I've done this once before, with the Bendis/Maleev Daredevil run, but Jason Aaron does a lot of what Bendis did in that story, which is peg specific events to specific dates. He also tells the tale out of sequence, so the dates are hard to suss out. So I thought I'd do the same thing for Scalped. WARNING: This will be tremendously SPOILER-Y, so if you haven't actually read Scalped yet, you might want to skip this. Unless you have no intention of reading Scalped, and then ... well, feel free to read it or don't. It's your choice!
This is how this works: I will put all the events in Scalped in chronological order, beginning in the 19th century and moving up to the final image of the series. I will give the issue number in parentheses from which I get the information. It's all very simple! So strap in and let's be nerdy together, shall we?
25 June 1876: Custer gets killed at Little Big Horn. (#25)
Winter 1876: Jebediah Churt teaches his son Alfus to scalp Indians. A Bad Horse, in turn, scalps him and teaches his son how to do it. (#50)
1889: That same Bad Horse son is stabbed by soldiers and dragged back to the reservation to die. (#50)
29 December 1890: Wounded Knee. (#25)
Early 1940s: Lincoln Red Crow's mother wants to abort him, but can't do it. (#41)
1950: Gina Bad Horse is born. (#28)
1952: Red Crow is at an Indian school run by Jesuits. He's maybe 10 years old? (#7)
1952: Catcher (Arthur Pendergrass) is born. (#9)
1969: Wade Rouleau, Dash's father, gets discharged from the army. (#38)
1972: Red Crow believes that there's an FBI spy in the Dog Soldiers. He suspects Reggie Standing Rock, so he kills him. (#22) Gina leaves him because she figures out that he killed Reggie. (#24)
1974: The Dog Soldiers occupy the Bureau of Indian Affairs offices in Washington for three days. (#1)
Late 1974/early 1975: Agent Baylis Nitz of the FBI gets stabbed by Jace Maggart, and Agents Bayer and Berntson save his life and then stop him from killing Maggart, only so they could let him kill Maggart later, when no one will miss him. (#27)
29 April 1975: Wade, still in Saigon, makes one last deal with his heroin dealer, but then decides to kill him instead. When he gets back to the States, he meets Bayer and Berntson and it turns out he's the undercover FBI agent. He wasn't in the States in 1972, so why did Red Crow think there was a mole then? Was Reggie really a mole and Wade replaced him? (#38)
26 June 1975: Bayer and Berntson are killed on the Prairie Rose Reservation. Five people are at the site: Gina, Red Crow, Lawrence Belcourt, Catcher, and Wade. (#1; the date is first given as 26 June in #4) Agent Nitz is not happy that his two friends were killed. (#27) The time sequence, as we learn in #28, is:
6.15 p.m.: Bayer and Berntson come under fire.
6.28 p.m.: Final radio transmission from the agents. After this, Catcher kills them.
6.42 p.m.: Back-up arrives and find them dead.
1976: Gina finds out that she's pregnant. She also gets arrested by Agent Nitz. (#11)
1976/1977: Carol Red Crow's mother, Claudine, wants to get an abortion, but Red Crow stops her. (#39)
15 January 1978: Gina, Red Crow, Catcher, and Wade celebrate their acquittal in the murder of the FBI agents. Dash, Gina's son, is about 14-15 months old. He can stand, but he can't speak more than a few words. (#5)
1981: Diesel attends the West Texas Kickapoo School. Later he finds an arrowhead and some bullies beat him up. Then the tribal members tell his mother he doesn't qualify as a "real Indian." (#8)
1982/1983: Carol's mother leaves her. (#39)
At some point when Dash is young, Gina has an abortion. (#40) She then tells Wade she doesn't want him around, and she leaves. Dash looks younger than 7 years old, but in issue #19 (see below), Wade is still hanging around him in 1983, when he's 6/7. So maybe Wade is just hanging out with him and not living with Gina and Dash.
