99% Invisible-113- Monumental Dilemma by Roman Mars published on 2014-05-06T06:07:48Z About ten miles north of Concord, New Hampshire, off of interstate 93 there’s a little island with a great, big monument on it. The monument depicts a woman who is holding a hatchet in her right hand and bunch of scalps in her left hand. When it was erected in 1874, this was the first monument to honor a woman in the United States. But despite this historic status, the monument is controversial because of the woman it memorializes and what she did. The woman in the monument is Hannah Duston and in 1697 she was living in Haverhill, Massachusetts when she, her infant daughter and her nurse-maid, Mary Neff were kidnapped by a band of Abenaki Native Americans. The three were marched north, and at some point, Hannah’s infant daughter was killed by the Abenakis. They stopped for the night in Boscawen, New Hampshire (on the island above with the monument) and while the Abenaki families slept, Hannah and her companions killed ten of them – including six children – and then scalped each victim before making their escape back to Haverhill. Genre public radio Comment by alex grenlie she was raped, beaten, kidnapped, her child killed in front of her. Any vengeance she takes I say she's owed. 2021-03-14T12:45:33Z Comment by Ruthann Adamsky Hannah Duston was a mother who did what she felt she had to do to get home to her husband and children. Other people interjected their politics, Hannah was a tough woman who survived bad things. 2014-05-19T16:20:38Z