University of Virginia Library

42. Saving a Flock of Children
BY DANIEL NEAL (1607)

ALL the plans of the English during the year 1696 seemed to be upset and nothing but murmurings and complaints were to be heard from one end of the Massachusetts province to the other. The Indians on the other hand were strangely exalted with their late success and threatened to ruin the whole country during the next summer. In the meantime they posted themselves so advantageously that it was


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hardly safe for the people on the frontiers to stir out of their houses. They killed many people who were at work in their fields. To crown the calamities of the year there was a very great scarcity of all sorts of grain, and the poor were ready to break out into riot for want of bread.

In the winter the enemy were pretty quiet, but upon the fifteenth of March, they made a descent upon the outskirts of Haverhill, burnt about half a dozen houses and captured thirty-nine persons. Among the prisoners was Hannah Dunston, who was a very brave woman. At this time she was weak and sick in her bed with only her nurse and eight small children in the house, when the Indians surrounded it. Her husband was at work in the field and seeing the enemy at a distance he ran home and bade seven of his eight children to get away as fast as they could to some garrison in the town. He then informed his wife of her danger, but before she could rise the enemy were so near that her husband despaired of being able to carry her off. He took his horse and his firearms, resolving to live or die with his children. He overtook them about forty rods from his house and drove them before him like a flock of sheep as fast as their little legs would carry them till they got to a place of safety about a mile or two from his house. The Indians pursued him all the while, but he kept in the rear of his little flock, and when any of the Indians came within reach of his gun, he aimed at them and they made their retreat.


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