1983: Wade tells Dash he shouldn't do drugs, even though Wade is using. (#19)
1983: Diesel steals from his dad to join a gang, but they just leave him. His dad beats him, the gang beats him, so he sets them both up. His dad gets killed and the gang members are taken to jail. (#26)
Sometime in the 1980s: Gina shows Dash (who's about 6-8) his first dead body. (#3)
Fall 1989: Dash is in middle school, and it's before he turns 13, because he implies that he turned 13 later. When he turned 13, his mother was protesting a Redskins game. Both of the events he talks about would seem to occur in the autumn of 1989, as Gina was pregnant in 1976, so Dash was presumably born in the fall of 1976. (#5)
1990: Gina tells Dash about the Lakota creation myth. Dash is unimpressed. (#13)
1990: Gina gives Dash some arrowheads. Dash is unimpressed. (#14)
1990: Red Crow visits Gina while Dash is asleep to tell her that he's running for tribal council. (#24)
1990/1991/1992: Gina buys Dash some nunchuks. (#52)
Sometime in 1992: Gina sends Dash to Arkansas. (#6)
Autumn 1992: Dash plays football in Arkansas. He's 15/16 years old. (#5)
1995: Dash learns martial arts in Oklahoma. (#5)
1997: Dash boxes illegally in Nevada. (#5)
1999: Dash is fighting in Kosovo. (#5)
2000: Graham and Carol try to leave the reservation with money he stole from Red Crow. Carol is pregnant. (#19) This doesn't work out very well, as Red Crow's men track them down and kill Graham. Carol's baby does not survive the trauma. (#20)
30 March 2001: Nitz pulls strings to make Dash an FBI field agent. (#5)
2003: Nitz sticks a gun in Red Crow's mouth and demands to be told who killed Bayer and Berntson. Red Crow doesn't say anything. (#27)
2004: Dino Poor Bear gets a girl pregnant. (#23)
2004: Dash busts Wesley Willeford for mail fraud in Alabama. (#29)
Summer 2007: Dash returns to the reservation. It's not winter and people aren't wearing a lot of clothing, so I'm going with summer. Later that night, Red Crow offers him a job. (#1)
Three days later: Dash is reunited with his mother, Gina. (#1)
The next day: Dash sees Carol for the first time since he returned to the reservation. (#1)
Two days later (five days before Dash meets with Nitz): Dash busts a meth house and meets Dino. Franklin Falls Down takes the meth before it "vanishes" from Red Crow's custody. (#2)
The next day (four days before Dash meets with Nitz): Dash meets Officer Falls Down. (#2)
The next day (three days before Dash meets with Nitz): Dash meets Carol again in a bar and rebuffs her advances. (#2)
The next day (two days before Dash meets with Nitz): Red Crow gets in an argument with the tribal council and sets up Falls Down to be killed. (#2)
The next day (18 hours before Dash meets with Nitz): Dash and Falls Down are ambushed (#3)
Seven hours before Dash meets with Nitz: Dash threatens Red Crow's life because Red Crow set him up. He goes from there straight to a meth house, where he sees Dino again. Later that same night, Carol almost runs him off the road. That same night, Red Crow has Lister killed because he failed to kill Falls Down. (#3)
Seven hours later: We learn Dash is an undercover FBI agent. (#1)
Some time later (issue #4 begins with "yesterday," but it's obviously after Dash meets with the FBI): Red Crow visits Gina, who tells him she's going to see Lawrence Belcourt the next day. Red Crow says he can't protect her anymore. (#4) (As we learn in issue #6, Dash returns to the reservation six weeks before the grand opening of the casino, so four weeks have probably passed. One week for the first three issues to run, then we skip to nine days before the grand opening of the casino.)
The next day (#4):
9.07 a.m.: Gina just misses Dash at a bust.
9.45 a.m.: Gina just misses Dash at a gas station.
10.37 a.m.: Gina just misses Dash at the casino.
11.42 a.m.: Gina just misses Dash at a trailer park.
12.17 p.m.: Gina just misses Dash at a whorehouse bust.
12.18 p.m.: Dash is in White Haven, Nebraska, watching Carol have sex with another man.
2.18 p.m.: Dash shows up at the casino, and Dino tells him Gina was looking for him.
5.32 p.m.: Dash watches Carol have sex with another man.
7.27 p.m.: Gina misses Dash once again and leaves for Kansas. As she leaves the reservation, she passes Dash asleep in his car.
