In 1851, the U.S. Army displayed Indian scalps in Stanislaus County, California. In Tehama County, California, U.S. military and local volunteers razed villages and scalped hundreds of men, women, and children.Scalping also occurred during the Sand Creek Massacre on November 29, 1864, during the American Indian Wars, when a 700-man force of U.S. Army volunteers destroyed the village of Cheyenne and Arapaho in southeastern Colorado Territory, killing and mutilating an estimated 70-163 Native Americans.An 1867 New York Times article reported that “settlers in a small town in Colorado Territory had recently subscribed $5,000 to a fund ‘for the purpose of buying Indian scalps (with $25 each to be paid for scalps with the ears on)’ and that the market for Indian scalps ‘is not affected by age or sex’.”The article noted this behavior was “sanctioned” by the U.S. federal government, and was modeled on patterns the U.S. had begun a century earlier in the “American East”.From one writer’s point of view, it was a “uniquely American” innovation that the use of scalp bounties in the wars against indigenous societies “became an indiscriminate killing process that deliberately targeted Indian non-combatants (including women, children, and infants), as well as warriors.”Some American states such as Arizona paid bounty for enemy Native American scalps.
