GRIM COMMERCE: SCALPS, BOUNTIES, AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF TROPHY-TAKING IN THE EARLY AMERICAN NORTHEAST, 1450-1770 by MARGARET HAIG ROOSEVELT SEWALL BALL B.A., Wesleyan University, l994 M.T.S., Harvard Divinity School, 1998 A thesis submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Colorado in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of History 2013 This thesis entitled: Grim Commerce: Scalps, Bounties, and the Transformation of Trophy-Taking in the Early American Northeast, 1450-1770 written by Margaret Haig Roosevelt Sewall Ball has been approved for the Department of History Professor Fred W. Anderson Professor Lee V. Chambers Date The final copy of this thesis has been examined by the signatories, and we Find that both the content and the form meet acceptable presentation standards Of scholarly work in the above mentioned discipline. ABSTRACT Ball, Margaret Haig Roosevelt Sewall (Ph.D., History) Grim Commerce: Scalps, Bounties, and the Transformation of Trophy-Taking in the Early American Northeast, 1450-1770 Thesis directed by Professor Fred W. Anderson Although most historians have evaded its study, postmortem mutilation had an extensive history on both sides of the Atlantic. Corporeal trophies communicated a variety of meanings to the people of Early America: mutilating a corpse conveyed affective power, marked physical and cultural boundaries between groups, and conferred spiritual authority.1 When European and Indian cultures met, these trophies formed an important aspect of their (mis)communication. Certain body parts acquired greater social and economic significance, developing into an exchange of human scalps for monetary rewards with dire implications for intercultural relations in North America. Colonial scalp bounties fused the “logic of elimination” with targeted violence.2 The rewards simultaneously produced racialized enemies and constructed whiteness as the unifying principle for people of the British (and later Amercian) empire who emerged from the Seven Years War as “the white people.”3 Nineteenth-century “image-makers” extended these semiotics into the language of a new American empire: an empire that defined its boundaries through racialized violence.4 1 See: Daniel Bornstein, "The Uses of the Body: The Church and the cult of Santa Margherita da Cortona," Church History, 62, no. 2 (1993); Katherine Verdery, The Political Lives of Dead Bodies: ReBurial and Postsocialist Change (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999); Vincent Brown, The Reaper's Garden: Death and Power in the World of Atlantic Slavery (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008). 2 Patrick Wolfe, “Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native,” Journal of Genocide Research 8, no. 4 (December 2006): 387-388. 3 Peter Silver, Our Savage Neighbors: How Indian War Transformed Early America (New York: W. W. Norton, 2007) 114-115. 4 Billington, Land of Savagery, used the phrase “image-makers” to refer to novelists, illustrators, journalists and others who helped construct the image of the West in American culture during the nineteenth century. To Daron and Auben; yes, Mommy’s done now. v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Late nights alone in front of a computer screen can make “dissertating” appear a solitary sport. Of course, nothing could be farther from the truth. I am grateful for the financial support I have received from the University of Colorado Graduate School’s Emerson/Lowe fund, the History Department Fellowships including the Bean Fellowship, the Buffalo Bill Historical Society’s CIWAS Fellowship, and the Air Force History and Museum Program’s Palace Acquire Tuition Assistance funding. Archivists at the Massachusetts Historical Society, the Filson Historical Society, the Newberry Library, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the Pennsylvania Library Company, the Huntington Library, the Buffalo Bill Historical Society, the Denver Public Library, the Jefferson National Expansion Monument Archives, and the United States Military Academy Library and Archives tracked down endless items from their collections so that I could study them. I remain eternally grateful for the enduring patience, thoughtful critiques, and constant encouragement I received from Professor Fred W. Anderson and Professor Lee Chambers. I could never have completed this without them. I probably would have left graduate school without Professor Chambers’s steady mentoring. I am also grateful to the members of my committee: Professors Virginia Anderson, Douglas Bamforth, and Elizabeth Fenn. Their comments and questions ensured a much better product than I could have hoped. I would have committed far more graduate student sins without the gentle guidance of Scott Miller, Graduate