Massacre on the Merrimack: Hannah Duston's Captivity and Revenge in Colonial America

by Jay Atkinson

Overview

Early on March 15, 1697, a band of Abenaki warriors in service to the French raided the English frontier village of Haverhill, Massachusetts. Striking swiftly, the Abenaki killed twenty-seven men, women, and children, and took thirteen captives, including thirty-nine-year-old Hannah Duston and her week-old daughter, Martha. A short distance from the village, one of the warriors murdered the squalling infant by dashing her head against a tree. After a forced march of nearly one hundred miles, Duston and two companions were transferred to a smaller band of Abenaki, who camped on a tiny island located at the junction of the Merrimack and Contoocook Rivers, several miles north of present day Concord, New Hampshire.

This was the height of King William’s War, both a war of terror and a religious contest, with English Protestantism vying for control of the New World with French Catholicism. After witnessing her infant’s murder, Duston resolved to get even. Two weeks into their captivity, Duston and her companions, a fifty-one-year-old woman and a twelve-year-old boy, moved among the sleeping Abenaki with tomahawks and knives, killing two men, two women, and six children. After returning to the bloody scene alone to scalp their victims, Duston and the others escaped down the Merrimack River in a stolen canoe. They braved treacherous waters and the constant threat of attack and recapture, returning to tell their story and collect a bounty for the scalps.

Was Hannah Duston the prototypical feminist avenger, or the harbinger of the Native American genocide? In this meticulously researched and riveting narrative, bestselling author Jay Atkinson sheds new light on the early struggle for North America.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781493018178
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	10/01/2015
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	882,065
File size:	737 KB

About the Author

Jay Atkinson, called “the bard of New England toughness” by Men’s Health magazine, is the author of seven books. Caveman Politics was a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Program selection and a finalist for the Discover Great New Writers Award; Ice Time was a Publishers Weekly Notable Book of the Year and a New England Bookseller’s Association bestseller; and Legends of Winter Hill spent seven weeks on the Boston Globe hardcover bestseller list. He has written for the New York Times, Boston Globe, Newsday, Portland Oregonian, Men’s Health, Boston Sunday Herald, and Boston Globe magazine, among other publications. Atkinson teaches writing at Boston University and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize three times. He grew up hearing Hannah Duston's story in his hometown of Methuen, Massachusetts, which was part of Haverhill until 1724.

Table of Contents

Prologue vi

Chapter I The Raid 1

Chapter II Dispossessed 14

Chapter III The Settlement 38

Chapter IV A Forced March 50

Chapter V Count Frontenac and the Reign of Terror 82

Chapter VI The Tomahawk and the Knife 123

Chapter VII The Fate of Other Captives 141

Chapter VIII Escape from Sugar Ball Island 168

Chapter IX Samuel Sewall, Cotton Mather, and the General Court of Massachusetts 191

Acknowledgments 214

Endnotes 218

Bibliography 300

Index 304

About the Author 310

Editorial Reviews

07/13/2015
A strong sense of place and vivid narration underscore journalist Atkinson’s tale of war, survival, and murder in colonial Massachusetts. Atkinson (Memoirs of a Rugby-Playing Man) opens with a heart-pounding account of the 1697 Abenaki raid on Haverhill, Mass., the English frontier town on the Merrimack River that was home to the Duston family. It was near the end of King William’s War, a bloody contest waged by the French, English, and various Native American tribes for control of northern New England. Thomas Duston got everyone in his family safely to the garrison house except his wife, Hannah, and their newborn daughter, Martha, who were taken prisoner. Grief-stricken when one of the Abenaki killed Martha, Hannah, a sturdy goodwife and devout Puritan, plotted and carried out a horrific revenge. Atkinson’s storytelling skills are superb; he crisply moves from events in Haverhill across the panorama of colonial rivalries in North America to Hannah’s captivity experiences. Yet there is a disconnect between Atkinson’s emphasis on the Merrimack landscape and the questions about motivations for Hannah’s revenge that he considers central to understanding her story. In failing to fully consider the religious, social, and cultural life of colonial women, Atkinson’s otherwise excellent account remains incomplete. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

"Jay Atkinson is one of my favorite writers, and Massacre on the Merrimack, detailing an important yet little-known episode of captivity and revenge in colonial-era Massachusetts, benefits from his accomplished writing and keen-eyed historical perspective." — Chuck Hogan, author of The Town


