1697.] A CAPTIVE AMAZON. 387 



women that, when they reached the village, they 

 would be stripped, made to run the gauntlet, and 

 severely beaten, according to custom. 



Hannah Dustan now resolved on a desperate 

 effort to escape, and Mary Neff and the boy agreed 

 to join in it. They were in the depths of the forest, 

 half way on their journey, and the Indians, who 

 had no distrust of them, were all asleep about their 

 camp fire, when, late in the night, the two women 

 and the boy took each a hatchet, and crouched 

 silently by the bare heads of the unconscious 

 savages. Then they* all struck at once, with blows 

 so rapid and true that ten of the twelve were killed 

 before they were well awake. One old squaw 

 sprang up wounded, and ran screeching into the 

 forest, followed by a small boy whom they had 

 purposely left unharmed. Hannah Dustan and 

 her companions watched by the corpses till day- 

 light ; then the Amazon scalped them all, and the 

 three made their way back to the settlements, with 

 the trophies of their exploit. 1 



1 This story is told by Mather, who had it from the women them- 

 selves, and by Niles, Hutchinson, and others. An entry in the contem- 

 porary journal of Rev. John Pike fully confirms it. The facts were 

 notorious at the time. Hannah Dustan and her companions received a 

 bounty of £50 for their ten scalps ; and the governor of Maryland, hear- 

 ing of what they had done, sent them a present. 