The same day: Red Crow tells Dash about Diesel's plans to disrupt the opening of the casino. It's "nine days ago," and the next scene is on the night of the grand opening. (#6)
The same day (eight days before the grand opening of the casino): Diesel calls a meeting to discuss robbing Red Crow's casino. (#8)
At this point, it's been "six weeks" since Dash returned to the reservation. (#6)
Three/four days after Gina leaves the reservation for Kansas: Gina gets in an argument with Lora, Lawrence Belcourt's brother. (#11)
Two days later: Gina meets Lawrence Belcourt in prison. (#11)
One day later: Gina dreams of the FBI agents who were killed. (#11)
The next day (in #4, Red Crow says the casino is opening in nine days, and issue #5 takes place on the day it opens): The casino's grand opening! At the same time, Dash begins his affair with Carol. Catcher stands in his trailer and says cryptic things. (#5)
The night of the grand opening:
7.18 p.m.: Dash leaves Carol's house to bust the meeting Diesel is supposedly organizing to protest the casino's opening. (#6)
7.33 p.m.: Red Crow is greeting the people at the casino and thinking about Wendell Short Bear. (#7)
8.27 p.m.: Red Crow supervises the liquor delivery at the casino. (#7)
8.30 p.m. (approximate): Catcher meets with Granny Poor Bear. (#9)
8.45 p.m.: Diesel steals something from Red Crow's office at the casino (in #27 we find out it's the scalps of Bayer and Berntson). Then Dash finds him. (#8)
9.18 p.m.: After a fight, Diesel tries to escape from Dash on a horse. Dash steals Merle Haggard's bus to chase him. They end up fighting in a rodeo arena, where both get gored a bit by the bull. (#8)
10.15 p.m.: The BIA agent is at his private party. (#7)
10.18 p.m.: Dash drags Diesel into the casino. (#6)
10.33 p.m.: Catcher rides toward the casino. (#9)
11.08 p.m.: Shunka tells Red Crow that the Hmongs are calling. (#7)
11.13 p.m.: Johnny Tongue tells Red Crow he's sending Mr. Brass to the reservation. (#7)
11.52 p.m.: Catcher surprises Red Crow from behind and Diesel escapes. Catcher drags Red Crow into the bathroom and asks him where Gina is. (#7, #9) [The time is a bit off. In #7, Red Crow talks to Johnny Tongue and almost immediately, Catcher shows up and Diesel escapes. In issue #9, the time is given as 11.52. It seems like there's too much time between Johnny Tongue's phone call and Catcher showing up, but it doesn't screw anything up too much.]
12.08 a.m.: Dash goes into the bathroom, where Catcher finds him and lets Dash know he knows that Dash is an FBI agent. (#6) [Where had Dash been for almost two hours? We never find out.]
12.10 a.m. (approximate): Dash returns and Red Crow tells him that Diesel escaped. They discover that Diesel trashed Red Crow's office and killed his dogs. (#7)
12.32 a.m.: Catcher calls Gina, but he doesn't speak to her because he's overwhelmed with visions. (#9)
1.00 a.m.: Diesel, the other undercover FBI agent, meets with Nitz and gives him the package he stole from Red Crow's office. (#8)
1.08 a.m.: Dash meets with his informer in Diesel's organization and gets a phone call from Nitz. (#6)
1.13 a.m.: Red Crow sits alone in his office. (#7)
Sometime after this, Dino comes into the office and cleans up. Red Crow gives him money to fix his car. (#10)
1.15 a.m.: Catcher gets drunk. (#9)
At some point on the night of the grand opening, Gina calls Lawrence and tells him she's going to see Catcher. (#11)
The next day: Gina's body is out in the desert. (#5) Dino and his friends find her. (#11)
The day Gina's body is discovered: Dash busts a meth house and finds the woman murdered and her kids in another room. He finds out that Diesel killed her. Later, Red Crow tells him his mother's dead. (#13)
That night: Nitz tells Dash that Diesel is an FBI agent. (#14)
