While detained on an island in the Merrimack River in present-day Boscawen, New Hampshire, she killed and scalped ten of the Abenaki family members holding them hostage, with the assistance of two other captives.

[14] During King William's War, Hannah, her husband Thomas, and their nine children, including a newborn baby, lived in Haverhill, Massachusetts.

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:[17] 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.

[18]Hannah and Mary were assigned to a family group of 12 people (probably Pennacooks) and taken north, "unto a rendezvous...somewhere beyond Penacook, New Hampshire; 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.

A few days later, Thomas Duston brought Hannah, Samuel and Mary to Boston, along with the scalps, the hatchet and a flintlock musket[26] they had taken from the Indians.

[23][1] Wives had no legal status at that time in colonial New England,[27] so her husband petitioned the Legislature on behalf of Hannah Duston, requesting that the bounties for the scalps be paid, even though the law providing for them had been repealed: The Humble Petition of Thomas Durstan of Haverhill Sheweth That the wife of ye petitioner (with one Mary Neff) hath in her Late captivity among the Barbarous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...

[30] Her neighbor Hannah Heath Bradley, who had also been abducted in the 1697 raid (and two of her children killed), was held for nearly two years before she was ransomed, returning to Haverhill in 1699.

In yet another raid on Haverhill (1708), Algonquin and Abenaki Indians led by the French officer Jean-Baptiste Hertel de Rouville killed sixteen, including the town's minister.

[35] In 1739 Mary Neff's son Joseph was granted two hundred acres of land at Penacook by the General Court of New Hampshire "in consideration of his mother's services in assisting Hannah Duston in killing divers Indians.

She said her master, whom she kill'd did formerly live with Mr. Roulandson at Lancaster...The single man shewed the night before, to Saml Lenarson, how he used to knock Englishmen on the head and take off their Scalps; little thinking that the Captives would make some of their first experiment upon himself.

[43]Hannah's story is recorded in the diary of John Marshall (1634–1732), a bricklayer in Quincy, Massachusetts,[44] who wrote the following entry for April 29, 1697: At the latter end of this month two women and a young lad that had been taken captive from Haverhill in March before, watching their opportunity when the Indians were asleep, killed ten of them, scalped them all and came home to Boston.

[31] After Cotton Mather's death, Hannah Duston's story was largely forgotten until it was included in “Travels in New England and New York” by historian Timothy Dwight IV, published in 1821.

[49] After this, Duston became more famous in the 19th century as her story was retold by authors like Nathaniel Hawthorne,[50] John Greenleaf Whittier,[51][16] and Henry David Thoreau.

[52][53] Thoreau's version adheres to information provided in primary sources, whereas Whittier describes her "thirst of revenge...an insatiate longing for blood.

An instantaneous change had been wrought in her very nature; the angel had become a demon, —and she followed her captors, with a stern determination to embrace the earliest opportunity for a bloody retribution.

"[50]Duston's story entered popular imagination along with other tales of violence perpetrated by women, sold as cheap works of short fiction or portrayed on stage in productions intended to appeal to working-class crowds.

Violent revenge against American Indians was another popular subject of literature and theater, as in Robert Montgomery Bird's 1837 novel Nick of the Woods.

[15] Later versions of the story added numerous details (including dialogue and the names of the Indians) not found in any primary source, as in Robert Boody Caverly's Heroism of Hannah Duston (1875).

Engravings on its sides told the story of the "barbarous" murder of Duston's baby and her "remarkable exploit;" the column was topped by an eagle.

[69] To prevent further vandalism, city workers draped the statue in a blue plastic tarp, pending cleaning by the highway department.

[70] In May, 2021, the city decided to keep the statue but alter some of the offensive language on the base, remove the hatchet and provide space in the park for a Native American monument, including a memorial to Duston's victims and information about Abenaki history.

The stone marker's inscription reads: On this point of land dwelt John Lovewell, one of the earliest settlers of Dunstable at whose house Hannah Duston spent the night after her escape from the Indians at Penacook Island March 30, 1697.

Erected by Matthew Thornton Chapter, DAR 1902[77]In December 1902 a millstone was placed on the shores of the Merrimack River where Hannah, Mary, and Samuel beached their canoe upon their return to Haverhill.

[82][83] It is on display with the knife she allegedly used to scalp her captors, along with her letter of confession petitioning to join the Center Congregational Church of Haverhill.