What do you think?
Rate this book
Massacre on the Merrimack: Hannah Duston's Captivity and Revenge in Colonial America
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."
304 pages, Hardcover
First published September 1, 2015
88 people are currently reading
847 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 85 reviews
June 25, 2022
“[A] little before break of day when the whole crew was in a dead sleep…one of these women took up a resolution to imitate the action of Jael upon Sisera, and, being where she had not her own life secured by any law unto her, she thought she was not forbidden by any law to take away the life of the murderers by whom her child had been butchered. She heartened the nurse and the youth to assist her in this enterprise, and they all furnishing themselves with hatchets for the purpose, they struck such home-blows upon the heads of their sleeping oppressors that ere they could any of them struggle into any effectual resistance at the feet of those poor prisoners…”
- Cotton Mather, A Narrative of Hannah Dustan’s Notable Deliverance from Captivity
“The arm that held the axe descended in a terrible swift blow, the weight shifting to the balls of [Hannah] Duston’s feet, and the heavy stone blade smashing against the Indian’s forehead. There was a muffled crack, quickly followed by two more such noises as Mary Neff and the boy struck their victims. Looking down for a moment, Duston saw an abundance of clear fluid mixed with bright red blood flowing from the Indian’s ear and nose. He gasped once, and fell silent…”
- Jay Atkinson, Massacre on the Merrimack: Hannah Duston’s Captivity and Revenge in Colonial America
If you’ve never heard of Hannah Duston, I can give you all the necessaries in a single paragraph. Except the exact spelling of her surname, which has several variants.
On March 15, 1697, Abenaki raiders attacked the English village of Haverhill, Massachusetts. The Indians took thirteen captives, including a woman named Hannah Duston and her week-old infant, Martha. A short time later, one of the warriors killed Martha to stop her from crying. After a march of approximately 100 miles, the captives were split up into smaller bands. Hannah traveled with two companions (Hannah’s nurse, Mary Neff, and a boy named Sam) to an island at the junction of the Contoocook and Merrimack Rivers. There, while the Abenaki slept, Hannah and her two companions took up axes and killed their captors, which included: two warriors, two women, and six children. Hannah, Mary, and Sam set out in a canoe, but Hannah made them turn around so that she could collect her prize: Ten scalps, which she later presented to the Massachusetts General Assembly. Even though Massachusetts’ governor had ceased paying a scalp bounty, Hannah was awarded fifty pounds.
***
That’s all you need to know about Hannah’s saga. And I use the word need loosely. Hannah’s captivity, vengeance, and escape are not world-historical events. Rather, this is better described as a striking, bloody vignette, a uniquely American anecdote that vividly symbolizes the brutal struggle for this continent.
When I picked up Jay Atkinson’s Massacre on the Merrimack , I wondered how Atkinson could spin this out into an entire book. After all, Duston’s story has only one primary source, that being Cotton Mather, who took his first-person interview with Hannah and wrote about it in three separate publications, changing and expanding it to meet his needs. (The works are Humiliations Followed with Deliverances, Decennium Luctuosum, and Magnalia Christi Americana, just in case you have literally nothing else to do in this life). I doubted there existed enough to fill out even a relatively brief book. (Massacre has 213 pages of text, and 81 pages of annotated notes that I found essential to read). The subject intrigued me, but I didn’t want to read a bunch of filler.
Well, there is a lot of filler here, and necessarily so. But I was pleasantly surprised at how well the filler is presented. Atkinson takes a slim thread of a story and weaves it into something that is almost entirely satisfying, and at times, incredibly gripping.
***
History is a big, impersonal force that is created by the small acts and decisions of uncountable numbers of individuals. The best works of history manage to find the balance between the overarching context, and the people doing their best within a paradigm that is not of their own design.
Atkinson does a pretty good job with this.
Hannah’s journey is the heart and soul, of course, but Atkinson intersperses this narrative thread with other chapters that cover the background leading to the Abenaki raid. There are chapters that leave Hannah entirely in order to trace the sad history of Massachusetts-Indian relations, providing plenty of impetus for the Abenaki to lash out. Atkinson also provides a decent description of King William’s War, a religious conflict between French Catholics and English Protestants that played out in Colonial America. I found this presentation to be really satisfying. Instead of the Abenaki raid occurring in a vacuum, Atkinson shows us people caught up in larger events. As individuals, they have choices, but those choices are also circumscribed by things far bigger than themselves.
***
Atkinson is a fantastic writer and his retelling of this old tale is brilliant and evocative. For instance, there is a marvelous scene set in a homestead before an Indian raid. The tension Atkinson evokes had me skipping ahead to see what happened.
The level of detail is astounding. It is, in fact, unbelievable, and this is worth noting. I would not classify this as a straight history. This is, to use a trendy paradoxical phrase, a nonfiction novel. Due to the aforementioned dearth of primary sources on Hannah Duston, Atkinson has to construct his narrative using other methods. For example, during Hannah’s revenge, Atkinson describes the sound of the axe hitting Abenaki skulls. Does that info come from Hannah? No. Instead, Atkinson interviewed Dr. Aloke Mandal, a trauma surgeon based out of Los Angeles. Mandal described to Atkinson the sound an axe might make hitting a skull, and Atkinson used that in his book. Is this likely accurate? Probably yes. Does this make it into a peer-reviewed quarterly? Absolutely not.
Another example is the terrain and topography. Atkinson is really good at describing the physical nature of Hannah’s trek. His information does not come from 17th century sources, but from his own experience following in her footsteps. It is effective, to be sure, and I was fine with it. I am willing to grant narrative historians some artistic license, especially as to assumable details that do not otherwise alter known trajectories. Importantly, the gaps he fills in the record do not – as far as I can tell – change the essence of any essential fact. When he writes about how the cold air felt on Hannah’s skin, it doesn’t really matter. He’s making the story more readable without irrevocably perverting the record. Nonetheless, if you are a stickler for citations, this will likely infuriate you.
***
On the issue of sources, it is worth mentioning that Atkinson relies heavily on 19th century secondary sources, without any discussion on how those books came by their information. The mere fact that a book is old does not transform it into a primary source.
This popped into my head during a very graphic scene in which Atkinson recounts an Indian torturing an infant with hot coals. Because of the ghastliness of the incident, I headed for the citations, which directed me to a secondary source. There was no discussion as to how this secondary source originally came by this story, which was relevant, as it was published one hundred years later. It may or may not be true, but it’s so macabre as to sound propagandistic, and I really needed more than a Francis Parkman reference to believe it happened.
