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

Written by Jay Atkinson

Narrated by Malcolm Hillgartner

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. 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.

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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tantor Media, Inc
• Release date: May 28, 2019
• ISBN: 9781515906568

Reviews for Massacre on the Merrimack

[m.belljackson · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Equally terrifying and enlightening, the MASSACRE of 1697 is not bedtime reading.Jay Atkinson has a compelling range, from tender landscapes and settings so vivid that readersmay actually hear the war party crawling toward the Duston home.As well, he creates a near unbearable tension as Hannah Duston's "master" speaks of the fate of the rest of her familyand the projected horrors for the remaining captives as they travel toward the French to have scalps counted.The balanced account of the peace sought by the high Abenaki leader Passaconaway as the Abenaki hunting and fishing landswere stolen contrasts with both the savagery and tortures inflicted bythe Colonial Europeans and the "Indians" - Iroquoi and later Abenaki descendants.

[froxgirl · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Here's a history familiar to many in Eastern Massachusetts: as Puritan families came over to the new world, many settled in isolated wilderness areas because land was cheaper than in the settlement towns. In 1697, the French and English were still fiercely competing for territory, and members of the Eastern Native American tribes in the area that had not been wiped out by epidemics were used as raiders by the French to terrify settlers and to discourage them from staying and growing their families and farms. On the outskirts of present day Haverhill, MA, the Duston family was the victim of a such a raid, and the matriarch Hannah, mother to nine living children, was taken, with her nurse and her week old daughter, by an Abenaki band. Her captivity and her revenge make for a fascinating and almost unbelievable tale.Atkinson has done his research; in fact, the 82 pages of endnotes almost equal a second recounting. Subjects covered range from the vivid descriptions of the harsh land and the powerful Merrimack River, to the bustling Boston of the era and some of its most renowned statesmen, such as Cotton Mather and Samuel Sewall, both primary figures in the upcoming Salem witch trials. Many of the local Native American tribes are discussed in depth, as well as the fearsome neighboring Iroquois nation. So many locations - towns, mountains, rivers, lake, highways - surrender the origin of their names.The lives of Puritans, seemingly the evangelical Christians of their day, are convincingly told, as is the career of Count Frontenac, commander of the French in Quebec. The essential nature of beavers to the colonial economy, including a detailed description of the making of beaver hats (using chemicals so toxic that the phrase "mad as a hatter" comes into general usage) is explored. There is such a wealth of fascinating information here that the Hannah Duston story is almost subsumed by every other amazing topic. And - spoiler alert - there is yet another Hannah, also from Haverhill, who is captured TWICE, nearly three times, and lives to tell the tales.Colonial history lovers, rejoice!