“In this superb book, Massacre on the Merrimack, Jay Atkinson tells two stories: First, the dramatic tale of a young woman, Hannah Duston, who is abducted by Abenaki tribesmen and force-marched across a hundred miles of frozen wilderness, before fighting her way free. That alone is a dramatic tale of heroism, savagery, and survival against overwhelming odds. Simultaneously, Atkinson elucidates the bloody fight for the land we now inhabit, once known as the New World, now America. French and English imperialists, Jesuit missionaries, as well as rival Indian tribes—the Mohawk, the Abenaki and the Iroquois among them—were fighting, killing, scalping, and massacring for the right to call "New England" home. This is the rare book that succeeds in telling both as a useful and succinct history, and as an intimately narrated story of a young woman fighting, successfully for her life, and for the lives of her friends and family members. There is a statue of Hannah Duston in Massachusetts, and now there is this wonderful book—a fitting memorial to an extraordinary woman, whose story is finally, and brilliantly, told here.” —Alex Beam, Boston Globe columnist and author of American Crucifixion: The Murder of Joseph Smith and the Fate of the Mormon Church



“Massacre on the Merrimack is colonial history told as a thriller. The writer’s research and craftsmanship are stamped throughout the book. It's an engaging story, and you will want to savor every page. It also makes a terrific gift for young students of American history, as it depicts history the way it really happened.” –Lou Ureneck, author of The Great Fire


“Jay Atkinson has written a gripping account of the brutal struggles in seventeenth-century New England and Canada among British and French immigrants and various resident Native American tribes. He makes the shifting alliances comprehensible and conveys in vivid prose the desperate motives and aspirations of each group. This book portrays the sad and bloody shadow side of our perennial American Thanksgiving Day myth of happy camaraderie among European settlers and their native hosts. Anyone interested in the earliest origins of the United States will want to read this dreadful tale of greed, violence—and amazing courage on all sides.” —Lisa Alther, author of Blood Feud


“Resurrecting one of the most fascinating and horrific stories of colonial America, Jay Atkinson delivers a riveting and thrilling narrative of savagery, murder, and revenge. His elegant prose animates the drama, allowing readers to experience not only the terror and visceral anger that Hannah Duston felt while being held captive, but also her sense of relief upon brutally killing her tormentors and returning home. Atkinson also provides a nuanced perspective on the deeply troubling relationship between whites and Indians during the early years of the American experience. This book is an excellent read.” —Eric Jay Dolin, author of Leviathan and Fur, Fortune, and Empire

From the Publisher

2015-05-18
A woman's life in dangerous times. In 1697, Hannah Duston, a Haverhill, Massachusetts, wife and mother, was abducted by Abenaki Indians and forcibly marched north toward French-occupied Canada to be ransomed. Her week-old infant was brutally murdered during the march, other captives were beaten to death, and the survivors were starved and abused. Desperate, Duston managed to take revenge, slaying not only her captors, but squaws and children, as well, hacking off scalps for monetary reward. Journalist and fiction writer Atkinson (Writing/Boston Univ.; Memoirs of a Rugby-Playing Man, 2012, etc.) narrates Duston's story in gory detail, aiming to convey "the moral truth of what happened" and allow readers to judge whether Duston's act of savagery was justified. Her contemporaries had no doubt: Cotton Mather wrote a sympathetic account; Maryland's governor sent Duston an appreciative gift of three pewter chargers; in recognition of her valor and the scalps, the General Court of Massachusetts awarded her 50 pounds. Atkinson implies his own admiration, as well, in presenting Duston's experience "through the lens of the prejudices, preconceptions, and preoccupations of the seventeenth-century colonial settlers and the Indians." Although he acknowledges that Indians had suffered "decades of insult and abuse," were driven from their land, "preyed upon by corrupt traders and swindlers, [and] demeaned by colonial authorities," he still depicts them as terrorizing savages: marauding, whooping with "devilish noise," ruthlessly murdering with axes, clubs, hatchets, pikes, knives, and rifles given to them by the French. The French, greedy and bellicose, inflamed Indian hatred of the colonists and disrupted their traditional hunting and gathering by seducing them into the lucrative fur trade. The competition for animal hides, Atkinson maintains, pitted tribe against tribe. Drawing on archival documents and contemporary and recent histories, Atkinson has written a compelling narrative, but his reprisal of 17th-century prejudices makes for discomfiting reading.

Kirkus Reviews