Chapter VIII · (continued 3)

On the 27th of September, 1776, a committee reported to the South Carolina Assembly, that it was "not advisable to hold Captive Indians as Slaves, but as an encouragement to those who shall distinguish themselves in the war against the Cherokees, they recommended the following rewards, to wit: For every Indian man killed, upon certificate thereupon given by the Commanding Officer, and the scalp produced as evidence thereof in Charlestown by the forces in the pay of the State, seventy-five pounds currency; For every Indian man prisoner one hundred pounds like money" (American Archives, 5th ser., iii. 32).

It is true that bounties had previously been offered in New York for scalps taken from the "enemy", but at the time of the Revolution New York and Massachusetts had apparently abandoned the policy of offering bounties for scalps. Abundant records show that they had been committed to this policy in earlier times. The Act of Assembly in South Carolina, the previous legislation in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maryland, and Virginia, and the subsequent legislation in Pennsylvania and Illinois, were directed exclusively against Indians. Penna. Colonial Records (xii. 311; xii. 632; xiii. 201). Laws of the Colonial and State Governments relating to Indians and Indian Affairs from 1633 to 1831 inclusive, with an appendix containing the proceedings of the Congress of the Confederation and the laws of Congress from 1800 to 1830 on the Same Subject (Washington city, 1832), p. 239. In the Pennsylvania Archives (iii. p. 199) there is a curious letter from the superintendent of Indian affairs in the Southern Department to the governor of Maryland, dated June 30, 1757, in which he says that several of the colonies are becoming fond of giving large rewards for scalps. If these rewards were confined to their own people he should consider it laudable, but as they are offered chiefly to Indians the case is very different. He says the Indians make several scalps out of one. The Cherokees in particular make four scalps out of one man killed. "Here are now", he adds, "twenty scalps hanging out to publick view which are well known to have been made out of five Frenchmen killed. What a sum (at £50 each) would they produce if carried to Maryland, where the artifice would not probably be discovered!" In early times in Maryland, the proof required from persons who had killed Indians, in order that the reward might be claimed, was the production of the right ear of the dead Indian. There was less opportunity to subdivide the ears, and thus multiply the bounties. The charge that the English paid bounties for scalps thus found its way naturally into the histories, and the officers who had been disciplined in the previous wars were probably ready to make such offers. Doddridge (Notes, 274) expresses the belief current on the frontier when he says, "The English government made allies of as many of the Indian nations as they could, and they imposed no restraint on their savage mode of warfare. On the contrary, the commandants at their posts along our Western frontiers received and paid the Indians for scalps and prisoners, thus, the skin of a white man's or even a woman's head served in the hands of the Indian as current coin, which he exchanged for arms and ammunition, for the further prosecution of his barbarous warfare." This belief found expression at the time, and worked its way into print. The Remembrancer gives a letter from Capt. Joseph Bowman "at a place called Illinois Kaskaskias, upon the Mississippi", dated July 30, 1778, in which we read: "The Indians meeting with daily supplies from the British officers, who offer them large bounties for our scalps" (Remembrancer, viii. p. 83). There is, however, better authority than rumors of this class to justify those authors who repeat this statement. When Governor Hamilton was captured at Vincennes, he was sent to Williamsburg, and his conduct was investigated by the Council of Virginia. In their report the Council say, "The board find that Governor Hamilton gave standing rewards for scalps, but offered none for prisoners, which induced the Indians, after making the captives carry their baggage into the neighborhood of the fort, there to put them to death, and carry in their scalps to the governor, who welcomed their return and success by a discharge of cannon" (Memoir, Correspondence, and Miscellanies from the Papers of Thomas Jefferson, ed. by Thomas Jefferson Randolph, Boston, 1830; 2d ed., vol. i. p. 456). Thus the official sanction of a board composed of prominent men of good reputation has been given to the statement. In weighing the value of this decision we must not forget that Hamilton was the special object of hatred to the Virginians. Col. George Rogers Clarke, in an official communication to the governor of Virginia, from Kaskaskia, Feb. 3, 1779, speaks of "A late meneuv^r of the Famous Hair Buyer General Henry Hamilton, Esqr., Lieut.-Governour of De Troit", etc., etc. (Calendar of the State Papers of Virginia, p. 315). C. W. Butterfield edited a reprint of A Short Biography of John Leith (Lancaster, Ohio, 1831) as Leith's Narrative (Cincinnati, 1883), and in this new edition (p. 39) we find an account of a brutal murder, by Indians, of a prisoner at Sandusky: "They knocked him down with tomahawks, cut off his head, and fixed it on a pole erected for the purpose; when commenced a scene of yelling, dancing, singing, and rioting." To this part of Leith's narrative the annotator attaches a note, in which he states that a part of the "importance of this recital is in a historical sense;" "that captives were brought to the points contiguous to Detroit, and then tomahawked and scalped, the direct result of Hamilton's barbarous policy of offering rewards for scalps, but paying none for prisoners." The language of the note is ambiguous, but a natural interpretation of its purpose would be that the statement in the text was relied upon to prove the charges against Hamilton. I presume this prisoner was scalped,—it would probably have been recorded by Leith as a remarkable event if he had escaped being scalped,—but a statement which omits mention of the fact can hardly be cited as evidence against Hamilton.

