America's Hidden History: Untold Tales of the First Pilgrims, Fighting Women, and Forgotten Founders Who Shaped a Nation Paperback by Kenneth C. Davis Page A
Authors: Kenneth C. Davis
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Jamestown in 1607, Captain John Smith lay prostrate with his head upon a stone, as he later told it, about to be brained by an Indian war club, when the maiden Pocahontas lay across his body and saved his life. The legendary incident is now acknowledged to have been an initiation ceremony rather than a threatened execution. Or, at most, it was a symbolic execution in which the Indians asserted their dominion over the captive Smith.
But for Hannah Dustin and Mary Neff, such distinctions would have offered small solace. To them, it must have seemed that death or survival as servants to the Indian family were their only prospects.
Upon learning the Indians’ plan to take them north to Canada, Hannah Dustin set her mind to escape.
In the predawn hours of March 31, as her captors lay asleep, Hannah roused Mary and Samuel. The three resourceful New Englanders found tomahawks and, with little difficulty or hesitation, dispatched ten of the sleeping Indians—six of them children—sparing only an old woman and a small boy.
At Hannah Dustin’s suggestion, young Samuel Lennardson had acquired the grim skills to carry out this plan from one of the Indians. A famous later account imagined the deadly tutorial session: “ ‘ Strike ’em there,’ said he placing a finger on his temple and he also showed him how to take off the scalp. . . . The English boy struck the Indian who had given him the information, on the temple, as he had been directed.”6
Setting out from this horrific bloodletting, Hannah Dustin was sufficiently self-possessed to return to the wigwam to take the Abenakis’ scalps in order to prove what she and the other two escapees had done. The Massachusetts Bay Courts had enacted a bounty for the scalps of Indians three years earlier, in 1694. Although the bounty had since been reduced and then repealed, Hannah Dustin thought | 48 \
Hannah’s Escape
it might be worth the effort if they not only made good their escape but profited from the ordeal as well. This extraordinarily plucky decision may have resulted from some mingling of Yankee thrift and Puritan work ethic, along with some of that legendary colonial American pioneer bravado—perhaps mixed with a measure of vengeance at the memory of what had been done to Hannah’s newborn child. With ten scalps wrapped in a linen kerchief—later to be displayed in Haverhill’s historical society—the trio scuttled all of the Indians’ canoes save one, and in that one they started out on their journey back to Haverhill, about sixty miles downriver.
Early this morning the deed was performed, and now, perchance, these tired women and this boy, their clothes stained with blood, and their minds racked with alternate resolution and fear, are making a hasty meal of parched corn and moosemeat, while their canoe glides under these pine roots whose stumps are still standing on the bank. They are thinking of the dead whom they have left behind on that solitary isle far up the stream, and of the relentless living warriors who are in pursuit. Every withered leaf which the winter has left seems to know their story, and in its rustling to repeat it and betray them. An Indian lurks behind every rock and pine, and their nerves cannot bear the tapping of a woodpecker. Or they forget their own dangers and their deeds in conjecturing the fate of their kindred, and whether, if they escape the Indians, they shall find the former still alive.
— H e n r y Dav i d Th o r e au, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849)7
The two women and the young boy eventually reached the safety of Haverhill, and when word of their escape reached Boston, they | 49 \
America’s Hidden Hi Ç ory would be feted as heroes. Later brought to the seat of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the redeemed captives received a grand welcome. Although the bounty for scalps had actually expired, the Massachusetts General Court made a special case for the brave mother and her com-patriots. Accounts vary,
But for Hannah Dustin and Mary Neff, such distinctions would have offered small solace. To them, it must have seemed that death or survival as servants to the Indian family were their only prospects.
Upon learning the Indians’ plan to take them north to Canada, Hannah Dustin set her mind to escape.
In the predawn hours of March 31, as her captors lay asleep, Hannah roused Mary and Samuel. The three resourceful New Englanders found tomahawks and, with little difficulty or hesitation, dispatched ten of the sleeping Indians—six of them children—sparing only an old woman and a small boy.
At Hannah Dustin’s suggestion, young Samuel Lennardson had acquired the grim skills to carry out this plan from one of the Indians. A famous later account imagined the deadly tutorial session: “ ‘ Strike ’em there,’ said he placing a finger on his temple and he also showed him how to take off the scalp. . . . The English boy struck the Indian who had given him the information, on the temple, as he had been directed.”6
Setting out from this horrific bloodletting, Hannah Dustin was sufficiently self-possessed to return to the wigwam to take the Abenakis’ scalps in order to prove what she and the other two escapees had done. The Massachusetts Bay Courts had enacted a bounty for the scalps of Indians three years earlier, in 1694. Although the bounty had since been reduced and then repealed, Hannah Dustin thought | 48 \
Hannah’s Escape
it might be worth the effort if they not only made good their escape but profited from the ordeal as well. This extraordinarily plucky decision may have resulted from some mingling of Yankee thrift and Puritan work ethic, along with some of that legendary colonial American pioneer bravado—perhaps mixed with a measure of vengeance at the memory of what had been done to Hannah’s newborn child. With ten scalps wrapped in a linen kerchief—later to be displayed in Haverhill’s historical society—the trio scuttled all of the Indians’ canoes save one, and in that one they started out on their journey back to Haverhill, about sixty miles downriver.
Early this morning the deed was performed, and now, perchance, these tired women and this boy, their clothes stained with blood, and their minds racked with alternate resolution and fear, are making a hasty meal of parched corn and moosemeat, while their canoe glides under these pine roots whose stumps are still standing on the bank. They are thinking of the dead whom they have left behind on that solitary isle far up the stream, and of the relentless living warriors who are in pursuit. Every withered leaf which the winter has left seems to know their story, and in its rustling to repeat it and betray them. An Indian lurks behind every rock and pine, and their nerves cannot bear the tapping of a woodpecker. Or they forget their own dangers and their deeds in conjecturing the fate of their kindred, and whether, if they escape the Indians, they shall find the former still alive.
— H e n r y Dav i d Th o r e au, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849)7
The two women and the young boy eventually reached the safety of Haverhill, and when word of their escape reached Boston, they | 49 \
America’s Hidden Hi Ç ory would be feted as heroes. Later brought to the seat of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the redeemed captives received a grand welcome. Although the bounty for scalps had actually expired, the Massachusetts General Court made a special case for the brave mother and her com-patriots. Accounts vary,
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