A Thrilling Narrative of Indian Captivity: Dispatches from the Dakota War of 1862

Part three in a seven-part series on European American/Native American War Artifacts and the Ethics of Display by Zabelle Stodola, professor of literature and cultural studies at the University of Arkansas, Little Rock. The series begins here.

Part 3: Hannah Dustan’s Story

Wonder Woman Comic Issue 89, 1957, “Fabulous Females.” What’s Wonder Woman got to do with it? Read on.

Mary Rowlandson and Hannah Dustan share some similarities: both were seventeenth-century Puritan women captured with one or more children in a violent raid on their home, both were devastated when one of those children died from its wounds, and both were the subjects of famous captivity narratives (Rowlandson wrote her own but Dustan, who was probably illiterate, told her story to others).

However, that’s where the correspondences end. Rowlandson bore her captivity as patiently as she could, believing that it was a special providence sent by God to test her faith.  Dustan had not been formally received into the Puritan church at the time of her capture, so theologically and temperamentally she felt justified in literally taking matters into her own hands.

Here’s what happened. In March 1697, Abenakis descended on Haverhill, Massachusetts. Thomas Dustan, Hannah’s husband, was able to shepherd seven of their children to safety when the house came under attack. But he couldn’t prevent the Indians from capturing Hannah and Mary Neff, the midwife who had attended the birth of Hannah’s baby girl only a few days earlier, and marching them towards Canada after killing the newborn.

Held on an island near Penacook, New Hampshire, Hannah masterminded a plan with Neff and another English prisoner to kill their captors (mostly women and children) and succeeded in slaying ten of them with a hatchet. But instead of immediately fleeing to safety in a canoe, they spent precious time scalping the corpses. Was it out of revenge, righteousness, fear, or greed?  Probably some combination.

What we do know is this: from 1694 to 1696, the Massachusetts Bay Colony had a bounty for Indian scalps on its books. Even though the bounty had been repealed a few months before Hannah was captured, Thomas Dustan successfully petitioned the authorities for a cash reward for his wife and her accomplices. She received twenty-five pounds—a huge amount at the time— and her partners each received half that sum. The Court also presented Hannah with a pewter tankard as thanks for her actions.[i]

The pewter tankard given to Hannah Dustan by the Great and General Court of Massachusetts. Held in the Buttonwoods Museum, Haverhill, Massachusetts.

Hannah Dustan’s story is so extraordinary that it has been retold and refashioned countless times, but it has always been controversial. Was she an example of “outraged maternity” driven to extremes by the brutal death of her baby (a heroine), or was she a violent, greedy vigilante (a villain)?[ii] From contemporary versions of her story by the eminent Puritan minister Cotton Mather, to accounts by classic writers like Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry Thoreau, to a 1957 portrayal in the Wonder Woman comic series, Dustan has captured the popular imagination with a vengeance (sorry about those puns).[iii] 

–Zabelle Stodola

The controversies over memorializing Dustan’s story are developed in Part 4.

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Information on this and other versions of the story at http://tinyton.org/hannahbio.htm.

Photo Credits: Comic: http://tinyton.org/hannahbio.htm, via Google Images; tankard: http://minerdescent.com/2012/04/06/hannah-dustin-hero-or-cold-blooded-killer/  via Google Images.

Notes to Part 3

Part two in a seven-part series on European American/Native American War Artifacts and the Ethics of Display by Zabelle Stodola, professor of literature and cultural studies at the University of Arkansas, Little Rock. The series begins here.

Part II: Mary Rowlandson, “King Philip’s War Club,” and Other Ritual Objects

The artifact known as “King Philip’s War Club,” held by the Fruitlands Museum, in Harvard, Massachusetts.

