xliv Introduction.

lished in the gazettes of the neighboring provinces, that the Maryland govern-
ment would give rewards of £50 for each enemy Indian scalp. This was felt
by the house to be important as the Catawbas in ignorance of this large reward
had recently carried scalps to Virginia where only a £10 bounty was paid. The
message as first presented to the Assembly by its committee contained a para-
graph reflecting upon the Governor for his alleged delay in presenting the letter
of the Cherokee chief to the Assembly, but this offensive reference was
deleted in the Lower House by a vote of 20 to 10 (pp. 106-107). The Gover-
nor then sent a message to the Lower House asking what was to be done there-
after towards supplying provisions to friendly Indians who might come into
the Province. The house in a petulent reply side-stepping the question declared
that as it was about to adjourn, it regretted that such a trivial question should
be addressed to it at this time (pp. 112-113).

The Governor at the September-December, 1757, session transmitted to
the Lower House seven letters from Captain Joseph Chapline who had been
with the Maryland troops on the frontier. These letters, written between
April 23 and July 30, 1757, deal in great part with Indian affairs and are of
considerable interest to students of frontier warfare (pp. 335-341).

At the February, 1756, session, the Assembly had appropriated £4,000 to be
applied in great part to rewards for Indian scalps at the rate of £10 each; and
at the September 1756 session, this bounty had been raised to £50. The
accounts of the agents under the Supply acts when audited as of November 11,
1757, showed that only two scalps at £10 and four scalps at £50 each, had been
claimed and paid for, and with the commissions allowed the agents, involved
an expenditure of only £329: 10:0. At the September-December, 1757, ses-
sion the £20,000 Service or Supply bill which was rejected by the Upper
House, had set aside £2,000 for cultivating the friendship of the southern
Indians. The Lower House in a message to the Governor, December 5, 1757,
expressed its concern that a measure so conducive to the safety of the province
could have been rejected by the Upper House (p. 305). To this message the
Governor replied that the Honorable Mr. Aitken, whom the King had recently
appointed sole agent and superintendent of Indian Affairs in the Southern
District of America, had written to him that it was contrary to the treaties with
the Cherokees for them to demand or expect scalp rewards, and the Governor
submitted Aitken's letter to this effect. Aitken, while not opposing the pay-
ment of scalp bounties to whites, said that with the Indians these rewards had
given rise to numerous abuses such as the scalping for bounties of friendly
Indians and even of women and children, and then cited several instances of
the murder of friendly Chicasaws, Creeks, and Tuscaroras by Cherokees, who
had the cunning to make four scalps out of one and to claim as many bounties.
He adds that the Earl of Loudoun, Sir William Johnson of New York, and
General Montcalm all detested the practice of giving rewards to Indians for
scalps (pp. 309-312).

The animus of the Lower House may be well gauged by its refusal on
December 8, by vote of 24 to 17, to change the scalp bounty (p. 321). Had
the calls upon the treasury been greater its attitude might have differed. A few