Military Wiki
Raid on Haverhill (1697)
Part of King William's War
DateMarch 15, 1697
LocationHaverhill, Province of Massachusetts Bay
Result French and native victory
Belligerents
Union flag 1606 (Kings Colors) British colonists Royal Standard of the King of France French colonists
 Algonquin
Commanders and leaders
Chief Nescambious
Strength
approximately 20
Casualties and losses
27 colonists were killed and 13 were taken captive unknown

The Raid on Haverhill was a military engagement that took place on March 15, 1697 during King William's War. French, Algonquin, and Abenaki warriors descended on Haverhill, then a small frontier community in the Province of Massachusetts Bay. In the surprise attack, the Abenaki killed 27 colonists and took 13 captive. The natives burned six homes. The raid became famous in the nineteenth century because of Hannah Dustin's captivity narrative as a result of the raid.[1]

Afterward[]

Even after the war was officially ended, Abenaki raids on the English colonists continued. On March 4, 1698 Pigwacket Abenaki Chief, Escumbuit led a group of 30 Indians in a raid on Andover, Massachusetts, the last and most severe Indian raid on this town.

Legacy[]

  • Henry David Thoreau A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849)
  • Nathaniel Hawthorne "The Duston Family." The American Magazine of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge, (1836)
  • John Greenleaf Whittier in his short story "The Mother’s Revenge" (1831)
  • Cotton Mather Magnalia Christi Americana (orig. pub. 1702).

See also[]

  • Dustin House

References[]

Texts
  • Caverly, Robert B. Heroism of Hannah Duston: Together With the Indian Wars of New England (orig. pub. 1875). Bowie, Md.: Heritage Books, 1990. ISBN 1-55613-301-4
  • Mather, Cotton. Magnalia Christi Americana (orig. pub. 1702). New York: Russell & Russell (Atheneum House), 1967. ASIN B0007DLZGI
  • Namias, June. White Captives: Gender and Ethnicity on the American Frontier. University of North Carolina Press, 1993. ISBN 0-8078-4408-X
  • Sayre, Gordon M., ed. American Captivity Narratives. Houghton Mifflin, 2000. ISBN 0-395-98073-9
Endnotes
  1. John Grenier. The First Way of War. University of Cambridge Press. 2005. pp. 40-41

External links[]

All or a portion of this article consists of text from Wikipedia, and is therefore Creative Commons Licensed under GFDL.
The original article can be found at Raid on Haverhill (1697) and the edit history here.