I’m not alone in putting together hostage accounts and material objects. David Watters, an English professor at the University of New Hampshire, has constructed lesson plans showing how “ritual artifacts” can illuminate the teaching of literature, and he takes as his main case study Puritan grave markers and Mary Rowlandson’s seventeenth-century captivity narrative.[i]

But what exactly are ritual artifacts? Watters explains that they fall into two categories, the religious and the social, “People perform rituals to create a sense of order or meaning in their lives. Just as a religious ritual artifact—such as a Catholic rosary or a Jewish prayer shawl—might be used to express and enforce an individual’s religious beliefs, a social ritual artifact can express and enforce the social beliefs that permeate and organize the secular world. The program for a municipality’s annual Fourth of July parade and fireworks display, for example, may reveal a ritual emphasizing how patriotism, civic pride, and community involvement provide meaning and order for residents.”[ii] These examples suggest that societies imbue their chosen artifacts with symbolism and significance. Now let’s look at some of these ritual artifacts and try to unpack their meanings.[iii]

A 1720 imprint of Mary Rowlandson’s 1682 captivity narrative, marketed: “Written by her own Hand, for her private Life, now made Publick at the earnest Desire of some Friends for the benefit of the Afflicted…. Second Edition Carefully corrected and Purged from Abundance of Errors which escaped in the former Impression.”

The most famous of all American captivity narratives is by Mary Rowlandson, a Puritan minister’s wife. In 1675-76, during King Philip’s (Metacomet’s) War, a confederation of Nipmucs, Narragansetts, and Wampanoags captured her and her three children in Lancaster, Massachusetts. One child died as a result of being wounded in the initial attack, but the other two and Mary herself returned to their own culture several months later (Mary and one child were ransomed, the other child escaped).

Her narrative, The Sovereignty and Goodness of God . . ., was a Puritan bestseller and came out in four editions in 1682: three in New England and one, under the title A True Narrative . . ., in London.[iv] It has been regularly republished ever since, especially during turbulent times when mainstream American society needed a renewed sense of order and identity.

Rowlandson’s immediate captors were two native sachems, Quinnapin and one of his wives, Weetamoo, but she met the powerful King Philip (Metacomet) while she was a hostage, and he was responsible for allowing her to be ransomed for twenty pounds. The “war club” is presently housed at the Fruitlands Museum in Harvard, Massachusetts. [v] But Michael Volmer, the museum curator, admits “When and where the club, presently assumed to be Philip’s, came from is something of a mystery.” Although some oral and written provenance exists, all he can conclude is that in his “estimation the club was manufactured during the seventeenth century, in all likelihood by a Native American.”[vi]

Yet despite the club’s unconfirmed authenticity and iffy provenance, it figures in one part of the museum’s public program about its collections. That part is titled “Native American” and is described as being an “Introduction to New England ethnohistory. Several of the early accounts describing southern New England before 1650 will be presented and discussed. Object examination will include King Phillip’s [sic] war club, the James the Printer deed and Mary Rowlandson pamphlet.”[vii]

But not only don’t we know if the object belonged to King Philip (Metacomet), we don’t know if it really is Native American or, for that matter, if it’s even a war (as opposed to a ceremonial) club. Further, Rowlandson’s narrative never refers to Metacomet holding such a club. Nevertheless, the program links an artifact that likely reinforces negative stereotypes of Native Americans as savage and violent with Rowlandson’s seventeenth-century publication describing many of them in similar terms, as “Barbarous Creatures,” “bloody Heathen,” “Crew of Pagans,” and “hell-hounds.” [viii]

The “Native American” program at Fruitlands is on a small scale, but it raises some of the same questions that the Minnesota Historical Society faces as it puts together a commemorative US-Dakota War exhibit set to open at the end of June, 2012. What to do with “highly sensitive” and “highly emotional” objects?[ix] How to strike a balanced and ethical approach involving a range of constituents and perspectives?

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Photo credits: “King Philip’s War Club” Fruitlands Museum, Inc., Google Images; Rowlandson Second Edition, Encyclopedia Britannica, Google Images.

Notes to Part 2