12. Hannah’s own story describing her captivity was never fully told
Hannah Duston left her story behind with Cotton Mather, Samuel Sewall, and through her husband with the Massachusetts Legislature, but she never recorded it on her own, and in the retellings known to history she did not recount her treatment by the Indians who held her in captivity, beyond those related to her escape. However, in May 1724 a letter was presented to her church elders in Haverhill, asking that she be given status as a full member of the congregation. Her express purpose was to be allowed to take communion and to offer her confession. The letter, likely composed by another member of the church and possibly by the minister himself contains a brief passage describing her captivity.
“I am Thankful for my Captivity,” she wrote, or rather dictated. “[T]was the Comfortablest time that I ever had; In my Affliction, God made his Word Comfortable to me.” She also claimed that she remembered the 43rd Psalm, and that, “…those words came to my mind”. Beyond that she had no further comment on the event which led to her using a tomahawk – in effect a small axe – to bash in the skulls of several humans, most of them children. Nor did she express any regret nor remorse. Hannah was granted her request and received the full covenant of the church. The statue later erected in her honor, said to be the first ever erected for a woman in the land which is now the United States, stands on the site of the church. The church itself was razed, but the letter remains in the hands of the Haverhill Historical Society.