7. Hannah was a prisoner of the Abenaki (or Pennacook) for about six weeks
According to the account later delivered, along with the bloody scalps, by Hannah and a somewhat subdued Mary Neff, the attack on the Indian “family” which had held them took place on or about April 30, meaning that she had been a captive for about six weeks. The story she told the authorities (in the person of Cotton Mather) was that they had been held by two men, two women, six children, though later accounts added older women to the encampment, who managed to escape. Since Hannah presented ten scalps for collection of her bounty, four of which had been detached from the heads of adults, at least six of her victims had been children. They also claimed a firearm, in the form of a musket, as a prize.
The actual killings likely took place in the colony of New Hampshire, only recently (1680) acquiring such status on its own, but the waters of the Merrimack were claimed by Massachusetts, which thus also had the responsibility of honoring the claim for the bounty represented by the scalps. There were problems with the scalps however, and they had nothing whatever to do with being the scalps of children, as one might expect among the pious Protestants of Massachusetts. The colony had suspended the payment of a bounty on scalps the preceding year. Besides, Hannah was a woman, married, and thus had no legal standing with which to claim the bounty. The scalps were, in the eyes of the colony, the property of her husband, as indeed was Hannah herself. It was up to him to claim the money, if he so chose.