P
declined by nearly 20 percent. The unwillingness
of the English to provide the Iroquois with sup-
port and protection disappoints the Indians and
will help persuade them to declare neutrality in
later European conflicts (see entry for SUMMER
1701).
March 15–30
Hannah Duston (Dustin) is held captive by
the Abenaki.
During a raid on Haverhill, Massachusetts, Abenaki
warriors capture a white woman named Hannah
Duston, her nurse (Mary Neff ), and her infant
child, whom the Indians later murder. To avenge
the baby’s death, Duston and a fellow captive, ten-
year-old Samuel Lennardson, attack their sleeping
captors on the night of March 30. With hatchets
in hand, they kill and scalp 10 Indians, includ-
ing several children; only one boy and an elderly
woman escape with their lives. Duston, Neff, and
Lennardson then flee. After Duston’s arrival in
Haverhill, her husband, on her behalf, collects 25
pounds from the Massachusetts government, which
has placed a bounty on Indian scalps. The story of
Hannah Duston’s captivity and escape will be cel-
ebrated in Cotton Mather’s Humiliations Followed
with Deliverances (1697). In the 19th century, it will
also be retold in works by Nathaniel Hawthorne
and Henry David Thoreau.
1700The College of William and Mary enrolls its
first Indian students.
Established in Williamsburg, Virginia, in 1693, the
College of William and Mary begins admitting In-
dians despite the resistance of local tribal leaders,
who fear the students will be enslaved by the Eng-
lish. The school supplies an elementary education in
reading and writing English. Increasingly, however,
Virginia officials will value the school primarily as a
means of holding Indian youths to help ensure that
nearby tribes will not attack Williamsburg. Due to
a lack of funds, the Indian school at the college will
close in 1777.“[O]ur ideas of this kind of Edu-
cation happen not to be the same
as yours. We have had some Expe-
rience of it. Several of our young
People were formerly brought up
at the Colleges of the Northern
Provinces... but, when they came
back to us, they were bad Run-
ners, ignorant of every means of
living in the woods.... [N]either
fit for Hunters, Warriors, nor
Counselors, they were totally
good for nothing.”
—an Iroquois delegation declining
an offer to educate their youths at
the College of William and Mary
in 1744The San Xavier del Bac mission is founded
in Akimel O’odham (Pima) territory.
Jesuit missionary Eusebio Kino establishes San
Xavier del Bac near what is now Tucson, Arizona.
From this mission, Kino preaches to area Indi-
ans and is particularly active among the Akimel
O’odham (Pima). Generally respectful of the In-
dians he encounters, Kino will convert as many as
4,500 Indians to Christianity, while also teaching
them non-Indian methods of farming and ranching.
He will also explore and chart much of the region,
thus expanding the boundaries of New Spain.1701The Hopi slaughter the men of Awatovi.
Amidst rumors that the Awatovi Hopi have agreed
to allow the Spanish to settle on their lands, Hopi