The Virginia Council, while they published no evidence bearing upon the question of Hamilton's buying scalps, were more explicit when it came to his inciting Indians to acts of war:—

"Williamsburgh, Va. In Council, June 16, 1779. Case of Hamilton, Dejaine La Mothe." "They find that Hamilton has executed the task of inciting the Indians to perpetrate their accustomed cruelties on the citizens of these States, without distinction of age, sex, or condition, with an eagerness and activity which evince that the general nature of his charge harmonized with his particular disposition; they should have been satisfied, from the other testimony adduced, that these enormities were committed by savages acting under his commission, but the number of his Proclamations, which at different times were left in houses, the inhabitants of which were killed or Carried away by Indians, one of which Proclamations, under the hand and seal of Governor Hamilton, is in possession of the Board, puts the fact beyond doubt", etc. (Remembrancer, viii. p. 337). "The narrative of the Capture and treatment of John Dodge by the English at Detroit" was made public about the same time (Remembrancer, viii. p. 73). The portion of Dodge's story which relates to the reception by Hamilton of Indians returning with scalps and prisoners, bears a striking resemblance to the report of the Council. Dodge states that Hamilton become so enraged at him that the governor "offered £100 for his scalp or his body." In another place he says: "These sons of Britain offered no reward for prisoners, but they gave the Indians twenty dollars a scalp", etc., etc.; and again: "One of these parties returning with a number of women and children's scalps and their prisoners, they were met by the commandant of the fort, and after the usual demonstrations of joy, delivered their scalps, for which they were paid."

Some correspondence passed between Jefferson and the governor of Detroit on the question of Hamilton's treatment as a prisoner, in which Jefferson dwells at length upon Hamilton's responsibility for the acts of the Indians, but it is to be remarked that no charge is made against Hamilton of paying bounties for scalps (Calendar of State Papers of Virginia, i. p. 321). Before the British government is finally convicted of having offered bounties for scalps, it is just that other evidence should be adduced than such affidavits as that of Moses Younglove (Campbell, Tryon County, 2d ed., p. 116), who swears that he "was informed by several sergeants-orderly for General St. Leger that twenty dollars were offered in general orders for every American scalp." The mere showing of scalps at headquarters does not necessarily imply that the Indians were to be paid for them (Ibid. p. 307). According to Campbell (Ibid. p. 117), Col. Gansevoort, in a letter, confirms the statement that twenty dollars were offered by St. Leger for every American scalp. Col. Gansevoort, besieged in Fort Stanwix, relied of course upon some other person for this statement. It is probably the Younglove story in another shape. It must not be forgotten that St. Leger ordered Lt. Bird "not to accept a capitulation, because the force of whites under Bird's command was not large enough to restrain the Indians from barbarity and carnage."

