Book of the Week #40

Massacre on the Merrimack:Hannah Duston's Captivity and Revenge in Colonial America by Jay Atkinson (Lyons Press, 2015)

"Early on March 15, 1697, a band of Abenaki raided the English frontier village of Haverhill, Massachusetts. Striking swiftly, the Abenaki killed twenty-seven men, women, and children, and took thirteen captives, including 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. The Abenaki intended to make the captives run the gauntlet at their village in Quebec, after which they would be sold as slaves.

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. The fact that the two religions could not have worshipped a more similar God is an ironic footnote to the carnage that would ensue.
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 exquisitely researched and riveting narrative, bestselling author Jay Atkinson sheds new light on the early struggle for North America." -publisher's blurb

On Saturday, October 3, 2015 at 4pm Gibson's will host a launch party for this latest book from Jay Atkinson who was a recent guest on The Exchange.