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Scalping is the act of removing another person's scalp or a portion of their scalp. It can be done to someone after death, or on someone alive, in which case it may or may not be deadly. Scalping is applied to provide a portable proof or trophy of prowess in war.[citation needed] Scalping is also associated with frontier warfare in North America, and was practiced by Native Americans, colonists, and frontiersmen over centuries of violent conflict. William Brandon and Keith Rosenberg, Native American specialists state that some Mexican (e.g. Sonora and Chihuahua) and American territories (e.g. Arizona) paid bounty for enemy Native American scalps.[1] Contrary to formerly popular beliefs, scalping was far from universal amongst Native Americans.[2]

Pontiac's Rebellion was a war that was launched in 1763 by a loose confederation of elements of Native American tribes primarily from the Great Lakes region, the Illinois Country, and Ohio Country who were dissatisfied with British policies in the Great Lakes region after the British victory in the French and Indian War (1754–1763). Warriors from numerous tribes joined the uprising in an effort to drive British soldiers and settlers out of the region. The war is named after the Ottawa leader Pontiac, the most prominent of many native leaders in the conflict. The war began in May 1763 when Native Americans, offended by the policies of British General Jeffrey Amherst, attacked a number of British forts and settlements. Eight forts were destroyed, and hundreds of colonists were killed or captured, with many more fleeing the region. Hostilities came to an end after British Army expeditions in 1764 led to peace negotiations over the next two years. The Natives were unable to drive away the British, but the uprising prompted the British government to modify the policies that had provoked the conflict.

Slavery in the United States lasted as a legal institution until the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1865. It had its origins with the first English colonization of North America in Virginia in 1607, although African slaves were brought to Spanish Florida as early as the 1560s.[1] Most slaves were black and were held by whites, although some Native Americans and free blacks also held slaves; there was a small number of white slaves as well.[citation needed] Slaves were spread to the areas where there was good quality soil for large plantations of high value cash crops, such as cotton, sugar, and coffee. The majority of slaveholders were in the southern United States, where most slaves were engaged in an efficient machine-like gang system of agriculture, with farms of fifteen or more slaves proving to be far more productive than farms without slaves.[citation needed] Also, these large groups of slaves were thought to work more efficiently if guarded by a managerial class called overseers to ensure that the slaves did not waste a second of movement. From 1654 until 1865, slavery for life was legal within the boundaries of much of the present United States.[2] Before the widespread establishment of chattel slavery (outright ownership of the slave), much labor was organized under a system of bonded labor known as indentured servitude. This typically lasted for several years for white and black alike, and it was a means of using labor to pay the costs of transporting people to the colonies.[3] By the 18th century, court rulings established the racial basis of the American incarnation of slavery to apply chiefly to Black Africans and people of African descent, and occasionally to Native Americans. In part because of the success of tobacco as a cash crop in the Southern colonies, its labor-intensive character caused planters to import more slaves for labor by the end of the 17th century than did the northern colonies. The South had a significantly high number and proportion of slaves in the population.[3] Twelve million Africans were shipped to the Americas from the 16th to the 19th centuries.[4][5] Of these, an estimated 645,000 were brought to what is now the United States. The largest number were shipped to Brazil (see slavery in Brazil).[6] The slave population in the United States had grown to four million by the 1860 Census.[7] Slavery was one of the principal issues leading to the American Civil War. After the Union prevailed in the war, slavery was abolished throughout the United States with the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.[8]

Slavery in the United States

Squanto died a few days later in 1622 in Chatham, Massachusetts. He was buried in an unmarked grave in Plymouth's Burial Hill cemetery

1580s – November 1622

The Monongahela Valley was the site of a famous, if small, battle that was one of the first in the French and Indian War (Braddock Expedition). It resulted in a sharp defeat for British and Colonial forces against those of the French and their Native American allies.

Squanto was a Native American who helped the English colonists in Massachusetts develop agricultural techniques and served as an interpreter between the colonists and the Wampanoag.