The next day: Shelton asks Dash if he found Diesel yet. (#14)
That night: Red Crow asks Shunka if he killed Gina. Mr. Brass arrives at the casino. (#14)
The next day: Dash begins to teach Shelton how to shoot. Dash thinks Red Crow killed Gina, which pisses Red Crow off. Mr. Brass tortures a witness to death to get information about Diesel. That night, Dash wanders over to his mom's house and finds his arrowhead collection. (#15)
The next day: Dash shows up in White Haven, looking for Diesel. He meets Sheriff Karnow. Nitz visits Red Crow at the casino. Then Karnow shows up and complains to Red Crow, who doesn't want to hear it. Dash says goodbye to Shelton, who's going to live with his aunt. Two hours later, he finds out that Shelton got a gun and headed off to White Haven to find Diesel. (#16)
That same night/early morning: Diesel kills Shelton "in self-defense." Dash shoots Diesel a few times just for good measure (but doesn't kill him). (#17)
That day: Gina's funeral. Dash doesn't attend. Red Crow meets with Officer Falls Down. Later Dash gets drunk and ends up back at Gina's house. At the same time, Catcher is in his trailer, trying to wash the blood off his hands. (#17)
At some point after meeting with Red Crow, Falls Down visits Lawrence Belcourt in prison. Presumably Belcourt tells him what he knows about Catcher. (#18)
A couple of weeks later: Carol kicks her husband out and Dash continues his affair with her. (#19)
About the same time: Dash visits Diesel in jail and tells him he's going to kill him. He goes to Carol's place and starts smoking heroin. (#20)
Some time later: Dino gets roped into delivering a "package" for the tribal police to a drug dealer named Rath in Nebraska. (#21)
The same day: Mr. Brass rapes and kills a young man and woman in his hotel room. Red Crow is not happy about it. (#21)
That night: Granny Poor Bear gives Red Crow Gina's soul bundle. (#21)
The next day (?): Red Crow finds out that the girl that Brass killed is Reggie Standing Rock's granddaughter. He visits Reggie's widow. Later, the BIA agent tells him there's an FBI agent within his organization. (#22)
Three weeks later: Granny Poor Bear throws Dino out of the house because he's working for drug dealers. Then Dino gets taken to the Badlands Cafe, where Mr. Brass wants to talk to him. (#23) Later Red Crow enters the cafe with a gun. He kills Brass's two thugs and arrests Brass. (#21, 24)
After this event, Red Crow gives the soul bundle back to Granny. (#24)
Later: Wesley Willeford arrives on the reservation. (#25; we learn his real name in #29)
At least three days later: Wesley sees Dash and remembers that he's an FBI agent. (#25)
One/two days later: Dash is having sex with Carol. (#29)
One hour later: Dash leaves Carol's house. (#29)
One hour later: Dash buys heroin. It turns out that the dealer put rat poison in it. (#29)
Three hours later: Dash begins to shoot up, but is interrupted by Shunka looking for him, so he doesn't. (#29)
Two hours later: Wesley kills the stripper he's been shacked up with and tells Dash he's going to help him rob the casino or he'll tell Red Crow who he is. (#25)
Later that day: Wesley and his crew rob the casino, but before Wesley can kill Dash, he accidentally injects himself with Dash's poisoned heroin and dies. Dash manages to kill the rest of the gang before they talk. Then he goes to Carol's house and tells her he's an FBI agent. (#29)
A few days later: Diesel is trying to get out of jail but he can't get Agent Nitz to talk to him, because Nitz is visiting his ex-wife and the graves of the two FBI agents, whose scalps he places on their graves. (#27)
At the same time: Falls Down investigates the murder of the stripper. He doesn't know what happened at the casino, because he's been in Kansas City investigating Gina's murder. (#28)