***
Beyond source veracity, a couples other issues stood out. The first is Atkinson’s nomenclature. Like S.C. Gwynn in his otherwise wonderful Empires of the Summer Moon, Atkinson continually refers to the Indians as “savages.” Initially, I thought this was idiomatic, and that he chose the word to convey Hannah’s perspective. The consistency of the usage proved otherwise. The same thing with “squaw.” I think it’s widely agreed that squaw does not actually refer to female genitalia; however, the word’s historic usage is generally degrading, and there are other, better words to use instead (such as, you know, “woman”).
The bigger problem – the one that keeps this from greatness – is that Atkinson never tells me why Hannah Duston is important. Massacre on the Merrimack ends abruptly with Atkinson informing us that Hannah’s exploits would “eventually fade into the darkness of history.” Okay, if that’s the case, why do you think it deserves a new airing? What relevance does she have for us?
Frankly, I’m shocked that Atkinson doesn’t bother with this question. To me, this should have been the goal of this enterprise.
In The Terror Dream, Susan Faludi used Hannah to explore early frontier gender roles. Contemporary historians – from as far back as the 17th century – debated the morality of her actions, as Atkinson points out in the endnotes. Even today, people are interpreting and reinterpreting Hannah’s bloody and immortal moment. You can argue with equal strength that she is either a proto-Wonder Woman or a remorseless murderer.
What you can’t do is ignore the issue entirely. Massacre on the Merrimack is really good, and that’s almost disappointing. It covers every aspect of Hannah Duston, except Hannah’s legacy. Atkinson utterly fails to derive any meaning from this event, or to convince the reader of its noteworthiness, aside from the obvious novelty of a woman being the one to wield the fatal axe.
- Cotton Mather, A Narrative of Hannah Dustan’s Notable Deliverance from Captivity
“The arm that held the axe descended in a terrible swift blow, the weight shifting to the balls of [Hannah] Duston’s feet, and the heavy stone blade smashing against the Indian’s forehead. There was a muffled crack, quickly followed by two more such noises as Mary Neff and the boy struck their victims. Looking down for a moment, Duston saw an abundance of clear fluid mixed with bright red blood flowing from the Indian’s ear and nose. He gasped once, and fell silent…”
- Jay Atkinson, Massacre on the Merrimack: Hannah Duston’s Captivity and Revenge in Colonial America
If you’ve never heard of Hannah Duston, I can give you all the necessaries in a single paragraph. Except the exact spelling of her surname, which has several variants.
On March 15, 1697, Abenaki raiders attacked the English village of Haverhill, Massachusetts. The Indians took thirteen captives, including a woman named Hannah Duston and her week-old infant, Martha. A short time later, one of the warriors killed Martha to stop her from crying. After a march of approximately 100 miles, the captives were split up into smaller bands. Hannah traveled with two companions (Hannah’s nurse, Mary Neff, and a boy named Sam) to an island at the junction of the Contoocook and Merrimack Rivers. There, while the Abenaki slept, Hannah and her two companions took up axes and killed their captors, which included: two warriors, two women, and six children. Hannah, Mary, and Sam set out in a canoe, but Hannah made them turn around so that she could collect her prize: Ten scalps, which she later presented to the Massachusetts General Assembly. Even though Massachusetts’ governor had ceased paying a scalp bounty, Hannah was awarded fifty pounds.
***
That’s all you need to know about Hannah’s saga. And I use the word need loosely. Hannah’s captivity, vengeance, and escape are not world-historical events. Rather, this is better described as a striking, bloody vignette, a uniquely American anecdote that vividly symbolizes the brutal struggle for this continent.
When I picked up Jay Atkinson’s Massacre on the Merrimack , I wondered how Atkinson could spin this out into an entire book. After all, Duston’s story has only one primary source, that being Cotton Mather, who took his first-person interview with Hannah and wrote about it in three separate publications, changing and expanding it to meet his needs. (The works are Humiliations Followed with Deliverances, Decennium Luctuosum, and Magnalia Christi Americana, just in case you have literally nothing else to do in this life). I doubted there existed enough to fill out even a relatively brief book. (Massacre has 213 pages of text, and 81 pages of annotated notes that I found essential to read). The subject intrigued me, but I didn’t want to read a bunch of filler.
Well, there is a lot of filler here, and necessarily so. But I was pleasantly surprised at how well the filler is presented. Atkinson takes a slim thread of a story and weaves it into something that is almost entirely satisfying, and at times, incredibly gripping.
***
History is a big, impersonal force that is created by the small acts and decisions of uncountable numbers of individuals. The best works of history manage to find the balance between the overarching context, and the people doing their best within a paradigm that is not of their own design.
Atkinson does a pretty good job with this.
Hannah’s journey is the heart and soul, of course, but Atkinson intersperses this narrative thread with other chapters that cover the background leading to the Abenaki raid. There are chapters that leave Hannah entirely in order to trace the sad history of Massachusetts-Indian relations, providing plenty of impetus for the Abenaki to lash out. Atkinson also provides a decent description of King William’s War, a religious conflict between French Catholics and English Protestants that played out in Colonial America. I found this presentation to be really satisfying. Instead of the Abenaki raid occurring in a vacuum, Atkinson shows us people caught up in larger events. As individuals, they have choices, but those choices are also circumscribed by things far bigger than themselves.
***
Atkinson is a fantastic writer and his retelling of this old tale is brilliant and evocative. For instance, there is a marvelous scene set in a homestead before an Indian raid. The tension Atkinson evokes had me skipping ahead to see what happened.
The level of detail is astounding. It is, in fact, unbelievable, and this is worth noting. I would not classify this as a straight history. This is, to use a trendy paradoxical phrase, a nonfiction novel. Due to the aforementioned dearth of primary sources on Hannah Duston, Atkinson has to construct his narrative using other methods. For example, during Hannah’s revenge, Atkinson describes the sound of the axe hitting Abenaki skulls. Does that info come from Hannah? No. Instead, Atkinson interviewed Dr. Aloke Mandal, a trauma surgeon based out of Los Angeles. Mandal described to Atkinson the sound an axe might make hitting a skull, and Atkinson used that in his book. Is this likely accurate? Probably yes. Does this make it into a peer-reviewed quarterly? Absolutely not.
