Some Unusual Atrocities of the Left: 1. Hannah Duston

It was not dead Abenakis from Canada that vandalized the statue of Hannah Duston in Haverhill, New Hampshire.

Excerpted from the (seriously tainted by Leftist BS) Wikipedia account:

During King William’s War, Hannah, her husband Thomas, and their eight children lived in Haverhill, Massachusetts. On March 15, 1697, when she was 40 years old,[16] the town was raided by a group of about 30 Abenaki from Quebec. In the attack, 27 colonists were killed (most of them children), and 13 were taken captive, to be either adopted or held as hostages for the French. Hannah’s husband Thomas, who was building a new brick home about half a mile away, fled with their eight children. The Indians captured Hannah and her nurse, Mary Neff (1646-1722, nee Corliss), set fire to Hannah’s home, and forced the two women to march into the wilderness, Hannah carrying her newborn daughter, Martha. According to the account Hannah gave to Cotton Mather, along the way her captors killed six-day-old Martha by smashing her head against a tree:

About 19 or 20 Indians now led these away, with about half a score of other English captives, but ere they had gone many steps, they dash’d out the brains of the infant against a tree, and several of the other captives, as they began to tire in the sad journey, were soon sent unto their long home.

Hannah and Mary were assigned to a family group of 12 people (probably Pennacooks) and taken north, “unto a rendezvous…somewhere beyond Penacook; and they still told these poor women that when they came to this town, they must be stript, and scourg’d, and run the gauntlet through the whole army of Indians.” The group included Samuel Lennardson (1683-1718, … a 14-year-old boy captured in Worcester, Massachusetts, in late 1695.

On April 29 or 30, at an island in the Merrimack River at the mouth of the Contoocook River, Hannah led Mary and Samuel in a revolt:

…furnishing themselves with hatchets for the purpose, they struck home such blows upon the heads of their sleeping oppressors, that ere they could any of them struggle…they fell down dead.

Hannah used a hatchet to kill one of the two grown men (Lennardson killed the second), two adult women, and six children. According to Cotton Mather’s account, Hannah and her partners let one of the children sleep, “intending to bring him away with them,” but the boy awoke and escaped. One severely wounded Abenaki woman also managed to escape the attack.

The former captives immediately left in a canoe, but not before scalping the dead as proof of the incident and to collect a bounty. They went downriver, traveling only during the night, and after several days reached Haverhill.

A few days later, Thomas Duston brought Hannah, Samuel and Mary to Boston, along with the scalps, the hatchet and a flintlock musket they had taken from the Indians.[21] Although New Hampshire had become a colony in its own right in 1680, the Merrimack River and its adjacent territories were considered part of Massachusetts, therefore Hannah and the other former captives applied to the Massachusetts Government for the scalp bounty. …

The Humble Petition of Thomas Durstan of Haverhill Sheweth That the wife of ye petitioner (with one Mary Neff) hath in her Late captivity among the Barbarous Indians, been disposed & assisted by heaven to do an extraordinary action, in the just slaughter of so many of the Barbarians, as would by the law of the Province which [only] a few months ago, have entitled the actors unto considerable recompense from the Publick. That tho the [want] of that good Law [warrants] no claims to any such consideration from the publick, yet your petitioner humbly [asserts] that the merit of the action still remains the same; & it seems a matter of universal desire thro the whole Province that it should not pass unrecompensed… Your Petitioner, Thomas Durstun

On June 16, 1697, the Massachusetts General Court voted to give them a reward for killing their captors; Hannah Duston received 25 pounds, and Neff and Lennardson split another 25 pounds.

Hannah’s heroism was recorded by the Puritan historian Cotton Mather, and later retold by Hawthorne, Whittier, and even Thoreau. She became a popular heroine in 19th century Massachusetts and several monuments honoring her were erected in various locations, including an 1879 monument and statue standing in the town square of her home town.

Well, just like Robert E. Lee, Thomas Jefferson, and Theodore Roosevelt, poor old Hannah Duston has been targeted for cancellation by the Woke Left.

The Guardian (way over in Manchester, U.K.) reports:

As protests across the US topple statues of historical figures with connections to colonialism and slavery, Duston’s name has largely stayed out of the national conversation. But concerns about the New Hampshire statue, and another in Haverhill, Massachusetts, are now emerging.

This is because Duston is implicated in the deaths, and scalping, of 10 Native Americans.

“The statues were made to send a message to the indigenous community, that they are inferior, that their land would be seized, and they would be removed and put on reservations,” Judy Matthews, a Haverhill resident, told the Guardian.

[There were no Abenakis in Haverhill in 1879, so inferring that the monument constituted a message to them is just plain stupid. –JDZ]

She spoke during a 30 June city council meeting in Haverhill, asking officials to consider moving the statue to a less public place. …

On 3 July, an online petition began to circulate among local social media groups calling for the removal of the Haverhill statue. A counter-petition shortly followed. Ten days after Matthews spoke at the city council meeting, the monument was vandalized with the words “Haverhill’s own monument to genocide” written in chalk.

Shortly after the vandalism, Haverhill’s mayor, James Fiorentini, appointed two Native Americans to the Haverhill Historical Commission (HHC), which protects the town’s historic structures, to make recommendations for the future of the monument.

“I want to tell the other side of the story – of the Native Americans who lived here, of the immigrants who built the shoe factories, of the African Americans who were freed from slavery, and of African Americans who lived here as slaves in Haverhill,” said Fiorentini. …

Elizabeth Dubrelle, the head of education and public programs at the New Hampshire Historical Society, says the group made the conscious decision not to include Duston’s story in the revamped school curriculum.

That is “in part because we don’t think it’s appropriate for kids”, she said. “I think it’s way too violent. No matter whose side you take, or what you think about it, I just don’t think it’s a good story for kids.” …

[T]here is now a concrete plan to adapt the New Hampshire statue. Proposed by representatives of the Cowasuck band of the Pennacook Abenaki people and New Hampshire state officials, it was approved on 17 July.

The changes include renaming the site of the Duston statue from the Hannah Duston Memorial Site to Unity Park N’dakinna, which means “our land” in Abenaki, and adding additional signage and monuments around the statue discussing discrepancies within the story, allowing the visitor to come up with their own conclusions.

WT

Personally, I think there ought to be a state bounty for the scalps of every public nuisance Woke Liberal and commie radical agitator, and the person who collects the most scalps should get the biggest and best monumental statue.