The Phips Bounty Proclamation
A Price on Native Lives
You are standing outside the Old State House, the seat of colonial government in Massachusetts. In 1749, six English colonists killed a Wabanaki man in Wiscasset Harbor and wounded two others. Not one of them was convicted.
In 1755, Spencer Phips, Lieutenant Governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, issued what became known as the Phips Bounty Proclamation. It declared the Penobscot people to be “enemies, rebels, and traitors” to the Crown, and called on all of “his Majesty’s Subjects of this Province to Embrace all opportunities of pursuing, captivating, killing, and Destroying all and every of the aforesaid Indians.”
The bounties were precise. Fifty pounds for a living male Penobscot captive aged twelve or older. Forty pounds for the scalp of a Penobscot male aged twelve or older. Twenty-five pounds for the scalp of a Penobscot woman. Twenty pounds for the scalp of a child under twelve. To put this in context: a schoolteacher in colonial Massachusetts earned between sixty and one hundred twenty pounds a year. The government of Massachusetts was offering the equivalent of months of wages for the scalp of a Native child.
The Phips Proclamation was one of five bounties issued by colonial authorities in Boston in 1755 alone. Between 1675 and 1757, an estimated sixty-five scalp proclamations were issued in the Province of Massachusetts Bay. The word “redskin,” still used as a sports team name well into the twenty-first century, is believed by many scholars to derive directly from the bloody trade in Native scalps.
The Phips Proclamation contributed to the near-destruction of the Wabanaki Confederacy, which had once included between sixteen and thirty tribes. Four tribes remain in Maine today. It has never been formally repealed.
FEATURED AT THIS STOP
"PRICE OF A PEOPLE"
Mwalim DaPhunkee Professor
VIEW LYRICS
Price of a people
Rivers ran silver with the whispers of our names
Came with fire in their pockets and death in their claims
Like sparrows children hid under the pines
The earth drank their fear while the gold counted time
Smoke curled like ghosts where the villages used to stand
Gold in their pockets, muskets in their hands
Price of a people
What a price to pay
Like shadows we ran through the night when the law looked away
And the crown paid for blood and our hearts would not sway
Price of a people
What a price to pay
Roots hold the stories that the wind cannot erase
Flames keep the memory alive in every place
Like rivers, our voices run through time and space
Through smoke and flame, through dark of night
The truth remains the same
Price of a people
The truth remains the same
Price of a people
READ BIO
Coming from long family lines of West Indian/Bajan (Barbados) and Mashpee Wampanoag oral traditionalists, it was of little surprise that Mwalim would tell stories to his classmates in nursery school and kindergarten, or that he began winning awards for storytelling in the 7th grade, and city-wide short-story contests in high school. While in college, he began his career as a storyteller and spoken-word artist; interweaving storytelling with a life long love of music as a violist, pianist, percussionist, and singer. Playing Carnegie Hall before the age of 14 and -at 16 -becoming one of the youngest session players in EMI history- Mwalim’s story is a rich and multi-dimensional one. After completing his MS in Film Boston University he studied theater arts education and playwriting at New African Company in Boston. His plays began getting productions in Boston and after a reading at the 1999 National Black Theatre Festival, his plays and performances pieces began receiving productions throughout the USA and Canada as well as the UK and Caribbean.
For over 30 years as a performer, teaching artist and curriculum development consultant, Mwalim has taught theater and language arts as well as music for private and public schools, community programs, arts academies, colleges, and conferences throughout the United States and Canada. His stages and classrooms have included theaters, arenas, nightclubs, schools, libraries, museums, community centers, festivals, street corners, powwows, colleges, temples, jails, and churches. Mwalim is a recipient of numerous awards, fellowships and grants for theater, music, and media arts; including the Ira Aldridge Fellowship, New York Theatre Forum, Osborne Trust Fellowship, Yen Fellowship, and the Healey Grant, He has been the Playwright-In-Residence at New African Company in Boston since 2004. He is the keyboardist and resident songwriter for the 6-time Grammy nominated band The GroovaLottos. Mwalim is a tenured professor of English and the former Director of Black Studies at UMass Dartmouth.
References
- Phips Bounty Proclamation — Upstander Project
- Phips Bounty Proclamation — Maine Indian Tribal-State Commission
- Bonnie D. Newsom and Jamie Bissonette-Lewey, “Wabanaki Resistance and Healing” — Landscapes of Violence, Vol. 2, No. 1 (2012)
- King Philip’s War and the Cultural Landscape of Boston — Mass Humanities