Another example is the terrain and topography. Atkinson is really good at describing the physical nature of Hannah’s trek. His information does not come from 17th century sources, but from his own experience following in her footsteps. It is effective, to be sure, and I was fine with it. I am willing to grant narrative historians some artistic license, especially as to assumable details that do not otherwise alter known trajectories. Importantly, the gaps he fills in the record do not – as far as I can tell – change the essence of any essential fact. When he writes about how the cold air felt on Hannah’s skin, it doesn’t really matter. He’s making the story more readable without irrevocably perverting the record. Nonetheless, if you are a stickler for citations, this will likely infuriate you.
***
On the issue of sources, it is worth mentioning that Atkinson relies heavily on 19th century secondary sources, without any discussion on how those books came by their information. The mere fact that a book is old does not transform it into a primary source.
This popped into my head during a very graphic scene in which Atkinson recounts an Indian torturing an infant with hot coals. Because of the ghastliness of the incident, I headed for the citations, which directed me to a secondary source. There was no discussion as to how this secondary source originally came by this story, which was relevant, as it was published one hundred years later. It may or may not be true, but it’s so macabre as to sound propagandistic, and I really needed more than a Francis Parkman reference to believe it happened.
***
Beyond source veracity, a couples other issues stood out. The first is Atkinson’s nomenclature. Like S.C. Gwynn in his otherwise wonderful Empires of the Summer Moon, Atkinson continually refers to the Indians as “savages.” Initially, I thought this was idiomatic, and that he chose the word to convey Hannah’s perspective. The consistency of the usage proved otherwise. The same thing with “squaw.” I think it’s widely agreed that squaw does not actually refer to female genitalia; however, the word’s historic usage is generally degrading, and there are other, better words to use instead (such as, you know, “woman”).
The bigger problem – the one that keeps this from greatness – is that Atkinson never tells me why Hannah Duston is important. Massacre on the Merrimack ends abruptly with Atkinson informing us that Hannah’s exploits would “eventually fade into the darkness of history.” Okay, if that’s the case, why do you think it deserves a new airing? What relevance does she have for us?
Frankly, I’m shocked that Atkinson doesn’t bother with this question. To me, this should have been the goal of this enterprise.
In The Terror Dream, Susan Faludi used Hannah to explore early frontier gender roles. Contemporary historians – from as far back as the 17th century – debated the morality of her actions, as Atkinson points out in the endnotes. Even today, people are interpreting and reinterpreting Hannah’s bloody and immortal moment. You can argue with equal strength that she is either a proto-Wonder Woman or a remorseless murderer.
What you can’t do is ignore the issue entirely. Massacre on the Merrimack is really good, and that’s almost disappointing. It covers every aspect of Hannah Duston, except Hannah’s legacy. Atkinson utterly fails to derive any meaning from this event, or to convince the reader of its noteworthiness, aside from the obvious novelty of a woman being the one to wield the fatal axe.
March 18, 2017
I picked this up because (a) it's local history and (b) I've really enjoyed Jay Atkinson's other books. This book, not so much. I will give him this, he was thorough. But here's what I didn't like:
1. The jumping around back and forth in time, in several tangential stories about Hannah Bradley and the history of the French, the English, and the native people of America.
2. Most of Hannah's account was taken from the one contemporaneous written account of the story, which was written by Cotton Mather. Let's not forget his ugly role in the frenzy of the Salem witch trials. He may have gone to Harvard and he may have been a minister, but his trade was in whipping up the most sordid, dramatic, and UNTRUE stories of the time. I'd rely on his account being factual as much as I believe the headlines in the Weekly World News.
3. Sorry, it's not okay to call them savages or say they are untamed because they don't follow Christian religious beliefs and do what the white Europeans say. There were times when I thought that the author was might give a balanced account of this story, but he was utterly incapable of doing so. He seemed to make much of the fact that natives walked around naked in the winter, as though they were too stupid to realize they were cold and do something about it. Let's not forget, these religious zealot invaders did not deal with the natives in a fair and aboveboard manner. They came in and conquered and killed and then wrote history to make themselves look good. This book falls into that trap, and I'm done with reading any more of this author's books. I won't support a racist.
1. The jumping around back and forth in time, in several tangential stories about Hannah Bradley and the history of the French, the English, and the native people of America.
2. Most of Hannah's account was taken from the one contemporaneous written account of the story, which was written by Cotton Mather. Let's not forget his ugly role in the frenzy of the Salem witch trials. He may have gone to Harvard and he may have been a minister, but his trade was in whipping up the most sordid, dramatic, and UNTRUE stories of the time. I'd rely on his account being factual as much as I believe the headlines in the Weekly World News.
3. Sorry, it's not okay to call them savages or say they are untamed because they don't follow Christian religious beliefs and do what the white Europeans say. There were times when I thought that the author was might give a balanced account of this story, but he was utterly incapable of doing so. He seemed to make much of the fact that natives walked around naked in the winter, as though they were too stupid to realize they were cold and do something about it. Let's not forget, these religious zealot invaders did not deal with the natives in a fair and aboveboard manner. They came in and conquered and killed and then wrote history to make themselves look good. This book falls into that trap, and I'm done with reading any more of this author's books. I won't support a racist.
March 2, 2016
Reading this book, you get the sense of a piece of art being painted before you. Atkinson goes into the detail of colonial America and several precipitating events to present the history that surrounds the story - the bias of the time, the political gamesmanship for control, and the intense financial drivers that form the backdrop to the scene in the foreground. A woman forcibly taken, marched through the NH wilderness in the freezing cold, subjected to brutal conditions and acts, all spurned on by french-sponsored raiding parties by local American Indian tribes.
To critics that cannot restrain from romanticizing and placing a euphemistic lens on history, try spending 2 weeks in the NH wilderness without supplies or shelter, dressed as they did in this story, and follow the path they traveled. You'll endure cold temps ranging from a 48 degree high to a 23 degree low with snow still occurring. That's what NH is like in mid to late March. Picture being forced through river crossings that soak your feet and legs. Even by today's standards with the advanced protective clothing available, such a trek is daunting. You feel the brush of snow and bone-chilling cold of the water because Atkinson experienced them, and has mastered taking an event where the ending is known and puts you into the midst of the story to feel the fear, chills, exhaustion, and near hopelessness.
