A cute little snapshot from our colonial past

During a winter in 1697 Hannah Duston of Massachusetts and her family were attacked by indians. After they brutally killed her infant son they dragged her to their indian camp some fifteen days distance. Along with a few other prisoners they had captured they told them they would probably be tortured and then used for target practice by hatchet-throwing young warriors. At midnight Duston and another woman and a young boy gathered the hatchets from the dozing indians and, quoting now from the excellent Underground Education by Richard Zachs, “killed ten of their twelve Indian guards. The captives fled but then decided to return and take the scalps…of two Indian men, two women and six children.” After their escape by canoe the General Court of Massachusetts awarded them £50 for the bounty.

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