9. Cotton Mather gives birth to the legend of Hannah Duston
In the spring of 1697, when the near miraculous return of Hannah Duston was still fresh in the minds of the residents of the Massachusetts frontier, and when King William’s War was still raging, she was visited by an eminent worthy from Boston. Cotton Mather was a graduate (1681) of Harvard College, a well-known author of religious and scientific pamphlets, and had been one of the leading perpetrators of the mass hysteria known to history as the Salem Witch Trials. He was also a minister with a strong reliance on fire and brimstone in his messages to the faithful, and an early and steadfast supporter of inoculation against disease. The latter position drew strong resistance from many Puritans, who believed that smallpox and other diseases were acts of retribution by a righteous God, and interference with His will was blasphemous.
Mather eventually published the tale of Hannah Duston and her deliverance from the heathen Abenaki, in no less than three different works, none of which were particularly concerned with historical accuracy. Mather also invited Hannah to attend a sermon he preached on the subject in Boston, likely a tedious experience for the obviously no-nonsense Hannah forced to listen to the notoriously long-winded Mather. Through Mather, the story became well-known along the frontier, and in the taverns and meeting houses of the rough towns which took the place of cities in early colonial America. Mather’s versions of the story – plural, as all three contain significant differences in detail – were not the first to be told on the frontier, nor the only to appear in writing, and over time the story grew with each telling, newly embellished by the teller of the tale.