Everything here is rich in history and offers an expansive big picture to include the manipulation and misunderstandings between American Indians and European colonizers in North America and Canada. We're presented with clash of cultures and conflicting values on all sides, as well as subtle inner conflicts within each society. The American Indian was often cruel to their enemies, but early settlers were also blinded by religion conveniently defined for their purposes. And, as is still true today, following the money always leads back to the root of an issue -- a truth borne out in this story.
An exceptional read and very much worth your time.
To critics that cannot restrain from romanticizing and placing a euphemistic lens on history, try spending 2 weeks in the NH wilderness without supplies or shelter, dressed as they did in this story, and follow the path they traveled. You'll endure cold temps ranging from a 48 degree high to a 23 degree low with snow still occurring. That's what NH is like in mid to late March. Picture being forced through river crossings that soak your feet and legs. Even by today's standards with the advanced protective clothing available, such a trek is daunting. You feel the brush of snow and bone-chilling cold of the water because Atkinson experienced them, and has mastered taking an event where the ending is known and puts you into the midst of the story to feel the fear, chills, exhaustion, and near hopelessness.
Everything here is rich in history and offers an expansive big picture to include the manipulation and misunderstandings between American Indians and European colonizers in North America and Canada. We're presented with clash of cultures and conflicting values on all sides, as well as subtle inner conflicts within each society. The American Indian was often cruel to their enemies, but early settlers were also blinded by religion conveniently defined for their purposes. And, as is still true today, following the money always leads back to the root of an issue -- a truth borne out in this story.
An exceptional read and very much worth your time.
December 15, 2020
Shame on Atkinson for not calling this a work of historical fiction--emphasis on fiction. Atkinson delivers a retread of a story as told to Cotton Mather (of Salem witch trials fame), and retold by such literary lights as Whittier, Hawthorne, and Thoreau.
This story of a Puritan woman's capture by "savages" and escape after slaughtering and scalping an entire encampment of sleeping Indians, became a Victorian trope and parr of the justification for 19th century Manifest Destiny. Ultimately, Atkinson's lurid imagining of the saga, with a fig leaf of historical references, perpetuates offensive stereotypes of Native Americans.
This story of a Puritan woman's capture by "savages" and escape after slaughtering and scalping an entire encampment of sleeping Indians, became a Victorian trope and parr of the justification for 19th century Manifest Destiny. Ultimately, Atkinson's lurid imagining of the saga, with a fig leaf of historical references, perpetuates offensive stereotypes of Native Americans.
February 24, 2021
Massacre on the Merrimack, by Jay Atkinson is a true and compelling account of Indian captivity. In the1600's, English settlers in New England had to be on constant alert for Indian raids. One such raid occurred on March 13, 1697, in Haverhill, MA, one of many small farming communities on the frontier.
That day, the Indians killed twenty- seven and captured thirteen, including Hannah Duston, a thirty-nine year old mother of ten. She was unable to escape with her family because she had a one-week old baby, so she and her baby and her elderly nurse were taken captive.
One thing I really liked about this book is that, before he wrote the book, the author took the very same journey Hannah had taken. He traveled the same trail under the same rough conditions and at the same time of year. He could have taken an ATV and a Wave Runner. It added great authenticity. Even better, Haverhill was Mr. Atkinson’s hometown. He had access to sources that other authors could only dream of.
Hannah soon found herself, with Mary and a young white captive named Sam. They were guarded by only two drunken warriors and two squaws and some children. Hannah decided that this was the time to escape. She crept around and confiscated the weapons and distributed them among her cohorts. They had a gun, a knife and a couple of axes. They quickly murdered the ten adults and children and loaded the canoe with supplies and put holes in the other canoe. Then Hannah shocked her friends by going back to collect all the scalps. England had put a bounty on Indian scalps. They were worth a great deal of money. They then began the trip home down the Merrimac River.
After a harrowing and terrifying trip of many days, they returned home, to a cheering crowd. Hannah finally received the ransom money and split it with Mary and Sam.
To this day, Hannah Duston is considered a hero in New England.
That day, the Indians killed twenty- seven and captured thirteen, including Hannah Duston, a thirty-nine year old mother of ten. She was unable to escape with her family because she had a one-week old baby, so she and her baby and her elderly nurse were taken captive.
One thing I really liked about this book is that, before he wrote the book, the author took the very same journey Hannah had taken. He traveled the same trail under the same rough conditions and at the same time of year. He could have taken an ATV and a Wave Runner. It added great authenticity. Even better, Haverhill was Mr. Atkinson’s hometown. He had access to sources that other authors could only dream of.
Hannah soon found herself, with Mary and a young white captive named Sam. They were guarded by only two drunken warriors and two squaws and some children. Hannah decided that this was the time to escape. She crept around and confiscated the weapons and distributed them among her cohorts. They had a gun, a knife and a couple of axes. They quickly murdered the ten adults and children and loaded the canoe with supplies and put holes in the other canoe. Then Hannah shocked her friends by going back to collect all the scalps. England had put a bounty on Indian scalps. They were worth a great deal of money. They then began the trip home down the Merrimac River.
After a harrowing and terrifying trip of many days, they returned home, to a cheering crowd. Hannah finally received the ransom money and split it with Mary and Sam.
To this day, Hannah Duston is considered a hero in New England.
September 8, 2015
What a page-turner! The story of Hannah Duston’s captivity and revenge will mark you forever. Atkinson plunges you into the cold water of the Merrimack river, makes you feel like brushing the snow from your shoulders, and marches you alongside the Indians into a world of wilderness now forever lost. Lost that is — except on Atkinson’s pages. He writes English prose like a master, and his canvas is as colorful as a mural. Painting the big picture of colonial America, when the French and the English struggled for dominance and Indians were used as mercenaries, Atkinson zooms in for the close-up on Hannah -- his steadfast heroine, giving you the thrill of intimacy with her iron will and unforgettable deeds. The author then pulls back for the establishing shots of what made the circumstances of her tragedy possible. Caught in the center of a triangle of warfare between French Catholics, English Puritans, and displaced Indians, Hannah Duston’s story becomes their nexus, that place where the forces of history find expression in a single human lifetime, one representing the terrible collision of native and European cultures. Atkinson’s background as a novelist is on full display here and his sensual images jolt history into hot, breathing life — without invention; indeed, the transparency of his work runs as clear as ice-water, and that is the clearest lens we’re ever going to get to peer through at this one-of a kind spectacle, this unique biography, not only of a woman, but of America. Massacre on the Merrimack is an important, beautiful book, and we’re extremely lucky to have it.
