14. Cotton Mather made Hannah a living symbol of divine protection
Cotton Mather preached the story of Hannah Duston from the pulpit as an example of the protection of the Protestant settlers of New England by their justly vengeful Providence. The Indian tribes, allied with the French, were viewed as heathens in the service of Satan. Those who had been converted to Catholicism by the French were little better in the eyes of the Protestant English. Their view was reflected by the wars in Europe – and the ferocity exhibited as they were fought – during that extraordinarily brutal age. There were more than a few like Hannah, in the sense that they had successfully escaped captivity. Hannah’s surreptitious killing of ten sleeping Indians was unique, however, and Mather made it a sign that the hand of God was with the English.
He did so not only from the pulpit, but in tracts he wrote. They were not only for the consumption of the fledgling colonial settlements, but back home in England. The works, the first published in 1697, focused on her deliverance, presumably through divine intercession, from the hands of the godless heathen which had captured her. Mather drew direct comparisons in his works between Hannah’s adventures and those of other colonial women who had fallen into the hands of the nefarious French and their barbarous allies, some of whom were rescued and some of whom escaped. One such tale was recorded in a tract entitled The Sovereignty and Goodness of God, which described the capture and eventual recovery (through ransom) of Mary Rowlandson. It is widely considered to have been the work of Increase Mather, father of Cotton Mather.