Dead but not buried: Hannah Dunstan and the creation of a North-American community of memory

Abstract

 Abducted by a group of Abenaki Indians, on March 15, 1697, Hannah Dustan witnessed the murder of her baby at the hands of their captors and suffered all kinds of physical and psychological abuse. Fearing that they would suffer greater torments when arriving at the Indian camp, the woman murdered her abductors and scalped them. Considered by many as “mother of American history”, Dustan has been regarded by others as an Indian killer. The multiple versions of her experience show how female national myths and their native victims were put at the service of a political rhetoric that justified American colonization and expansionism and promoted patriotic formulas clearly based on male superiority and white supremacism that seem to have resurfaced during Donald Trump’s presidency.