January 27, 2016
In my naïveté and wishful thinking I pictured a Thanksgiving feast with congenial, respectful and cooperative relations between Native Americans and settlers. However, this story catagorically puts that "Disney-like" image to rest. In fact, life on the frontier and relations with and among Native American tribes and the settlers and the English and French was pretty much a free-for-all with back stabbing and side deals and greed at the heart of the unrest. What interested me the most in this book was Hannah Duston's story but as I mentioned there is a good deal of background and information on the context of this event and the politics of the time. This was not an easy time to be a settler and these were hearty people and I am very happy to have learned more about Hannah. I am sure there are many other similar stories of unrecognized individuals who also faced extreme situations and events. I would caution readers to avoid judgement of either the Native Americans and/or Hannah Duston as they were all caught up in a time when human compassion and decency was less of a priority than the basic survival of yourself and your family.
July 13, 2016
An exciting narrative of the trials of Hannah Duston of Haverhill. But the book has a remarkable typo (1863 for 1683) and one continuing error: Throughout the story Atkinson uses "musket' and "rifle" interchangeably. Although rifling was invented for large field weapons in the fifteenth century, It is highly unlikely that English colonists and Indians had access to them in the late 1600s. In fact most English soldiers carried muskets over a century later in the War of 1812.
July 17, 2019
Besides the detailed account of Hannah Duston and family, there is an excellent history of area Native Americans, the French, the history of Haverhill, Mass., and tales of other captives. The two things missing are (1.) maps - the book could really use a historical map and a present day map of the areas mentioned, and (2.) a picture of the statue of Hannah Duston. I did really like the cover photo so we get an idea of the river in March. The footnotes are extensive, but also very interesting.
April 15, 2016
Hannah and Thomas Duston are my husband's 9th great-grandparents. I can't believe all that Hannah had to endure---I am in awe of her. When I saw that this book had been written, of course I had to buy it! I was not disappointed. The author apparently did a ton of research, including retracing Hannah's route. Thank you for writing this book!
February 5, 2018
I re-read the author’s introduction to this book three times to understand why he wrote it the way he did. Major portions of this book are written as if the author was there - this can be done very well with history. Yet the excessive use of “savage” and careless language surrounding the murder of both indigenous people and settlers made this a hard and unrewarding read.
September 26, 2023
Without question, this is the most intense book I've read this year! From the moment Hannah Duston is taken from her Haverhill home until her breathtaking return some two weeks later, I was riveted.
Hannah Duston's story is well-known locally, but author Jay Atkinson brings it to life with spell-binding language, jolting details, and horrific imagery. The reader can only imagine what must have been exquisite self control - or is it shock? - as Duston sees her week-old baby taken from her nurse's arms and murdered before her eyes. Under the circumstances, one can only regard her resolve for revenge as righteous: it's exactly what any parent would be thinking.
King Philip's War, an extension of ongoing worldwide conflict between French Catholicism and English Protestantism, is the backdrop for this true story, which plays out on the New England frontier. Atkinson, who is from these parts and who traveled down the Merrimack River twice as part of his research for the book, paints a vivid picture of a dreary landscape at the end of a long winter, tainted with the blood of English settlers and Native Americans.
I'm finishing this book just as the home originally built for Hannah Duston by her husband Thomas is open to the public for a weekend. Not 10 minutes from where I live, and in a location I've passed many times, this stately brick garrison house, in the middle of an otherwise unremarkable neighborhood, and manned by four of Duston's many descendants when I visited, is loaded with artifacts that help tell more of the story of what life was like in the wilds of Northern New England. In the process of building the house when his wife was abducted, Thomas Duston had it completed soon Hannah's return. Their first home destroyed in the raid, the Dustons resettled here.
Today, Hannah Duston is, like so many from the past, both praised and reviled for her actions against her Native American captors. Reading this book goes a long way toward helping the curious make up their minds.
This is a read definitely worth the time, whether or not you live in the shadow of the Merrimack.
Hannah Duston's story is well-known locally, but author Jay Atkinson brings it to life with spell-binding language, jolting details, and horrific imagery. The reader can only imagine what must have been exquisite self control - or is it shock? - as Duston sees her week-old baby taken from her nurse's arms and murdered before her eyes. Under the circumstances, one can only regard her resolve for revenge as righteous: it's exactly what any parent would be thinking.
King Philip's War, an extension of ongoing worldwide conflict between French Catholicism and English Protestantism, is the backdrop for this true story, which plays out on the New England frontier. Atkinson, who is from these parts and who traveled down the Merrimack River twice as part of his research for the book, paints a vivid picture of a dreary landscape at the end of a long winter, tainted with the blood of English settlers and Native Americans.
I'm finishing this book just as the home originally built for Hannah Duston by her husband Thomas is open to the public for a weekend. Not 10 minutes from where I live, and in a location I've passed many times, this stately brick garrison house, in the middle of an otherwise unremarkable neighborhood, and manned by four of Duston's many descendants when I visited, is loaded with artifacts that help tell more of the story of what life was like in the wilds of Northern New England. In the process of building the house when his wife was abducted, Thomas Duston had it completed soon Hannah's return. Their first home destroyed in the raid, the Dustons resettled here.
Today, Hannah Duston is, like so many from the past, both praised and reviled for her actions against her Native American captors. Reading this book goes a long way toward helping the curious make up their minds.
This is a read definitely worth the time, whether or not you live in the shadow of the Merrimack.
December 9, 2020
As an undergrad, I took a class in captivity narratives. That was when I was first introduced to the story of Hannah Duston. Years later, I learned that I am her direct descendant. Hannah's story is complicated and took place in a very complicated time in early American history (before America was even America). On one side you have settlers from England who are searching for a place to root families and they feel that they were divinely inspired to claim the land; on the other are the native Americans that are angry and have been lied to. BUT! Hannah's story wasn't simply two sided. You have the French that paid Indians to raid, kill, and kidnap the English to put them into slavery. Power, money, the fur trade, exploration, tribal disputes all played a role in Hannah's story. There was real, tangible, fear.
Hannah Duston is the first woman to have a statue erected on American soil. Her story of killing a tribe of Abenaki Indians in order to gain her own freedom and that of some of her friends so she could be reunited with her family (and she didn't know who of her family was still alive), was incredibly brave, though controversial. She watched her baby die at the hands of her captors, yet she found a way to survive.
