abenakis. And my grandfather, the great Obomsawin, the great Simon he crossed the river just as the sun was rising. Just as the sun is seen first. He didn’t arrive soon enough, and just at that time he is almost across the river when the sun showed…. And there he was shot down on the other side-he was the only one to get across. All that were with the houses-well that was when they burned the village-the others, surely many were killed of the others, all that were with the houses.[250]
In 1766, General Gage appointed Rogers as commander at Fort Michilimackinac against the wishes of the Indian superintendent, who characterized him as “an overly ambitious, vain liar, who had been spoiled by excessive flattery, and who was incapable of performing the duties of commandment of the fort.” Rogers quickly lived up to his reputation, illegally trading with Natives and sliding seriously into debt. He plotted with the French to take over the fort and set up an independent governorship, after which he was arrested and taken to Montreal where he was tried for treason, but released on a technicality. Despite his illicit actions, he returned to England, where he was made a royal baron and celebrated by the press.[253]
In 1775 on the eve of the Revolution, Rogers returned to the colonies as a British major, where his Tory loyalties garnered suspicion. His request for an audience with George Washington was denied and he was soon arrested for his loyalist activities. British General Howe then made Rogers a Lieutenant Colonel, charged with raising a British ranger troop to fight the continental forces. His company fought poorly at Mamaroneck New York, where Rogers left the battlefield before being defeated by American forces, after which he was stripped of his rank. Jailed in 1777, he escaped. Rogers’s wife left him the following year, for non-support and infidelity and he returned to Britain where he died in exile and disgrace. [254]
One survivor of the massacre at Odanak was an Abenaki woman, Molly Ockett, originally of the Pequawket tribe, near the place currently known as Fryeburg, Maine. Although her family allied themselves with the English (her father may have been Atiwaneto, aka Captain Sam, who fought with Gorham’s rangers, before becoming disillusioned with broken British treaties and relocating to Odanak), the issuance of scalp bounty proclamations during the Sixth Anglo-Abenaki War forced her people to flee north to the French Canadian mission village of Odanak (aka St. Francis).[255] Molly was about twenty years old when Rogers’s Rangers attacked Odanak. She barely escaped by hiding behind a bush. Following the 1763 Treaty of Paris, the French lost political control in Canada. Ockett stayed in Odanak for a few years after the raid, where in 1764 her first child was born.
Some of the surviving populace at Odanak, decimated by war and pestilence, attempted to resume their ancestral seasonal patterns of travel, albeit without the support of their former French allies. For Molly Ockett, and others who chose to eventually return to their former homelands, now in English controlled territories of the Dawnland, a different and difficult world awaited them.
Permanent colonial settlements on the eastern slopes of the White Mountains—the center of Molly Ockett's world— near Fryeburg, Maine, began in the early 1760s. These settlements were established according to a pattern seen in much of northern New England just prior to and during the American Revolution in which northern “frontier” towns were granted to influential elite speculators who had little or no interest in relocating to the North Country. Many of these absentee English landholders received grants as payment for military service provided during the Anglo-Abenaki wars and hired surveyors to lay out towns and then divide them into roughly 50-acre parcels. There were no plans for a central village and no consideration of the local topography. It is worth underscoring that this was unlike the norm in earlier colonial times, when the English government granted land to settler "proprietors" (who owned homes clustered in villages and held common pasture land and woodlots with other shareholders).
During the 1760s, as Molly Ockett and others returned from Odanak and northern regions to find growing white settlements in Maine and New Hampshire, they encountered Europeans anxious to profit from the agriculture, forest, and mineral wealth of Indigenous homelands. Purchasing land from absentee proprietors, or, in some cases, land that was granted to them, settlers founded “Gateway towns” like Fryeburg and Conway, New Hampshire, which were hurriedly established, quickening the pace of new land grants to European settlers. The migration of whites to this region slowed but was not halted by the Revolution. Removed from the panic experienced in New England's older settler communities, these emerging backwoods settlements were relatively safe from British reprisals.
Oral histories of white settlers relate how Abenaki families, including those from Odanak, frequented these frontier settlements during the coldest months. They faced great odds in trying to maintain their culture amidst an ever-encroaching English population. Staying seasonally in bark wigwams near Fryeburg, Bethel, and other northern townships, Molly Ockett and her kin were part of these itinerant Abenaki survivors of war and land dispossession, numbering in the hundreds, who stay alive by hunting, fishing, fur trading, and selling wares and cures to whites.
