Bounty (reward)
Encyclopedia
Payment
A payment is the transfer of wealth from one party to another. A payment is usually made in exchange for the provision of goods, services or both, or to fulfill a legal obligation....
or reward often offered by a group as an incentive for the accomplishment of a task by someone usually not associated with the group. Bounties are most commonly issued for the capture or retrieval of a person or object. They are typically in the form of money
Money
Money is any object or record that is generally accepted as payment for goods and services and repayment of debts in a given country or socio-economic context. The main functions of money are distinguished as: a medium of exchange; a unit of account; a store of value; and, occasionally in the past,...
. By definition bounties can be retracted at any time by whomever issued them. Two modern examples of bounties are the bounty placed for the capture of Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was the fifth President of Iraq, serving in this capacity from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003...
and his sons by the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
's bounty for computer virus
Computer virus
A computer virus is a computer program that can replicate itself and spread from one computer to another. The term "virus" is also commonly but erroneously used to refer to other types of malware, including but not limited to adware and spyware programs that do not have the reproductive ability...
creators. Those who make a living by pursuing bounties are known as bounty hunter
Bounty hunter
A bounty hunter captures fugitives for a monetary reward . Other names, mainly used in the United States, include bail enforcement agent and fugitive recovery agent.-Laws in the U.S.:...
s.
Historical examples
A bounty system was used in the American Civil WarAmerican Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
. It was an incentive to increase enlistments. Another bounty system was used in New South Wales
New South Wales
New South Wales is a state of :Australia, located in the east of the country. It is bordered by Queensland, Victoria and South Australia to the north, south and west respectively. To the east, the state is bordered by the Tasman Sea, which forms part of the Pacific Ocean. New South Wales...
to increase the number of immigrants from 1832.
Bounties were sometimes paid as rewards for killing Native Americans
Native Americans in the United States
Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples in North America within the boundaries of the present-day continental United States, parts of Alaska, and the island state of Hawaii. They are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as...
. In 1862, a farmer received a $500 bounty for shooting Taoyateduta
Taoyateduta
Little Crow was a chief of the Mdewakanton Dakota Sioux. His given name translates as "His Red Nation," but he was known as Little Crow because of his father's name, Čhetáŋ Wakhúwa Máni, which was mistranslated.Little Crow is notable in for his role in the...
(Little Crow). In 1856 Governor Isaac Stevens
Isaac Stevens
Isaac Ingalls Stevens was the first governor of Washington Territory, a United States Congressman, and a brigadier general in the Union Army during the American Civil War until his death at the Battle of Chantilly...
put a bounty on the head of Indians from Eastern Washington, $20 for ordinary Indians and $80 for a "chief". A Western Washington Indian, Patkanim
Patkanim
Patkanim was chief of the Snoqualmoo and Snohomish tribe in what is now modern Washington State....
, chief of the Snohomish
Snohomish (tribe)
The Snohomish are a Lushootseed Native American tribe who reside around the Puget Sound area of Washington, north of Seattle. They speak the Lushootseed language. The tribal spelling is Sdoh-doh-hohbsh, which means "wet snow" according to the last chief of the Snohomish tribe, Chief William...
, obligingly provided a great many heads, until the Territorial Auditor put a stop to the practice due to the dubious origins of the deceased.
In Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
in 1824, a bounty of 500 acres (202.3 ha) of land was offered for capturing alive the Wiradjuri
Wiradjuri
The Wiradjuri are an Indigenous Australian group of central New South Wales.In the 21st century, major Wiradjuri groups live in Condobolin, Peak Hill, Narrandera and Griffith...
warrior Windradyne
Windradyne
Windradyne was an Aboriginal warrior and resistance leader of the Wiradjuri nation, in what is now central-western New South Wales, Australia; he was also known to the British settlers as Saturday...
, the leader of the Aboriginal
Indigenous Australians
Indigenous Australians are the original inhabitants of the Australian continent and nearby islands. The Aboriginal Indigenous Australians migrated from the Indian continent around 75,000 to 100,000 years ago....
resistance movement
Resistance movement
A resistance movement is a group or collection of individual groups, dedicated to opposing an invader in an occupied country or the government of a sovereign state. It may seek to achieve its objects through either the use of nonviolent resistance or the use of armed force...
in the Bathurst Wars. A week after the bounty being offered the word "alive" was dropped from the reward notices, however he was neither captured nor betrayed by his people.