This book is well thought out and researched. It is historical, yet Atkinson presents it from Hannah's perspective-- what she was feeling, seeing, experiencing. They way it is written, puts the reader in Hannah's cold feet. I also appreciate that Atkinson took the time to travel the routes that Duston did so he understood the geography and her struggle. Geography is an essential part in any story, but especially in Duston's.
I found the complexities and ideologies of the time intriguing.
Hannah Duston is the first woman to have a statue erected on American soil. Her story of killing a tribe of Abenaki Indians in order to gain her own freedom and that of some of her friends so she could be reunited with her family (and she didn't know who of her family was still alive), was incredibly brave, though controversial. She watched her baby die at the hands of her captors, yet she found a way to survive.
This book is well thought out and researched. It is historical, yet Atkinson presents it from Hannah's perspective-- what she was feeling, seeing, experiencing. They way it is written, puts the reader in Hannah's cold feet. I also appreciate that Atkinson took the time to travel the routes that Duston did so he understood the geography and her struggle. Geography is an essential part in any story, but especially in Duston's.
I found the complexities and ideologies of the time intriguing.
December 7, 2022
I loved reading about something so local to me. My town was mentioned a few times in the book, and I got to hear a bit about the history I had no idea about. The book was "good", although I did skip some parts, as I wanted hear more of the story of Hannah Duston than the historical background that I felt overtook the story at times. I'm a fan of historical fiction, and wasn't sure I would like the non-fictionness of the tale. I enjoyed (most of) the book.
November 20, 2020
Should be mandatory school reading!
July 27, 2023
This is a good book if you are looking for a retelling of the story of Hanna Duston's captivity and escape from Abenaki raiders. It is an unvarnished and brutal narrative of the events. It also has a good explanation of the Native American politics surrounding the Beaver Wars.
There are a couple of things that kept me from rating it higher. First, the section about the Beaver Wars popped up deep inside the book. It seemed as oddly out of place as it was informative. Second, this section and other sections of the book had a paucity of dates. In the case of the Beaver Wars, it was hard to tell what year or how much time had passed between events. The same was true for the captivity of Hannah Duston and Hannah Bradley. I was a bit shocked when reading and suddenly it was mentioned that a period of several months had passed.
Overall, it is a good story and has good information that is not presented in the best format. One note, for those who did not like the fact that more was not said about the shortcomings of Cotton Mather - the book was not about him. He is a minor player in the story. If you want to read about his shortcomings there are numerous books on the subject.
There are a couple of things that kept me from rating it higher. First, the section about the Beaver Wars popped up deep inside the book. It seemed as oddly out of place as it was informative. Second, this section and other sections of the book had a paucity of dates. In the case of the Beaver Wars, it was hard to tell what year or how much time had passed between events. The same was true for the captivity of Hannah Duston and Hannah Bradley. I was a bit shocked when reading and suddenly it was mentioned that a period of several months had passed.
Overall, it is a good story and has good information that is not presented in the best format. One note, for those who did not like the fact that more was not said about the shortcomings of Cotton Mather - the book was not about him. He is a minor player in the story. If you want to read about his shortcomings there are numerous books on the subject.
December 19, 2015
True story: 1697, Haverhill, Mass. Abenakis raid Haverhill, Mass, take captives, including Hannah Dustin, who a week prior had given birth to her zillionth baby. The raiding group trudge the group northward, many die, are killed (inc Hannah's baby) etc. Eventually, Hannah and 2 others--one is the woman who had been caring for Hannah after the birth, another a teenage boy from another villag--are taken with an Abenaki family group of a dozen or so to Concord, NH. They overnight on an island in the Merrimack River. That night, Hannah and her two fellows TOMAHAWK THE ENTIRE GROUP IN THEIR SLEEP (well, 2 escaped, one never seen again, the other in not good shape).
Then they have a harrowing journey back down the river by canoe, and yadda yadda yadda, make it home again.
The book goes well into the relationships and issues between the native tribes. A very complex setup, indeed. And, natch, I knew little to nothing about this what with my white girl education. Very interesting.
Then they have a harrowing journey back down the river by canoe, and yadda yadda yadda, make it home again.
The book goes well into the relationships and issues between the native tribes. A very complex setup, indeed. And, natch, I knew little to nothing about this what with my white girl education. Very interesting.
March 24, 2016
I really enjoyed this book about a local heroine. It's well researched but doesn't mindlessly reproduce the biases of the source material. Our views on Native Americans has changed greatly in the more than 300 years since Hannah was taken captive, and Atkinson tells the story with that in mind. He looks at both sides, showing the hardships and the cruelties of both the Native Americans and the Europeans. His notes are well worth reading alongside the main text, enriching the story further.
For all of that, this is not a dry, academic book. It's an enjoyable narrative about people ordinary, famous, and infamous. Those from the Merrimack Valley will visit familiar places and get to know people remembered only locally. Others will enjoy getting to know what frontier life was like in colonial days: how hard it was to survive, how easy it was to lose everything, and how a lack of understanding and compassion greatly affected the growth of our nation.
For all of that, this is not a dry, academic book. It's an enjoyable narrative about people ordinary, famous, and infamous. Those from the Merrimack Valley will visit familiar places and get to know people remembered only locally. Others will enjoy getting to know what frontier life was like in colonial days: how hard it was to survive, how easy it was to lose everything, and how a lack of understanding and compassion greatly affected the growth of our nation.
September 14, 2016
I really wanted to like this book more than I did. Hannah Duston's story is fascinating and Atkinson does a good job of setting it up in a dramatic way, providing historical context, and vividly describing the documented events. I enjoyed flipping back to the end notes for additional detail as I read and learned a lot along the way.
I couldn't give the book a higher rating because I was bothered by the author's interpretations and assumptions about what Duston was thinking or feeling at any given moment. There is absolutely no way that information is documented anywhere, especially in such detail, however it is presented in this book as fact. In addition, I found the descriptions of the landscape and the river to be extremely repetitive.
I couldn't give the book a higher rating because I was bothered by the author's interpretations and assumptions about what Duston was thinking or feeling at any given moment. There is absolutely no way that information is documented anywhere, especially in such detail, however it is presented in this book as fact. In addition, I found the descriptions of the landscape and the river to be extremely repetitive.