It adds little force to the evidence that we find similar allegations against the British in the class of books represented by Seaver's Life of Mary Jemison (p. 114), (various editions,—see Field's Indian Bibliography, nos. 1,380-81). In a similar manner, Simms (Frontiersmen, i. p. 10) cites a letter-writer as saying that the price per scalp was eight dollars; and Jenkins (Wyoming Memorial, p. 151) charges Burgoyne with opening a market for scalps at ten dollars each. Simms (Schoharie County, p. 578) says that a certificate, signed by John Butler, concerning certain scalps taken by "Kayingwaarto, the Sanakee chief", was found upon the body of an Indian killed during the Sullivan campaign. The details of the descriptions easily enable us to identify the scalps referred to in the certificate. An excellent local authority (Ketchum's Buffalo, i. 327, 329) analyzes the story thus "Gi-en-gwah-toh in Seneca is identical with Say-en-qua-ragh-ta in Mohawk, and is another spelling of the name in the certificate.... It is historically certain that the age, if nothing else, would preclude the possibility of Sayenquaraghta's being the person who wounded and scalped Capt. Greg and his corporal near Fort Stanwix in 1778. And it is equally certain that Sayenquaraghta was not killed by a scouting party of Sullivan's army in 1779, but was alive and well at Niagara in 1780, and came to reside at Buffalo Creek in 1781." The incident sought to be identified with this receipt was not only one of the most striking among the events of the border war, but the Indian actor appears to have been equally prominent. Butler makes especial mention of Brant and Kiangarachta—probably the same name as Gi-en-gwah-toh or Sayenquaraghta—in his account of the battle of Newtown (Sparks MSS.).

If we are forced to such evidence as this against the British government, we unfortunately find ourselves confronted with testimony of a like character against the Americans. Guy Johnson writes to Germain (N. Y. Col. Docs., viii. 740): "Some of the American colonies went further by fixing a price for scalps." Again it is said (Amer. Archives, 4th, v. 1102): "Seneca sachems assert that Oneidas want Butler's scalp, and that General Schuyler offered $250 for his person or scalp." Thomas Gummersall declared at Staten Island, Aug. 6, 1776 (Amer. Archives, 5th, i. 866), that "Mr. Schuyler, a rebel general, invited Sir John Johnson down, promising him protection, and at the same time employed the Indian messenger, in case he refused, to bring his scalp, for which he was to have a reward of one hundred dollars." It might, perhaps, be claimed that the bounties offered by South Carolina justified the first of these counter-assertions by the English, but I presume there would be no hesitation in classing these statements, as a whole, among those which were especially prepared for the purpose of influencing public opinion.

Before leaving this subject, the reader may need to be warned against a fabrication of Franklin, which has deceived many. Sparks speaks of Franklin "occasionally amusing himself in composing and printing, by means of a small set of types and a press he had in his house, several of his light essays, bagatelles, or jeux d'esprit, written chiefly for the amusement of his friends. Among these were the following, printed on a half-sheet of coarse paper, so as to imitate as much as possible a portion of a Boston newspaper", which he gave out as a Supplement to the Boston Independent Chronicle of March 12, 1782. This pretended newspaper contained what purported to be an extract from a letter from Captain Gerrish, of the New England militia, dated Albany, March 7, 1782, which reads as follows: "The peltry taken in the expedition will, you see, amount to a good deal of money. The possession of this booty at first gave us pleasure; but we were struck with horror to find among the packages eight large ones, containing scalps of our unhappy country-folks, taken prisoners in the three last years by the Seneka Indians from the inhabitants of the frontiers of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, and sent by them as a present to Colonel Haldimand, governor of Canada, in order to be by him transmitted to England. They were accompanied by the following curious letter to that gentleman;" which is given under the signature of James Crawfurd, and affords a detailed account of the contents of each package. This fictitious Supplement was reprinted as genuine in Almon's Remembrancer. In the first edition of Campbell's Annals of Tryon County it was printed in the Appendix as genuine, and copied from a newspaper published in Dutchess County during the Revolution (Ibid., 2d ed., 307). It was also reprinted in Rhode Island Historical Tracts (no. 7, p. 94, note I). It was exposed by Sparks, by Parton in his Life of Franklin (ii. p. 437), by Campbell in his second edition of the Annals of Tryon County, and by Col. Stone in the Introduction to his Brant (i. p. xvi.). In a note Col. Stone spoke of the document as "long believed and recently revived and included in several works of authentic history." There are copies of the original fabrication in the Stevens Collection of Frankliniana (Dept. of State at Washington; Stevens's Hist. Coll., i. p. 168); and in the Boston Public Library (Franklin Collection, p. 12).