H. D. Thoreau’s
Retelling of the Hannah Dustin Story
[From A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, “Thursday” section, 1849]
On the thirty-first day of March, one hundred and forty-two years before this,
probably about this time in the afternoon, there were hurriedly paddling down
this part of the river, between the pine woods which then fringed these banks,
two white women and a boy, who had left an island at the mouth of the
Contoocook before daybreak. They were slightly clad for the season, in the
English fashion, and handled their paddles unskillfully, but with nervous
energy and determination, and at the bottom of their canoe lay the still
bleeding scalps of ten of the aborigines. They were Hannah Dustan, and her
nurse, Mary Neff, both of Haverhill, eighteen miles from the mouth of this
river, and an English boy, named Samuel Lennardson, escaping from captivity
among the Indians. On the 15th of March previous, Hannah Dustan had been
compelled to rise from childbed, and half dressed, with one foot bare,
accompanied by her nurse, commence an uncertain march, in still inclement
weather, through the snow and the wilderness. She had seen her seven elder
children flee with their father, but knew not of their fate. She had seen her
infant’s brains dashed out against an apple-tree, and had left her own and her
neighbors’ dwellings in ashes. When she reached the wigwam of her captor,
situated on an island in the Merrimack, more than twenty miles above where we
now are, she had been told that she and her nurse were soon to be taken to a
distant Indian settlement, and there made to run the gauntlet naked. The family
of this Indian consisted of two men, three women, and seven children, beside an
English boy, whom she found a prisoner among them. Having determined to attempt
her escape, she instructed the boy to inquire of one of the men, how he should
despatch an enemy in the quickest manner, and take his scalp. "Strike ‘em
there," said he, placing his finger on his temple, and he also showed him
how to take off the scalp. On the morning of the 31st she arose before
daybreak, and awoke her nurse and the boy, and taking the Indians’ tomahawks,
they killed them all in their sleep, excepting one favorite boy, and one squaw
who fled wounded with him to the woods. The English boy struck the Indian who
had given him the information, on the temple, as he had been directed. They
then collected all the provision they could find, and took their master’s
tomahawk and gun, and scuttling all the canoes but one, commenced their flight
to Haverhill, distant about sixty miles by the river. But after having
proceeded a short distance, fearing that her story would not be believed if she
should escape to tell it, they returned to the silent wigwam, and taking off
the scalps of the dead, put them into a bag as proofs of what they had done,
and then retracing their steps to the shore in the twilight, recommenced their
voyage.
[38] Early this morning this deed
was performed, and now, perchance, these tired women and this boy, their
clothes stained with blood, and their minds racked with alternate resolution
and fear, are making a hasty meal of parched corn and moose-meat, while their
canoe glides under these pine roots whose stumps are still standing on the
bank. They are thinking of the dead whom they have left behind on that solitary
isle far up the stream, and of the relentless living warriors who are in
pursuit. Every withered leaf which the winter has left seems to know their
story, and in its rustling to repeat it and betray them. An Indian lurks behind
every rock and pine, and their nerves cannot bear the tapping of a woodpecker.
Or they forget their own dangers and their deeds in conjecturing the fate of
their kindred, and whether, if they escape the Indians, they shall find the
former still alive. They do not stop to cook their meals upon the bank, nor
land, except to carry their canoe about the falls. The stolen birch forgets its
master and does them good service, and the swollen current bears them swiftly
along with little need of the paddle, except to steer and keep them warm by
exercise. For ice is floating in the river; the spring is opening; the muskrat
and the beaver are driven out of their holes by the flood; deer gaze at them
from the bank; a few faint-singing forest birds, perchance, fly across the
river to the northernmost shore; the fish-hawk sails and screams overhead, and
geese fly over with a startling clangor; but they do not observe these things,
or they speedily forget them. They do not smile or chat all day. Sometimes they
pass an Indian grave surrounded by its paling on the bank, or the frame of a
wigwam, with a few coals left behind, or the withered stalks still rustling in
the Indian’s solitary cornfield on the interval. The birch stripped of its bark,
or the charred stump where a tree has been burned down to be made into a canoe,
these are the only traces of man,—a fabulous wild man to us. On either side,
the primeval forest stretches away uninterrupted to Canada, or to the
"South Sea"; to the white man a drear and howling wilderness, but to
the Indian a home, adapted to his nature, and cheerful as the smile of the
Great Spirit.
[39] While we loiter here this
autumn evening, looking for a spot retired enough, where we shall quietly rest
to-night, they thus, in that chilly March evening, one hundred and forty-two
years before us, with wind and current favoring, have already glided out of
sight, not to camp, as we shall, at night, but while two sleep one will manage
the canoe, and the swift stream bear them onward to the settlements, it may be,
even to old John Lovewell’s house on Salmon Brook to-night.
[40] According to the historian,
they escaped as by a miracle all roving bands of Indians, and reached their
homes in safety, with their trophies, for which the General Court paid them
fifty pounds. The family of Hannah Dustan all assembled alive once more, except
the infant whose brains were dashed out against the apple-tree, and there have
been many who in later times have lived to say that they had eaten of the fruit
of that apple-tree.
Courtesy of The
Thoreau Society, Lincoln, MA
ThoreauSociety@walden.org
The Thoreau Society