👉 “Bounty” shows daily at the Old State House and can be viewed online
at the Upstander Project’s website, which also features a timeline and a
teacher’s guide to the film and the issues it deals with.
New film at Old State House highlights Cambridge’s ties to colonial ‘scalp bounties’
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| Spencer Phips’ scalp bounty proclamation issued in 1755. (Image: Penobscot Nation Museum) |
“Bounty,” the newly installed film at Boston’s Old State House, is only nine minutes long, but its powerful and disturbing message looms much larger for audiences. Whether tourists or locals, visitors to the Old State House usually expect to tour the 1713 building to glimpse the legislative history of Massachusetts, particularly the events and public debates surrounding the Stamp Act, the Boston Massacre and other aspects of Revolutionary history. Now part of Revolutionary Spaces, which also oversees the Old South Meeting House, the Old State House is sharing the history of brutal attacks on New England’s Indigenous peoples as part of Massachusetts colonial policy – a legacy that is surprising and unnerving to those used to a purely celebratory telling of the colony’s story.
The exhibit, housed in the Old State House’s council chamber, tells the story of so-called “scalp bounties” – one that has a direct connection to Cambridge as a whole and, in particular, to History Cambridge’s headquarters at 159 Brattle St. The adopted son of Sir William Phips, the first governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, Spencer Phips entered politics in his own right in 1721 when elected to the provincial assembly. His family connections had set Phips up for political and economic prominence and, several years after his graduation from Harvard in 1703, he bought a large tract that encompassed much of what is now East Cambridge and settled there with his family.
Phips was appointed to the governor’s council in 1721, and from 1732-1757 was the lieutenant governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, which included the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the Plymouth Colony, the Province of Maine, Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. During two periods (1749-53 and 1756-57) Phips served as acting governor while William Shirley was abroad.
As a prominent landowner and politician, Phips had set his children up to marry well; in the 1730s Phips’ daughter Rebecca married the up-and-coming merchant and land speculator Joseph Lee and settled into 159 Brattle St., known commonly as the Hooper-Lee-Nichols House. While we do not have direct evidence that this house, which serves as the headquarters of History Cambridge, was occupied by enslaved people on a permanent basis, we know that Joseph Lee and Rebecca Phips enslaved two men, Caesar and Mark Lee/Lewis, on other Massachusetts properties that they owned, and it is likely that one or both stayed with the Lees when they were at their Brattle Street property. Spencer Phips, too, was an enslaver, holding five people in bondage, so his children would have grown up expecting to be waited on by enslaved servants.
In addition to his land in Cambridge, Phips was part-owner of a large tract on what is now the central coast of Maine (then part of the Province of Massachusetts Bay). In 1719, the owners began to develop the land for white settlement to the objection of the local Abenaki People, who argued that their leaders had made land grants to the colonists without authorization from the tribe. Conflicts increased in the 1720s, leading to what is known as Dummer’s War from 1723-1727. For the next several decades, tensions flared between the Abenaki and the colonists, leading Shirley to declare war on the Abenaki in 1754.
In its declaration of war, Massachusetts made an exception for one group of Abenaki: the Penobscot People, whom the colonial government claimed were exempt from their attacks. In reality, the position of the Penobscot made them vulnerable to the same brutality at the hands of colonists as other Abenaki. In the ongoing colonial battles between the English and the French, Indigenous peoples were pressured to take sides; although the Penobscot desired to remain neutral, their geographic location meant that they could not escape colonial politics. Seen as pro-British by the French and pro-French by the Maine colonists, the Penobscot found themselves pushed increasingly toward French alliance because of incidents such as a 1755 attack by New England militiamen on a Penobscot fishing party.
In 1755, while Shirley was away from the colony, Phips issued a declaration of war against the Penobscot, offering cash rewards for each scalp of a Penobscot person turned into the colonial government. Phips’ proclamation put a value of 50 pounds for males over age 12, while women and male children under 12 were deemed to be worth 25 pounds and female children were worth 20 pounds. The next year, the colonial assembly voted to allow scalp bounties of up to 300 pounds – by far the largest sum ever offered in a wartime declaration. In 1759, Massachusetts Gov. Thomas Pownall seized control of the Penobscot River and the homelands of the Penobscot people by force.
Phips signed the declaration of war and the scalp bounty proclamation in the council chamber of the Old State House; in 2021, Upstander Project created a short film featuring several current-day Penobscot families reading the text of the proclamation aloud in the chamber. Penobscot Nation tribal ambassador Maulian Bryant emphasized the importance of not only telling the story of the Phips Proclamation, but doing so in the physical space where these and other decisions were made that so greatly affected the Penobscot and other Indigenous peoples:
It conveys this empowering sense of resilience and that Penobscot people, Indigenous people all over this country were not supposed to still be here. That there were very systematic attempts to exterminate our people in order to have our land taken. So the fact that we are still living here in our home, and we will grapple with this trauma and we will reflect on it and honor our ancestors, but we need to do that by being strong, proud Penobscot people. And this project was a way to reclaim some of that space.
History Cambridge is proud to partner with the Upstander Project to work toward the amplification of Indigenous voices and a broader understanding of local Indigenous histories during this Native American Heritage Month and well beyond.
🦃THANKS BRADFORD?
Plymouth still celebrates (of course)
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The first National Day of Mourning event was held on Thanksgiving Day, November 26, 1970 on Cole's Hill in Plymouth, Massachusetts. James delivered an amended speech[1] beside a statue of Ousamequin, including
| "We forfeited our country. Our lands have fallen into the hands of
the aggressor. We have allowed the white man to keep us on our knees.
What has happened cannot be changed, but today we must work towards a
more humane America, a more Indian America, where men and nature once
again are important; where the Indian values of honor, truth, and
brotherhood prevail.
|
The event was attended by close to 500 Native Americans from throughout the United States[1] and has been held annually on the fourth Thursday in November every year since. James' speech was one of the first public criticisms of the Thanksgiving story from Native American groups.[2]
DAY OF MOURNING: NOVEMBER 28, 2024
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