At the same time: Lawrence Belcourt needs to get a message to Red Crow, because he knows who killed Gina. (#28)
Later that night: Falls Down gets the files on the FBI killings in 1975. (#28)
That night (?): Catcher visits Gina's grave and apologizes for killing her. (#28)
It's now late summer/early autumn, but not too long after the attempted robbery: Dash goes to White Haven to extradite Diesel. He gets Catcher (who was in jail for riding a horse while drunk) instead, but almost drives into a swooping eagle, and Catcher escapes. (#30)
About the same time: Falls Down talks to Granny Poor Bear about Catcher. (#30, 31)
Later that day: Red Crow tells Dash to find the undercover FBI agent in his organization. Nitz tells Newsome that he's the one who leaked the information about the BIA agent. (#30)
Later that day: Red Crow tells Johnny Tongue that he arrested Brass. Then, while he's still on the phone with Johnny, he shoots Brass in the head. (#30)
Red Crow realizes that a prisoner, Ben White Elk, saw him shoot Brass. (#31)
Later that day: Dash shows up at the police station and calls Nitz with the news about Brass's murder and the witness. (#31)
Later that day: Nitz arrives at the police station, and Dash grabs White Elk before Red Crow can have him killed. Meanwhile, Diesel calls Carol looking for Dash, because he's getting out of jail. Carol collapses, the first indication that she's pregnant. (#31)
About the same time: Catcher buys a rifle. (#32)
Dash tries to take White Elk out of the station, but White Elk panics and runs for it. (#32)
About the same time: Falls Down is looking for Catcher, and Catcher is tracking Falls Down. (#32)
About the same time: Dash goes to see Carol, who isn't happy to see him. Dash hits her to shut her up and realizes he's made a terrible mistake. That night, Red Crow visits Carol, and she collapses in his arms. (#32)
The same night: Dash goes to see Diesel and they "work out a plan." (#32)
The next day: Red Crow and Shunka fly over the Badlands, looking for White Elk. (#33)
At the same time: Dash is in White Haven, where Newsome tells him that he's picking up Diesel and transporting him to a mental hospital in Wyoming. (#33)
Later: Dash finds Catcher and asks for his help. (#33)
That night: Falls Down arrives at Catcher's trailer. Meanwhile, Nitz and a bunch of agents are in the Badlands, as is Shunka. Shunka manages to find White Elk and he asks him who helped him escape from the police station. (#33) Right before White Elk can talk, Catcher shoots him in the head. (#34) Catcher returns to his trailer and surprises Falls Down, conking him on the head. (#34)
The same night: Diesel manages to kill Agent Newsome and escape, and Dash picks him up and they head out into the Badlands. (#33) Later, Dash kills Diesel out in the wild. (#34)
The same night: The Hmongs arrive, and Red Crow goes out to meet them alone. He's beaten up for his troubles. (#33, 34) He and Shunka get to Minneapolis before Johnny Tongue and the Hmongs, and they kill the entire gang when they return. (#34)
The next day: Dash gives the gun he used to kill Diesel to Red Crow, which is really stupid. Carol finds out she's pregnant. (#34)
Some time later: Shunka goes to the Potawatomi casino in eastern Michigan and we find out that he's gay. (#36, 37)
Before winter: Sheriff Karnow has his "come to Jesus" moment. (#43)
Winter 2007: Granny Poor Bear visits Carol and tells her she can help get her off heroin. Carol burns her house down and joins her. (#39) [In issue #45, Maggie Rock Medicine tells Red Crow that he's going to have to leave office in "November." There's a lot of snow on the ground for the next few arcs for it to be earlier than November 2007, so presumably Maggie means the next November, which is in 2008. I guess.]