November 22, 2015
I grew up only a few hundred yards from Salmon Brook, which feeds into the Merrimack River. When Hanna Duston escaped from her Indian captors, she stopped briefly at the home of an Englishman on her way back to Haverill. There's a stone commorating this about a mile from where I grew up, so I've always been interested in Hannah's story. Jay Atkinson does a great job explaining the background of the Indian wars, most of which were incited by wars between France and England. Thank you, Jay!
January 5, 2016
Fantastic history. Well researched and written. Hanna Duston's taken into captivity by the Abenaki Indians in March of 1697 and her ultimate revenge is still debated today. Atkinson story tells of the harsh brutal reality she faced and her ultimate escape to return to what was left of her family. Highly recommended history.
December 12, 2015
Reads like an outdoor adventure tale for a dude's magazine. Not a trace of a primary source anywhere. And it sure sounds like he takes some liberties , adding reimagined glances exchanged between people and low level narrative business like that. A compelling tale that did not need such fluffing.
January 6, 2016
Great historical read. Though not for the faint of heart. I've yet to read such graphic descriptions of war, murder and kidnapping by colonial time Indians. How Hannah Duston survived and continued on is an amazing story.
January 12, 2016
Having grown up around the New England area I found this very interesting and I remember some incidents from history class. I also knew the areas, towns, etc that were mentioned in the book I felt Jay Atkinson was a superb writer.
January 2, 2016
Review to follow...
January 5, 2016
Intriguing story! These events took place near where I was born & lived until I was 10.
June 28, 2017
I found this to be a vivid, well-written , and well researched recreation of a violent and troublesome event in early American colonial history.
I met the author at a talk and reading that he gave at the Salem visitor center. I found him to be quite accessible and his manner easy-going. The passage he read inspired me to get and read the book.
As a kind of aside, (and not really a review of the book), I have to take exception to some of the criticisms leveled at the book here on Goodreads, which seem to condemn both the first-hand narrative approach, and the way that some of the subject matter is handled, specifically the portrayal of Native Americans as "violent savages".
First issue; the narrative approach.
Some have taken exception to the detailed, almost novelistic descriptions of things like specific actions and Hannah's state of mind. Although I know intellectually that these are author extrapolations, they are very good ones, based on first-hand written accounts of what happened, along with physical and forensic evidence, blended with actual, on-site, first-hand experience of the author himself, traveling the same route that Hannah traveled, under similar conditions.
Second issue: The portrayal of Native Americans.
The Native Americans were violent, and did behave savagely. They did so not only with the English, but also with other tribes. In short, they were humans, and like any group of people, were a decidedly mixed bag. This in no way excuses the savagery of the warfare the English waged on native Americans in their efforts to colonize and exterminate them, but it doesn't give a free pass to Native American behavior either. The unfortunate modern tendency to project modern interpretations and judgements onto actions and situations we are distantly and quite safely removed from strikes me as disingenuous and somewhat comical.
I can't help but feel that these criticisms miss the entire point of the story.
Although the author takes great pains to explain the political, religious and economic forces that led converted Catholic Abenaki Indians to mount the devastating early-morning, March 1697 raid , at some point, (if you are honest with yourself) you realize you no longer care what the big picture is, especially when it comes down to the basic issue of survival.
The point of the story is to put you in Hannah's shoes, and in that i think it succeeds brilliantly.
The big question in the book, and about Hannah herself is; was she a prototypical feminist hero, or just one of a long line of genocidal whites?
Although there is some evidence that white people (like Cotton Mather) were fine with using Hannah's story to confirm their pre-existing narrative of racial superiority and devine destiny.
That is unfortunate, but is not Hannah's fault, and does not impinge her credibility or basic facts of her story.
And finally , I had to ask myself, what would you have done?
If someone broke into your house, threatened the lives of your family, robbed you of your possessions, kidnapped you and your neighbors, burned your house down and murdered your newborn infant, what would you do?
Would you care that the perpetrators suffered injustice and genocide? Would you care why they did what they did? Or would you just want to wreak bloody vengeance upon them?
I don't know about you, but I'm afraid I'm with Hannah on this one.
I met the author at a talk and reading that he gave at the Salem visitor center. I found him to be quite accessible and his manner easy-going. The passage he read inspired me to get and read the book.
As a kind of aside, (and not really a review of the book), I have to take exception to some of the criticisms leveled at the book here on Goodreads, which seem to condemn both the first-hand narrative approach, and the way that some of the subject matter is handled, specifically the portrayal of Native Americans as "violent savages".
First issue; the narrative approach.
Some have taken exception to the detailed, almost novelistic descriptions of things like specific actions and Hannah's state of mind. Although I know intellectually that these are author extrapolations, they are very good ones, based on first-hand written accounts of what happened, along with physical and forensic evidence, blended with actual, on-site, first-hand experience of the author himself, traveling the same route that Hannah traveled, under similar conditions.
Second issue: The portrayal of Native Americans.
The Native Americans were violent, and did behave savagely. They did so not only with the English, but also with other tribes. In short, they were humans, and like any group of people, were a decidedly mixed bag. This in no way excuses the savagery of the warfare the English waged on native Americans in their efforts to colonize and exterminate them, but it doesn't give a free pass to Native American behavior either. The unfortunate modern tendency to project modern interpretations and judgements onto actions and situations we are distantly and quite safely removed from strikes me as disingenuous and somewhat comical.
I can't help but feel that these criticisms miss the entire point of the story.
Although the author takes great pains to explain the political, religious and economic forces that led converted Catholic Abenaki Indians to mount the devastating early-morning, March 1697 raid , at some point, (if you are honest with yourself) you realize you no longer care what the big picture is, especially when it comes down to the basic issue of survival.
The point of the story is to put you in Hannah's shoes, and in that i think it succeeds brilliantly.
The big question in the book, and about Hannah herself is; was she a prototypical feminist hero, or just one of a long line of genocidal whites?
Although there is some evidence that white people (like Cotton Mather) were fine with using Hannah's story to confirm their pre-existing narrative of racial superiority and devine destiny.
That is unfortunate, but is not Hannah's fault, and does not impinge her credibility or basic facts of her story.
And finally , I had to ask myself, what would you have done?
If someone broke into your house, threatened the lives of your family, robbed you of your possessions, kidnapped you and your neighbors, burned your house down and murdered your newborn infant, what would you do?
Would you care that the perpetrators suffered injustice and genocide? Would you care why they did what they did? Or would you just want to wreak bloody vengeance upon them?
I don't know about you, but I'm afraid I'm with Hannah on this one.
