Jay Atkinson

Equally terrifying and enlightening, the MASSACRE of 1697 is not bedtime reading.

Jay Atkinson has a compelling range, from tender landscapes and settings so vivid that readers
may actually hear the war party crawling toward the Duston home.

As well, he creates a near unbearable tension as Hannah Duston's "master" speaks of the fate of the rest of her family
and the projected horrors for the remaining captives as they travel toward the French to have scalps counted.

The balanced account of the show more peace sought by the high Abenaki leader Passaconaway as the Abenaki hunting and fishing lands
were stolen contrasts with both the savagery and tortures inflicted by
the Colonial Europeans and the "Indians" - Iroquoi and later Abenaki descendants. show less

Hannah Duston is a heroine or murderer depending on who you believe. She was asleep in her cabin in Haverhill, Massachusetts on the morning of March 15, 1697, when a war band of Abenaki attacked, killing 27 settlers – including Hannah’s week-old daughter (by smashing her head against a tree) – and taking 13 captives (including Hannah). About a week later, after a forced march of about 100 miles, the subgroup of Abenaki holding Hannah, another woman, and a 12-year-old boy went to sleep show more on an island in the Merrimack River. Hannah woke up, seized an axe and a knife, and killed her captors – two men, two women – and six children. After a short journey on a captured canoe, Hannah and the two others turned around, went back to the site, and scalped the bodies. She and the others made it back to “civilization”, told their story, handed over the scalps, and received a reward. Hannah eventually got a statue, believed to be the first statue in North America honoring a woman.
Times change. Some in Massachusetts now see Hannah as a genocidal murderer and the statue has been repeatedly vandalized (interestingly enough, the Abenaki want the statue preserved as history).
Jay Atkinson’s book is sort of a nonfiction novel. Hannah didn’t record her story herself but told it to local clergymen, who may or not have added or redacted various details. The story was repeated in local histories – again with possible additions or deletions. To keep the story moving, Atkinson adds his own interpretations – for example speculating that the Indians were intoxicated when Hannah killed them.
Some of Atkinson’s interpolations are a little dubious. He repeatedly describes one of the Indian weapons as a “pole axe”, while from the descriptions it seems to be a wooden club with a stone blade inset – probably what was called a “gunstock club”. He also describes both the Indians and the settlers as being armed with “rifles” – very unlikely given the time and place, more likely flintlock or matchlock smoothbores. And several times people “open the action” on their firearms – something you might do with a modern firearm but not applicable to a flintlock. Atkinson is also definitely on the side of Hannah rather than the Abenaki – the Indians are portrayed as “savage”; they “caper” and “dance”. I have to say I’m somewhat on the side of Hannah myself – watching your daughter have her skull crushed and seeing neighbors dead and scalped probably gives you and unenthusiastic view of Native Americans. Still, the bit about turning back for the scalps is a little unsettling.
For more on Indian wars in early North America, see The Name of War; White Devil; Women’s Indian Captivity Narratives; The First Frontier and Captives and Kin in the Ohio Country show less

Atkinson has a good eye for observation and detail on his travels retracing various elements of Jack Kerouac‘s On The Road. My disappointment was I’m not learning more about Kerouac. What the author did share was insightful. Like Kerouac, the author provides brief profiles of people he meets along the way and you always know what’s playing on the car radio.

Here's a history familiar to many in Eastern Massachusetts: as Puritan families came over to the new world, many settled in isolated wilderness areas because land was cheaper than in the settlement towns. In 1697, the French and English were still fiercely competing for territory, and members of the Eastern Native American tribes in the area that had not been wiped out by epidemics were used as raiders by the French to terrify settlers and to discourage them from staying and growing their show more families and farms.

On the outskirts of present day Haverhill, MA, the Duston family was the victim of a such a raid, and the matriarch Hannah, mother to nine living children, was taken, with her nurse and her week old daughter, by an Abenaki band. Her captivity and her revenge make for a fascinating and almost unbelievable tale.

Atkinson has done his research; in fact, the 82 pages of endnotes almost equal a second recounting. Subjects covered range from the vivid descriptions of the harsh land and the powerful Merrimack River, to the bustling Boston of the era and some of its most renowned statesmen, such as Cotton Mather and Samuel Sewall, both primary figures in the upcoming Salem witch trials.

Many of the local Native American tribes are discussed in depth, as well as the fearsome neighboring Iroquois nation. So many locations - towns, mountains, rivers, lake, highways - surrender the origin of their names.

The lives of Puritans, seemingly the evangelical Christians of their day, are convincingly told, as is the career of Count Frontenac, commander of the French in Quebec. The essential nature of beavers to the colonial economy, including a detailed description of the making of beaver hats (using chemicals so toxic that the phrase "mad as a hatter" comes into general usage) is explored.

There is such a wealth of fascinating information here that the Hannah Duston story is almost subsumed by every other amazing topic. And - spoiler alert - there is yet another Hannah, also from Haverhill, who is captured TWICE, nearly three times, and lives to tell the tales.

Colonial history lovers, rejoice! show less