About the same time: Shunka and Red Crow drag Dash out of his place so Red Crow can get him clean. (#39) They take him into the Badlands and sweat it out of him. (#40)
About the same time: Wade returns to the reservation, looking for Dash. (#39) He sees Red Crow at the casino. (#40)
Later: Red Crow doesn't know where Carol is, and he tells Shunka to find her, which he does. Red Crow doesn't approach her. (#41)
About the same time: Wade visits Dash in the hospital, where he was taken after his night in the wild. (#41)
Later that night: After Dash gets out of the hospital, he and Carol pass each other on the road and talk. Carol doesn't tell Dash that she's pregnant. (#41, 42)
The next day: Carol goes to get an abortion. (#42)
The same day: Nitz sees Wade and arrests him. Wade figures out that Dash is FBI, just like he was. (#42)
Later: Nitz falls out of favor with the FBI, but an accidental bust of a domestic terrorist unit gets him back in their good graces. (#44)
Some time later: Red Crow wants Dash to take over for him, but Hassell Rock Medicine shows up and tells him he's running against Red Crow in the next election. (#45)
About the same time: Dino is falling in love with Carol. (#45)
That night (?): Red Crow tells Shunka that Dash has been coming through more often than Shunka has. (#45)
Maybe the same night (?): Shunka tells Red Crow that Lawrence wants to see him. (#48)
The next day (?): Dash and Red Crow see Agent Nitz, and Dash punches him in the stomach. (#48)
The next day (?): Red Crow visits Lawrence Belcourt in prison and finds out that Catcher killed Gina. Lawrence tells Red Crow to stop protecting him in prison. (#46)
That night (?): Red Crow takes Dash to a sweat lodge, and they bond. (#48)
The next day (?): Dash tells Nitz that Red Crow completely trusts him. (#48)
The next night: Red Crow visits Hassell. (#45) At the same time, Catcher sees them through the window while he's leading Falls Down through the snow. (#45)
[All of this chronology is a bit confused. It could all work, but the fact that two days pass between Hassell and Maggie telling Red Crow he's running for office and Red Crow visiting Hassell means that there's a lot of stuff in between those two events. It's pretty clear all of this stuff happens between the two events in issue #45, but it's a lot of stuff!]
Later that night: Catcher takes Falls Down into a cave and tells him to find his way out. Blindfolded. Falls Down, however, manages to get out because he sees Gina's spirit animal leading him. He collapses outside, and Catcher rides away. Later that night, he wakes Dash up and tells him he's going to help him find the man who killed Gina. (#46) He tells Dash that he can take him to the man who killed Gina or they can rescue Falls Down. Dash chooses the man who killed Gina. (#48)
Later that night: Catcher tries to kill Dash, but just shoots him in the mouth. Falls Down, meanwhile, walks in front of the truck but doesn't stop. Dash and Catcher shoot each other, but Catcher still manages to escape. Then Dash sees Falls Down on the road. Catcher finds his horse, but Festus (the horse) walks away from him. (#49)
At the same time: Red Crow is still at Hassell's place. Hassell has a heart attack in front of Red Crow. Red Crow hesitates before calling 911. (#49)
The next morning: Red Crow tells Shunka he's shutting down his criminal operations. (#49)
At the same time: Dash carries Falls Down along the road toward town. Festus finds him and he rides the horse the rest of the way. (#49)
The same day: Catcher has been grabbed by the cops. He's unconscious and handcuffed to a bed next to Wade. (#49)
At some point, Dino tries to tell Carol how he feels, but she jumps the gun by saying she thinks of him as a brother. There's no snow on the ground, but it's supposed to be about the same time that all of this is going on. (#47)
Two weeks later (some of the people are wearing tank tops and there's no snow on the ground, but according to Falls Down in #52, it's only been two weeks since Dash and Catcher blasted away at each other): Red Crow continues to burn down his own meth houses. (#51)
About the same time: Karnow busts Rath's house and arrests him. He catches Dino, but releases him. (#51)
About the same time: Dash is still in the hospital, and Nitz is trying to question him and not getting anywhere. Later, he leaves the hospital with Falls Down, as they're going after Catcher. (#51)
The same night: Wade and Catcher are being transported in the same police car. Catcher claims not to know Wade. (#51)
The same night (probably): Rath calls Shunka and they plan to take out Red Crow. (#51)
The same night: Dash and Falls Down visit Catcher's trailer, and Dash burns it down. (#52)
The next day (?): Red Crow meets Karnow on the border. Karnow says he's bringing Red Crow down, but Red Crow doesn't seem to care. (#52)
The same day: Dash takes Falls Down to see Nitz, but Nitz claims that he doesn't have any information on Catcher, even though he knows exactly where he is. (#52)