June 14, 2018
An intricate, evocative recounting of a particularly jaw-dropping episode in 18th-century North America. In 1697 , Hannah Duston - of whom I happen to be a 9th great-grandson - was abducted from her Haverhill farmhouse by a band of Abenaki in the early morning hours. After undergoing a forced march north, near-starvation, and the slaughter of two of her small children, she fomented a successful plan to kill (and scalp) her captors in the middle of the night -men, women and children - and canoe back down the Merrimack to home. It's a story that squeezes all of the ugliness and contradictions and moral confusion of America's colonization into one neat package.
Atkinson wisely supplements this tale with a generous helping of historical context, summarizing the shifting alliances and betrayals in the native, French and English populations in New England and New France in the century preceding Duston’s ordeal. Most of the native’s attacks on English settlers were motivated by the French, who would pay handsomely for scalps and slaves. And this is further tied to the booming trade in beaver pelts, which is delved into in a surprisingly fascinating chunk of the book.
The only source for Duston’s story, though, is her personal recollection to the wacko Puritan bigwig Cotton Mather, who then published it. So Atkinson necessarily had to fill out the manuscript with his own research on colonial life, and even his own late-winter canoe ride down the same Merrimack route undertaken by Duston and her companions. The book excels, thusly, when describing the landscape of 17th-century New Hampshire and Massachusetts, and the miniscule details of colonial and native daily life and ingenuity. At other times, the writing gets a little tedious and repetitive. And perhaps Atkinson was trying to convey the mindset of the settler, but his near-constant use of the word “savage” was a little off-putting to me. Still, this inspires awe, and it’s disorienting to look around my home in quaint Central Massachusetts and imagine the violence and barbarism that pervaded so recently in history. And, however you look at it, my great great great great great great great great great grandma was a badass.
Atkinson wisely supplements this tale with a generous helping of historical context, summarizing the shifting alliances and betrayals in the native, French and English populations in New England and New France in the century preceding Duston’s ordeal. Most of the native’s attacks on English settlers were motivated by the French, who would pay handsomely for scalps and slaves. And this is further tied to the booming trade in beaver pelts, which is delved into in a surprisingly fascinating chunk of the book.
The only source for Duston’s story, though, is her personal recollection to the wacko Puritan bigwig Cotton Mather, who then published it. So Atkinson necessarily had to fill out the manuscript with his own research on colonial life, and even his own late-winter canoe ride down the same Merrimack route undertaken by Duston and her companions. The book excels, thusly, when describing the landscape of 17th-century New Hampshire and Massachusetts, and the miniscule details of colonial and native daily life and ingenuity. At other times, the writing gets a little tedious and repetitive. And perhaps Atkinson was trying to convey the mindset of the settler, but his near-constant use of the word “savage” was a little off-putting to me. Still, this inspires awe, and it’s disorienting to look around my home in quaint Central Massachusetts and imagine the violence and barbarism that pervaded so recently in history. And, however you look at it, my great great great great great great great great great grandma was a badass.
July 30, 2020
I don't want to be too negative, but I think Mr. Atkinson had a potentially good story and the research to share it in in unique and exciting way and he missed the mark. It's true this is considered a non-fiction account, but even non-fiction can be written in a way that brings the reader in and helps them connect with the story. Obviously, Mr. Atkinson is great at research. This book contains a wealth of information on nearly everything going on in the colonies during this time period, and that was the biggest problem. The story skipped around and delved into other people's stories. The subtitle led me to expect this was an account of Hannah Duston's experiences. Instead, it's a scattered history of the entire area--even people who did not have any direct influence on Hannah's story and THEIR backstories. Instead of giving flavor and depth to Hannah's account, the hopping around made the story feel choppy. I also found the writing sterile and missing pertinent details that would create an emotional connection. Again, I know this is non-fiction and one can't assume everything, but what about the two women whose newborn babies were murdered? Would they not have experienced pain at the sudden stop in breastfeeding, maybe even mastitis? What about their postpartum bleeding? I get the author is a man, and maybe those subjects were to sensitive for him to consider, but if you're going to include a brief history of the Salem Witch Trials, why not important details to the actual story? Instead, to create emotional tension, Mr. Atkinson invents a lost shoe. Boring. In the end, I'm glad I read it and I appreciated the depth of research, but I think the story could have better have been served if we saw the tip of the iceberg informing Hannah's story instead of the entire iceberg. I also didn't appreciate how Mr. Atkinson referred to the Native Americans--ignorant, brutal, dirty, and uncivilized savages. I know he may have been trying to share Hannah's perspective, but it that were truly the case, he wouldn't have gone off on a deep history of Chief Passaconaway. Overall, it' a scattered, wordy, sterile account.
November 4, 2018
I really enjoyed this book. Hannah Duston's story is one I had never heard, despite the fact that it was one of the most often told stories in New England public education for many decades. Rich in Indian folklore, history and our New England heritage, Hannah was a symbol for the indomitable spirit of the American frontier of the 17th and 18th centuries.
Hannah's capture and escape shows clearly how stark and violent our history was. As New England was being settled, the Indians were manipulated, pushed aside and hated. The French and Indian War became the focal point of greed over the profitable fur trade in the New World. Greed, deceit and corruption flourished in Quebec/France and in Boston/England. The Indian cultures of many tribes were push me/ pull me victims right in the middle.
This book was fascinating and gave a sweeping background of events and the players who made this such a compelling tale. Individuals like Hannah and thousands of others paid a dear price to forge their way in the New World. Life was harsh and short, death loomed in many corners and uncertainly was the only certain thing. Written in 2015 the book is a fresh retelling of an old tale. Now I understand why there is a statue of Hannah Duston in the center of Haverhill , Ma.
Hannah's capture and escape shows clearly how stark and violent our history was. As New England was being settled, the Indians were manipulated, pushed aside and hated. The French and Indian War became the focal point of greed over the profitable fur trade in the New World. Greed, deceit and corruption flourished in Quebec/France and in Boston/England. The Indian cultures of many tribes were push me/ pull me victims right in the middle.
This book was fascinating and gave a sweeping background of events and the players who made this such a compelling tale. Individuals like Hannah and thousands of others paid a dear price to forge their way in the New World. Life was harsh and short, death loomed in many corners and uncertainly was the only certain thing. Written in 2015 the book is a fresh retelling of an old tale. Now I understand why there is a statue of Hannah Duston in the center of Haverhill , Ma.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 85 reviews