Hannah Duston was a colonial Massachusetts

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...

 Puritan

Puritan

The Puritans were a significant grouping of English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries. Puritanism in this sense was founded by some Marian exiles from the clergy shortly after the accession of Elizabeth I of England in 1558, as an activist movement within the Church of England...

 woman who escaped Native American

Indigenous peoples of the Americas

The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...

 captivity by leading her fellow captives in killing their captors at night. Duston is believed to be the first woman honored in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 with a statue. (Due to the phonetic spelling of the time, her last name has also been written Dustin, Dustan, and Durstan.)

Biography

Hannah, her husband Thomas Duston, and their nine children were residents of Haverhill, Massachusetts

Haverhill, Massachusetts

Haverhill is a city in Essex County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 60,879 at the 2010 census.Located on the Merrimack River, it began as a farming community that would evolve into an important industrial center, beginning with sawmills and gristmills run by water power. In the...

 in March 1697 when the town was attacked by a group of Abenaki American Indians from Quebec

Quebec

Quebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....

. (In this attack, 27 colonists were killed and 13 were taken captive to be either adopted or or held as hostages for the French

New France

New France was the area colonized by France in North America during a period beginning with the exploration of the Saint Lawrence River by Jacques Cartier in 1534 and ending with the cession of New France to Spain and Great Britain in 1763...

.) When their farm was attacked, Thomas fled with eight children, but Hannah, her newborn daughter Martha, and her nurse Mary Neff were captured and forced to march into the wilderness. Along the way, the Indians killed the six-day-old Martha by smashing her against a tree. Hannah and Mary were assigned to an Indian family group of 13 persons and taken north. The group included Samuel Lennardson, a 14-year-old captured in Worcester

Worcester

The City of Worcester, commonly known as Worcester, , is a city and county town of Worcestershire in the West Midlands of England. Worcester is situated some southwest of Birmingham and north of Gloucester, and has an approximate population of 94,000 people. The River Severn runs through the...

 the year before. Six weeks later, at an island in the Merrimack River

Merrimack River

The Merrimack River is a river in the northeastern United States. It rises at the confluence of the Pemigewasset and Winnipesaukee rivers in Franklin, New Hampshire, flows southward into Massachusetts, and then flows northeast until it empties into the Atlantic Ocean at Newburyport...

 at the mouth of the Contoocook River

Contoocook River

The Contoocook River is a river in New Hampshire. It flows from Pool Pond and Contoocook Lake on the Jaffrey/Rindge border to Penacook , where it empties into the Merrimack River. It is one of only a few rivers in New Hampshire that flow in a predominantly northward direction...

 near what is now Penacook, New Hampshire

Penacook, New Hampshire

Penacook, originally called "Fisherville", is a village within the city of Concord in Merrimack County, New Hampshire, USA. It lies along Concord's northern border with Boscawen. The name comes from the Pennacook tribe that lived in the area...

, Hannah led Mary and Samuel in a revolt. She used a tomahawk

Tomahawk (axe)

A tomahawk is a type of axe native to North America, traditionally resembling a hatchet with a straight shaft. The name came into the English language in the 17th century as a transliteration of the Powhatan word.Tomahawks were general purpose tools used by Native Americans and European Colonials...

 to attack the sleeping Indians, killing one of the two grown men (the second was killed by Lennardson), two adult women and six children. One severely wounded Indian woman and a young boy managed to escape the attack. The former captives immediately left in a canoe

Canoe

A canoe or Canadian canoe is a small narrow boat, typically human-powered, though it may also be powered by sails or small electric or gas motors. Canoes are usually pointed at both bow and stern and are normally open on top, but can be decked over A canoe (North American English) or Canadian...

, but not before taking scalp

Scalp

The scalp is the anatomical area bordered by the face anteriorly and the neck to the sides and posteriorly.-Layers:It is usually described as having five layers, which can conveniently be remembered as a mnemonic:...

s from the dead as proof of the incident and to collect a bounty. They traveled down the river only during the night, and after several days reached Haverhill. The Massachusetts General 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...

 later gave them a reward for killing Indians; Hannah Duston received 25 pounds, and Neff and Lennardson split another 25 pounds (various accounts say 50 or 25 pounds, and some accounts mention only Duston receiving an award). Hannah lived for nearly forty more years.

Legacy

The event became well known, due in part to the account of Cotton Mather

Cotton Mather

Cotton Mather, FRS was a socially and politically influential New England Puritan minister, prolific author and pamphleteer; he is often remembered for his role in the Salem witch trials...

 in his Magnalia Christi Americana

Magnalia Christi Americana

Magnalia Christi Americana is a book published in 1702 by Cotton Mather . Its title is in Latin, but its subtitle is in English: The Ecclesiastical History of New England...

. Duston became more famous in the 19th century as her story was retold by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Nathaniel Hawthorne was an American novelist and short story writer.Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in 1804 in the city of Salem, Massachusetts to Nathaniel Hathorne and the former Elizabeth Clarke Manning. His ancestors include John Hathorne, a judge during the Salem Witch Trials...

, John Greenleaf Whittier

John Greenleaf Whittier

John Greenleaf Whittier was an influential American Quaker poet and ardent advocate of the abolition of slavery in the United States. He is usually listed as one of the Fireside Poets...

 and Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau was an American author, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, and leading transcendentalist...

.

In 1879, a bronze statue of Hannah Duston grasping a tomahawk was placed in Haverhill

Haverhill

Haverhill is the name of a number of different places in the world:*Haverhill, Suffolk, England*Haverhill, Florida, USA*Haverhill, Iowa, USA*Haverhill, Massachusetts, USA**Haverhill , also serving the MBTA***Haverhill Line of the MBTA...

 town square (now GAR Park), where it still stands. A statue of Duston with tomahawk and scalps was also installed on the island in New Hampshire

New Hampshire

New Hampshire is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. The state was named after the southern English county of Hampshire. It is bordered by Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Atlantic Ocean to the east, and the Canadian...

. Some of Dunston's artifacts are displayed at the Haverhill Historical Society.

Controversy

Today, her actions remain fiercily controversial, with some (in particular her descendants) calling her a hero, but others calling her a villain, with the Abenaki leaders saying her legend is racist and glorifies violence.

External links

• HannahDustin.com
• HannahDuston.com
• HawthorneInSalem gives Nathaniel Hawthorne
  Nathaniel Hawthorne
  Nathaniel Hawthorne was an American novelist and short story writer.Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in 1804 in the city of Salem, Massachusetts to Nathaniel Hathorne and the former Elizabeth Clarke Manning. His ancestors include John Hathorne, a judge during the Salem Witch Trials...
  
  's version