Hannah Duston

Who was Hannah Duston?

Hannah Duston was a colonial Massachusetts Puritan mother of nine who was taken captive by Abenaki Native Americans during King William's War with her newborn daughter during the Raid on Haverhill, in which 27 colonists were killed. While detained on an island in the Merrimack River in present-day Boscawen, New Hampshire, she killed and scalped ten of the Native American family members holding them hostage, with the assistance of two other captives.

Duston's captivity narrative became famous more than 100 years after she died. Duston is the first woman honored in the United States with a statue. During the 19th century, she was referred to as "a folk hero" and the "mother of the American tradition of scalp hunting". At the same time, scholars assert Duston's story only became legend in the 19th century because America used her story to define its violence against native Americans as innocent, defensive and virtuous.