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).
CHAPTER IX.
THE WEST,