Ockett made use of her traditional cultural skills and vast medicinal knowledge to forge important and useful relationships with white newcomers, which served her well throughout the remainder of her life. Stories of her curing white neighbors were passed down and Ockett became celebrated as a healer and medicine woman. Her traditional ecological knowledge and use of herbal cures earned her a reputation as "the great Indian doctress." The shortage of doctors or lack of medical knowledge in northern settlements made her services widely sought by settlers around Newry and Riley Plantation ("Ketchum"). Ockett successfully applied herbs into tonics, salves, or poultices, and shared her medicinal knowledge for making root beer and dyes. She was also sought after as a midwife, assisting with the birth of Andover’s first white child, born to her friend Sarah Merrill in 1790.
Ockett moved temporarily to Vermont around the turn of the eighteenth century, where she continued to employ her medicinal skills to cure dysentery and other ailments. In gratitude for saving Colonel Clark’s life, he invited Ockett to live with his family in Boston, which she did for a year, around 1800, before growing homesick for her northern homeland. Clark helped build her a wigwam at Rumford Falls, where he frequently visited and brought her provisions. Perhaps the best known story of Ockett's healing abilities was her curing of the infant Hannibal Hamlin, in 1809-10, near Bethel, Maine, who became Abraham Lincoln's first vice-president.
In the decades leading up to Maine’s statehood (1820), many northern settlements became compact towns, with a proliferation of farms and logging along the Androscoggin and other major regional rivers. After the Revolution, these incursions further displaced the Abenaki, most of whom were forced to release their hold on their ancestral lands and mobilize to more remote northern parts of Maine, New Hampshire, and Canada. Ockett was living near Upper Richardson Lake, north of Andover, Maine, with the Abenaki chief Metallak and his kin-group early in 1816 when she became ill. She remained in Andover, Maine, where white friends tended to her during her final days. She was buried in the Andover cemetery, where a head stone was finally erected in 1867.[256]
In the following section we look at how some communities wrestle with their legacy of brutality and the choices people make about whether, what, and how to remember the past.
Deeper Dive: Contemporary Memorialization
During the struggle to rename the high school in Halifax [258] and remove the statue in Halifax, articles reflecting a wide range of opinions were published about Cornwallis and the choices he made. Here are some excerpts from two diverging points of view that appear in an article by Tim Bousquet.
Canadian historian Jack Granatstein, interviewed by the Canadian Press … [stated] “[p]eople, who by our standards today, are seen as viciously anti-Indian, in the 1700s were seen as great patriotic soldiers who made it safe for whites to live in Nova Scotia…. You can’t apply today’s standards to people of the past. That just gets silly.”
This statement, by Bousquet, argues differently.
And to claim some sort of historical “objectivity” by saying, as [Atlantic Canada’s talk show host] Rick Howe does, that “in those days wars were nasty affairs with atrocities committed by all sides,” is not objective, but rather a perverse reading of history. The Mi’kmaq and Europeans did not meet on some vacant island in the middle of the Atlantic and decided to pointlessly murder each other. The Mi’kmaq did not invite Europeans to come here to conduct biological warfare against natives or put a bounty on their scalps.
Rather, Europeans came here for their own geopolitical reasons of empire, and were happy to slaughter whoever stood in their way in order to control the land and all its products. The objection, repeated dozens of times on Twitter, that “the Mi’kmaq killed Europeans too!” is a suggestion that the Natives weren’t behaving kindly enough to the people slaughtering them and stealing their land. Any resistance to genocide is considered bad behaviour, still more proof that the natives are subhuman beings and deserved everything they got. This argument is, in a word, racist.
To conclude, Bousquet poses a challenge to his community.
Here in Halifax … the suggestion that we simply not honour a genocidal agent of imperialism is met with disdainful reaction, and absurd process issues: We can’t change the name to everything, so we can’t change the name of anything; Where does it stop—do we have to change the name of anything anyone objects to? Here’s a suggestion: How ‘bout we in the white community work through those issues in a spirit of kindness and cooperation with the Mi’kmaq community, give pause and deep thought to how we have benefitted from historic wrongs, and how we have a responsibility to create a better world, instead of smugly accepting our position of privilege as the natural, inviolable state of things. [259]
Things to Consider
In the final lesson of the Bounty Teacher’s Guide, we look beyond the Dawnland at scalp bounties in other places of the United States. Some of these were state-sponsored while others were funded by wealthy landowners. It is worth noting that California and Colorado, for example, combined both insofar as state actors and private citizens provided monetary incentives to encourage scalp-bounty hunters. While our research into scalp bounties in the Dawnland has generated detailed information about who issued the acts and proclamations, names of tribal nations that were targeted, how many people in the targeted groups were scalped, who scalped them, and how much scalpers were paid, the information we provide about other colonies and states is more limited. The data that follow are meant to inspire future researchers who we hope will dig deep into local historical archives.
Work Cited
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