She was kidnapped, her infant child was murdered, and she was forced to march 100 miles into the wilderness. When her captors were asleep, she killed nine of them and escaped, taking two of her fellow hostages with her.
So, how is Hannah Duston the bad guy?’
Because it’s Columbus Day and/or Indigenous Peoples’ Day, and that means it’s time to denounce evil Europeans for the colonial oppressors that they are.
The details of Duston’s story, which are inscribed on a monument in Boscawen, are fairly straightforward. According to multiple accounts, including the Encyclopedia Britannica and contemporaneous reports, Dunston’s family home on the banks of the Sawmill River in Haverhill was attacked by members of the local Abenaki tribe in 1697, allegedly whipped up by the French during King Phillips’ War.
Whatever the Abenakis’ motives, they killed 27 women and children in a raid on Haverill before making their way to the Duston home. Hannah’s husband and seven other children were able to escape the attacking tribesmen, but she, her nurse, and her newborn baby were not. They were captured, along with some neighbors, and taken for ransom.
But traveling with a newborn was troublesome, and so Duston’s captors killed her baby on their march. According to one account, “before its mother’s horrified eyes, it dashed out its brains against an apple tree.”
Eventually, their captors took them to an island at the confluence of the Merrimack and Contoocook rivers, and there Duston seized her chance. Late one night, she, her nurse, and another hostage killed 10 of their captors by beating their heads in with tomahawks and escaped. Dustin, who wanted to prove their story to authorities, scalped the dead and brought back the evidence.
After that?
“Duston lived out the rest of her life quietly, moving to Ipswich after the death of her husband in 1732,” one history records.
Today, a 35-foot statue stands in Boscawen, one of the first statues in the U.S. to honor an American woman. In Duston’s right hand is a hatchet. In her left, a handful of scalps.
And Rep. David Nagel (R-Gilmonton) is “appalled.” He’s filing legislation to remove the statue and the historical marker that’s with it.
According to The Boston Globe, “Nagel’s proposal would allow officials to either destroy the statue or display it elsewhere.”
“It’s a part of our history that I think that we should be very ashamed of,” Nagel told the paper.
“Ashamed?” Why? Who is upset that some kidnappers who’d already committed a mass murder were killed when a captor escaped?
Well, Nagel, apparently. He accuses Dunston of participating in a “genocide against native peoples.”
The Globe also editorialized in its “news” coverage that the statue and accompanying historical marker “portray Duston as a victim.”
Portray?
She was kidnapped. Her family had to flee their home. Her baby was murdered in front of her eyes. What’s a lady got to do to be a “victim” these days?
First, don’t get killed by “indigenous people” or members of an ethnic minority. The people who want to erase Columbus Day simple won’t tolerate the idea that the Native Americans could be the bad guys. They are always the victims, which is why Dustin can’t be.
One academic describes the murder of Duston’s infant child this way: “She lost her infant in the hostilities.”
That is ludicrous.
This idiotic premise of cancelling Columbus Day or hauling down Hannah Duston’s statue is the notion that some groups are inherently guilty while others are innately innocent. (If you hear echoes of this in the “Free Palestine” movement that excuses Hamas terrorism, you’re onto something.)
Nobody who knows anything about history can deny that some Europeans treated Native Americans horrifically. Future president Andrew Jackson’s behavior toward Indians in the American South was nothing short of barbaric.
But Native Americans were practicing slavery, human sacrifice, and ritual cannibalism long before any Europeans appeared on their shores. The Mayans would literally cut the hearts out of living people, or decapitate them as part of their religious practices.
Does that excuse murdering Native Americans? Of course not. But it’s a reminder that there is no connection between ethnicity and innocence.
If the Indians hadn’t attacked Duston, they wouldn’t have died. After her escape, Hannah didn’t join a band of bloodthirsty settlers and seek out more Native Americans to scalp. She “lived out her life quietly.”
The “land acknowledgement” lefties should do the same. Leave Duston — and Columbus — alone.
And shut the hell up.
