Massacre on the Merrimack

One day in 1697 Abenaki warriors descended on a small frontier village called Haverhill in the Massachusetts colony. Hannah Duston's husband daringly led seven of their children to safety, but he couldn't save his wife and their newborn daughter, whom the Natives seized. They marched Hannah and their other hostages north toward Quebec to sell them as slaves to the French. Two weeks into the arduous trek, Hannah, whose infant the Natives had killed right in front of her eyes, and two fellow captives conspired to escape and plotted their revenge. Moving among the sleeping Natives with tomahawks and knives, they killed two warriors, two women, and six children. Hannah returned to the bloody scene and scalped their victims before she and her cohorts embarked on the perilous voyage home. They braved treacherous waters and the constant threat of attack and repeat kidnapping, finally returning to tell their tale and show the scalps, for which Hannah collected a bounty. Was Hannah Duston America's first female freedom fighter, or was she a symbol of the coming genocide of Native Americans? In Massacre on the Merrimack, Jay Atkinson sheds new light on the controversy surrounding this colonial-era captive turned bloodthirsty avenger.