Bounties have been offered on animals deemed undesirable by particular governments or corporations. In Tasmania
Tasmania
Tasmania is an Australian island and state. It is south of the continent, separated by Bass Strait. The state includes the island of Tasmania—the 26th largest island in the world—and the surrounding islands. The state has a population of 507,626 , of whom almost half reside in the greater Hobart...
, the thylacine
Thylacine
The thylacine or ,also ;binomial name: Thylacinus cynocephalus, Greek for "dog-headed pouched one") was the largest known carnivorous marsupial of modern times. It is commonly known as the Tasmanian tiger or the Tasmanian wolf...
was relentlessly hunted to extinction based on such schemes. Gray Wolves
Gray Wolf
The gray wolf , also known as the wolf, is the largest extant wild member of the Canidae family...
too were extirpated from much of the present United States by bounty hunters. An example of the legal sanction granted can be found in a Massachusetts Bay Colony
Massachusetts Bay Colony
The Massachusetts Bay Colony was an English settlement on the east coast of North America in the 17th century, in New England, situated around the present-day cities of Salem and Boston. The territory administered by the colony included much of present-day central New England, including portions...
law dated May 7, 1662: "This Court
Massachusetts General Court
The Massachusetts General Court is the state legislature of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The name "General Court" is a hold-over from the Colonial Era, when this body also sat in judgment of judicial appeals cases...
doth Order, as an encouragement to persons to destroy Woolves, That henceforth every person killing any Woolf, shall be allowed out of the Treasury of that County where such woolf was slain, Twenty shillings, and by the Town Ten shillings, and by the County Treasurer Ten shillings: which the Constable of each Town (on the sight of the ears of such Woolves being cut off) shall pay out of the next County rate, which the Treasurer shall allow."
21st century examples
Bounty hunters provided most of the prisoners held in Guantánamo Bay detainment campGuantanamo Bay detainment camp
The Guantanamo Bay detention camp is a detainment and interrogation facility of the United States located within Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba. The facility was established in 2002 by the Bush Administration to hold detainees from the war in Afghanistan and later Iraq...
.
21st century outstanding rewards offered
The Isabella Stewart Gardner MuseumIsabella Stewart Gardner Museum
The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum or Fenway Court, as the museum was known during Isabella Stewart Gardner's lifetime, is a museum in the Fenway-Kenmore neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, located within walking distance of the Museum of Fine Arts and near the Back Bay Fens...
in Boston currently offers a $5 million dollar reward for the return, in good condition of the thirteen works of art taken from its galleries in March 1990.
Three of the thirteen art works stolen from the Gardner Museum in March of 1990 by thieves who posed as policemen.
Other uses
The term bounty is used in the mathematics, computer science, and free culture communities to refer to a reward offered to any person willing to take on an open problem in that domain; for instance, implementing a feature or finding a bug in an open source software program. Bounties are offered for solving a particular math problem — ranging from small lemmas that graduate students solve in their spare time for $20 US up to some of the world's hardest math problems. Paul ErdősPaul Erdos
Paul Erdős was a Hungarian mathematician. Erdős published more papers than any other mathematician in history, working with hundreds of collaborators. He worked on problems in combinatorics, graph theory, number theory, classical analysis, approximation theory, set theory, and probability theory...
was famous for offering mathematical bounties.
Poker
In poker culture, a bounty prize refers to a fixed quantity each player put on when registering into a tournament that is particularly dedicated to be given to the player that spews another out of the tournament.Motor Sport
Often, if a driver or team has won multiple consecutive races, a race track or sanctioning body will establish a bounty on a team. This practice is common on local short tracks, especially if a driver has won three consecutive weeks or more. The bounty often is increased for every race the offending driver or team continues to win, and is claimed upon another driver or team ending that winning streak. After Chip Ganassi RacingChip Ganassi Racing
Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates is an automotive racing organization with teams competing in the IZOD IndyCar Series and the Rolex Sports Car Series. It is owned by businessmen Chip Ganassi and Felix Sabates. They have won 4 Champ Car, 3 Indy Racing League and 1 Grand-Am championships...
won six consecutive Rolex Sports Car Series
Rolex Sports Car Series
The Rolex Sports Car Series is the premier series run by the Grand American Road Racing Association. It is a North American-based sports car series that was founded in 2000 under the name Grand American Road Racing Championship to replace the failed United States Road Racing Championship...
races, Grand American Road Racing Association established a $25,000 bounty to the team that beats Ganassi. On May 14, 2011, Action Express Racing defeated Ganassi, and claimed the $25,000 bounty.