Bounty Systems in Ckuwaponahkik, the Dawnland and the Eastern Woodlands
This timeline covers the period between 1675-1765, spanning what are often known as the Six Anglo-Abenaki Wars. These conflicts (with the exception of the first, which we refer to as Pometacomet’s Resistance/King Philip’s War) were largely fought between colonial English and French forces for control of what is today northern New England and Eastern Canada.
Colonial governments deployed divide-and-conquer strategies, recruiting Native allies and fighters with promises of payments and protection. Wabanaki and other Indigenous peoples mounted campaigns of resistance against increasing settler colonial encroachment, dispossession, punitive laws, and violations of vital resources, including hunting, fishing and subsistence lands.
In this timeline, we present evidence about land and cash bounties granted to thousands of soldiers, militia and settler colonists (and/or their heirs) who participated in and/or profited from wars and bounty expeditions, resulting in scalping, killing, capturing and/or enslaving thousands of Indigenous children, women, and men in the northeastern Dawnland (later called New England).
During this period, no fewer than 81 scalp bounty acts/laws were issued by the colonial governments and colonists of Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Nova Scotia, resulting in at least 148 recorded claims, including 42 for land. The greatest number of scalp bounty laws (24) were issued during the 5th Anglo-Abenaki War (1744-50).
More than £9,000 in bounty payments were made from public treasuries of the colonial governments, and hundreds of thousands of acres of land granted, to thousands of individuals and groups who petitioned to found settler townships, between 1675-1765.