Member-only story
None Dare Call it Treason
Conflict of interest disclosure:
My younger son joined the Marine Corps after high school, he testified at his disability hearing, “to serve my country.” At the time he was medically retired from the Army, he was a noncommissioned officer with two combat tours in Iraq and his unit was preparing for deployment to Afghanistan.
Administration of bounty programs on human beings has always been tricky. Other animals are easier because the typical bounty situation is that people are being menaced and they lack the technology or the skills to defend themselves, and so the bounty is like calling an exterminator. The proof of performance is simple. Sometimes the skins even provide a parallel cash flow, when the entire skin need not be turned in as evidence. All very tidy, to the extent death can be tidy.
Humans, not so much. Bounties on the human beings who occupied North America began in 17th century New Netherland and ended in the 19th century somewhere in California. It’s hard to tell exactly where or when because bounties on Indians were offered at so many levels of government.
