Millheim Journal. [volume] (Millheim, Pa.) 1876-1984, 1883-06-28

Prices Paid for Them tn Colonial Times
Big Premium sn Dead Indians.

Prices Paid for Them in Colonial Times
A Big Premium on Dead Indians.
The taking Of scalps came to be a
recognized part of colonial warfar,
Hannah Dustin, who escaped from
Indian captivity in 1893, took ten
scalps with her own hand, and was
paid for them. Captain Church,
undertaking his expedition against
the eastern Indians, in l705, after the
Deerfeld massacre, announced that he
had not hitherto permitted the scalp
ing of "Canada men," but should
thenceforth allow it. In 1922, when
the Massachusetts colony sent an eXpe-
dition against the village Of praying
Indians" founded by Father Rasle.
they offered for each scalp bounty of
SIS, afterward increased to el00; and
this inhumanity was so far carried out
that the French priest himself was one
of the victims. jeremiah Bumstead,
of Boston, made this entry in his alma
nae in the same year: "Aug. %, 28
Indian scalps brought to Boston, one
of which was Bombazen's Gan Indian
chief) and one fryer Rallies" Two
years after, the celebrated but inappro-
priately named Captain Lovewell, the
foremost Indian fighter of his region,
came upon ten Indians asleep round a
pond; he and his men killed and
scalped them all, and entered Dover
New Hampshire, bearing the ten
scalps stretched on hoops and elevated
on poles. After receiving an ovation
in Dover they went by water to Boston,
and were paid thousand pounds for
their snalps. Yet Lovewell's party
was always accompanied by a chaplain,
and had prayers every morning and
evening.
The most painful aspect of the
whole practice lies in the fact that it
was not confined to those actually en-
gagged in fighting, but that the colonial
authorities actually established tariff
of prices for scalps, including even
non-combatants-so much for mans.
so much for woman's, so much for a
child's. DIR. Ellis has lately pointed
out the striking circumstance that
whereas William Penn declared the
person of an Indian jo.be sacred" his
grandson in 1864 offered 1884 for the
scalp of an Indian man, ,$l30 for that of
a boy under ten, and $50 for that of a
woman or girl. The habit doubtless
began in the fury of retaliation, and
was continued in order to conciliate
Indian allies; and when bounties were
offered to them, the white volunteers
naturally claimed a share. But there
is no doubt that Puritan theology
helped the adoption of the practice.
1t was partly because the Indian was
held to be something worse than a
beast that he was treated as being at
least a beast. The truth was that he
was viewed as Il fiend, and there could
not be much scruple about using inhu-
manities against demon. Cotton
Mather calls Satan 'the old landlord
of the American wilderness, and says
in his ''Magnalia:" i'These Parts were
then covered with Nations of Bar
barous Indians and 1nfdels, in whom
the. Prince of the Power of
the Air did work as a Spirit; nor
could it be expected that Nations
of Wretches whose whole religion
was the most Explicit sort of
Devil-Worship should not be acted by
the Devil to engage in some early and
bloody Action for the Extinction of a
Plantation so contrary to his Interests
as that of New England now
T. w. HigginSon, IN Harper'S.