That night: Shunka almost betrays Red Crow. (#52, 53)
The next day: Dash meets Maggie Rock Medicine, who spits on him. (#53)
About the same time: Rath finds out that Shunka didn't kill Red Crow, and he wants to make a deal with Karnow to give up Shunka. Shunka allows himself to be arrested so he can get close to Rath. (#53)
About the same time: Wade, who's in the cell next to him, remembers Catcher. (#53)
That night: Karnow confronts Nitz and tells him to lend him some men to take down Rath's main "stash house." Nitz tells his men to take the night off. Rath has compromised Karnow's main deputy, and no one is backing Karnow up. (#53) Nitz, however, feels guilty, so he goes himself. At the house, Dino shoots Karnow in the back of the head. (#54)
The same night: A prisoner in Karnow's jail freaks out and grabs a gun and starts shooting deputies. Catcher manages to get the keys from a dead cop, gets out of his cell, and discovers that Wade caught a stray bullet. Catcher confesses to Wade, who tries to choke him. Wade dies before he can kill Catcher. (#54)
Later that night: Red Crow comes to get Shunka before Rath can kill him. He fires Shunka, but Shunka kisses him before he leaves. Later, Shunka kills Rath and then goes to Dash's house to confront him. (#54) They fight, rather brutally. Red Crow shows up and kills Shunka. Then Dash arrests him. (#55)
The same night: Catcher spots Festus, who attacks him. He's forced to kill his loyal horse. (#55)
The same night: Nitz shuts down the casino. (#55)
The next morning: Dash puts Red Crow in jail. (#56)
Eight months later (summer 2008, depending on when the previous events took place): Maggie Rock Medicine is breaking ground on a new community center. She's also sleeping with Dash. Red Crow knows he has dirt on Dash, but he doesn't want to use it. Dogs dig up Diesel's shallow grave. (#56)
About the same time: Catcher is killing ex-tribal council members. (#57)
About the same time: Dino tells Red Crow's lawyer he knows something that will get Red Crow to stop protecting Dash. The lawyer tells Red Crow that Carol had an abortion. (#57)
About the same time: Falls Down finds Diesel's corpse. (#57)
The next day: Dino delivers the gun that Dash used to kill Diesel and various photographs of Diesel's body to Falls Down (anonymously, of course). Later, Falls Down visits Dash and tells him he knows Dash killed Diesel, but he's giving him a chance to get away. Before he can leave, Dash figures out that Catcher is killing the tribal council members. (#57)
The next day: Red Crow is released. (#58)
The same day: Dash searches for Catcher, and Nitz is searching for Dash. (#58)
That night: Dash and Red Crow meet at Gina's grave, and Red Crow shoots Dash because he thinks Dash pressured Carol into having an abortion. When he realizes Dash didn't know, he calls the police and goes back to his empty casino. Catcher finds Dash, who's passed out from blood loss. (#58)
The same night: Dino plans to rob Red Crow. (#58) His gang breaks in, but Red Crow is ready for them, and he kills a bunch of Dino's men. Catcher and Dash arrive and join in the shooting. Dash sees Dino, but lets him go. Dino decides to burn the casino down. Nitz is told that Catcher killed Bayer and Berntson, so he goes to the casino too. Everyone gets very bloody. (#59) Nitz and Catcher die together in the fire. Dash carries Red Crow out of the casino. He leaves him there. (#60)
Three months later (anywhere from September-December 2008): Granny Poor Bear dies. Carol takes her place. Dino has become the head crime boss on the reservation. Red Crow is living out in the boondocks. Maggie is pregnant, because apparently no one in this series has ever heard of birth control. Dash leaves the reservation for points unknown. (#60)
So that's it. Aaron doesn't use hard and fast dates for the main action, but we know it takes place over the course of about six months in 2007. Both Gina and Wade have 2007 on their gravestones, for instance. We can extrapolate quite a bit, although usually when Aaron begins a new arc, he doesn't always tell us how long it's been since the previous one. Occasionally he'll drop clues, but not always. So this is a bit loose, obviously. The book, however, does hold together, date-wise, quite well, and Aaron does a nice job connecting the past with the present. For some of the older events, he definitely gives dates, or he counts backward from 2007 (e.g., "35 years ago"). So those are easy to figure out. The day-to-day stuff is a bit harder, especially between issue #49 and issue #51, because the former issue obviously takes place in the winter, but the latter doesn't seem to, although not that much time has passed. No big deal, though.
Scalped is a well-plotted comic, and part of that is the fact that time passes and Aaron is aware of that. I always find it fun to connect stuff like this, so that's why I did this. It's fun!