Secretary extraordinaire, who kept me in line – most of the time. Mr. George (“Skip”) Bradley III, Command Historian at Air Force Space Command, has afforded me more kindness than I vi probably deserve to permit me to complete this project. My father-by-choice, Stuart Rubinow provided last-minute research assistance, without which no appendices would support this work. I am grateful for the daily chats with my mother, Lucy Sewall, who kept me on track and out of bleak pessimism, especially toward the end. Professor Eric T. L. Love was unable to serve on my committee. I am grateful for his example of excellence in the face of dire circumstance. He reminded me that I am truly fortunate for the opportunity to pursue a graduate degree. He also demonstrated that, in the end, it is the quality of our relationships with one another that matters the most. I am most grateful to those who have invested the most in this project: thank you Daron and Auben for your patience. Daron took on far more than he bargained for and Auben is, of course, the reason I do everything. vii CONTENTS CHAPTER I. Introduction …………………………………………………………………………. 1 II. Pre-Encounter Cultural Frameworks ………………………………………………... 8 III. “Their Great Friend [Will] Make War on Their Enemies,” Bodies in Contact, 1550- 1650 ………………………………………………………………………….. 35 IV. The Seventeenth Century and the Beginning of Bounties ……………………….... 67 V. “Suitable Incouragement” and the Colonial Scalp Hunter ……………………….. 100 VI. Empire and Extermination ………………………………………………………... 131 VII. Conclusion: Race after Revolution ……………………………………………….. 163 BIBLIOGRAPHY …………………………………………………………………………… 175 APPENDIX A. Colonial Equivalents to £100 Sterling …………………………………………... 236 B. Massachusetts Bounties for Wolves and Wild Cats …………………………….. 242 C. Massachusetts Indian Scalp Bounties …………………………………………… 244 viii TABLES TABLE 1. Money of Account Denominations in the 1690s …………………………………….. 94 2. Rates of Exchange, 1696 and 1697 ………………………………………………….. 94 3. Comparative Colonial Bounty Values, 1696 and 1697 ……………………………… 94 4. Massachusetts Provincials’ Wages in Lawful Money, 1757 ……………………….. 143 ix FIGURES FIGURE 1. Engraved Skull Gorget …………………………………………………………. 23 2. Scalp Stretched on Wood Hoop …………………………………………………23 3. “Pillaging of Churches by Calvinists” …………………………………………. 55 4. “The Savages Let Loose” ………………………………………………………171 1 CHAPTER I Introduction As mediator and locus of our individual experience in the world, the body provides a potent vehicle for communicating cultural meanings. Its very ubiquity complicates the message, multiplying and enriching those meanings. For European and indigenous peoples in early America, the human body provided “the ultimate site of cultural identity and intercultural contention” that shaped their understandings of themselves and each other.1 Although most historians have evaded its study, postmortem mutilation had an extensive history on both sides of the Atlantic and appears in a startling number of sources. Corporeal trophies communicated a variety of meanings to the people of Early America: mutilating a corpse conveyed affective power, marked physical and cultural boundaries between groups, and conferred spiritual authority.2 When European and Indian cultures met, these trophies formed an important aspect of their (mis)communication. Certain body parts acquired greater social and economic significance, developing into an exchange of human scalps for monetary rewards with dire implications for intercultural relations in North America. Europeans had mutilated their dead often as a sign of state power, epitomized by the practice of drawing and quartering an English traitor. On this side of the Atlantic, communities displayed and exchanged scalps, hands and other trophies as symbols of alliance. Many performed elaborate ceremonies intended to incorporate these items as surrogates for the slain, 1 Joyce E. Chaplin, Subject Matter: Technology, the Body, and Science on the Anglo-American Frontier, 1500-1676 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), 270. 2 See: Daniel Bornstein, "The Uses of the Body: The Church and the cult of Santa Margherita da Cortona," Church History, 62, no. 2 (1993) Katherine Verdery, The Political Lives of Dead Bodies: ReBurial and Postsocialist Change (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999); Vincent Brown, The Reaper's Garden: Death and Power in the World of Atlantic Slavery (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008). 2 ritually reviled them as vengeance against the dead, or both.3 Colonial interactions transformed these expressions into a language expressing economic relationships, domination, and cultural resistance. This study traces that process among the major cultural groups of the northeast: Algonquians of the coastal and riverine