Jennifer “Jay Jay” Stroup · 2011-12-15 · “Male figures of greed and violence thus repeatedly breach, or attempt to breach, ... to the end of a long stick, and carried on

Jennifer “Jay Jay” Stroup

[http://www.jayjaystroup.com/teaching/teaching-methodology/study-guide-hannah-dustan/] 1

AML 3286: Early American Women's Words

Study Guide for Hannah Dustan & The Panther Captivity

Primary Sources:

A Notable Exploit; wherein, Dux Faemina Facti from Magnalia Christi Americana

and

A surprising account of the Discovery of a Lady who was taken by the Indians in the year 1777,

and after making her escape, she retired to a lonely Cave, where she lived nine years

[both primary sources are taken from Women's Indian Captivity Narratives]

Definitions:

Discourse: “Following Michel Foucault, the term has also been used to indicate language in

use. That is, for Foucault, discourses are coherent, self-referential bodies of statements that

produce an account of reality by generating ‘knowledge’ about particular objects or concepts,

and also by shaping the rules of what can be said and known about those entities. Thus, one can

speak of ‘legal discourse,’ ‘aesthetic discourse,’ ‘medical discourse,’ etc. These groups of

statements and rules exist historically and change as the material conditions for their possibility

also change…Foucault also argues that discourse in this sense is not defined by an exchange

between individuals, but exists at a level of anonymity” (Columbia Dictionary 84).

Dux Faemina Facti: “literally, a woman leader in the deed; in other words, a heroic woman”

(Women’s Indian Captivity Narratives 343)

Historiography: “The writing of history; written history” (OED)

Rhetorical drag: This term was absent from both Oxford English Dictionary and The Columbia

Dictionary, so I decided to turn to the source itself, Carroll’s book, Rhetorical Drag.

“The ‘tricky’ practice exposed and examined in these texts is authorial gender impersonation, an

act of imposture that begins with the male writer assuming the fame captive’s voice. This

imposture encompasses an array of discursive practices that reflect and inflect contemporaneous

gender regimes. Because the impersonation exceeds merely the appropriate of the ‘I’ and

depends for its success on ascriptions of gendered language and diverse rhetorical practices, I

refer to this phenomenon as rhetorical drag. This term represents a deliberate invitation to

readers to consider how we might use queer theory as well as archival research and feminist

inquiry to think about the practices of authorial impersonation and its cultural effects. The

analyses and interpretation here rely on a reading of rhetorical drag as a complex linguistic

enactment, one analogous to Judith Butler’s view of drag as a performance predicated on

dynamic and elusive (and, therefore, allusive) gender constructs. ‘Is drag the imitation of

gender, or does it dramatize the signifying gestures through which gender itself is established?’

Butler asks (Gender Trouble x)” (Carroll 1-2).



Ventriloquism: “The art or practice of speaking or producing sounds in such a manner that the

voice appears to proceed from some person or object other than the speaker, and usually at some

distance from him” (OED)

Common Themes in Panther & Dustan:

Fantasy building in literature

Woman as fact and fictive,

simultaneously

Female body as a site of

manipulation (literary, physical,

spiritual)

Dustan statues = substitute body,

additional sites of reading

Lady as Lady Columbia

What is masculine? What is

feminine?

In what specific ways do Dustan and the Lady violate modes of female propriety? Does

Dustan’s husband, Thomas, violate male gender regulations, or is he acting in obedience? Do

the two male hunters violate male gender regulations? Is violence an appropriate reaction to

violation of the female body (Dustan and her Indian captors, the Lady and the giant)?

On Rhetorical Drag:

“That is, even within their own historical context, as each of the captivity narratives

demonstrates what a female experience should sound or look like, each produces an explicitly

gendered style; each performs gender” (Carroll 3).

“The displacement most often emerges from an epistemological crisis: does the woman’s

empirical experience of captivity support or supplant the interpretive authority of the male

historian? The problem of how to use the experiences of conventionally marginalized persons –

marginalized by their gender, and often by their class status as well as by their suspect culture-

crossing – lies at the heart of rhetorical drag” (Carroll 4).

On Kolodny’s article [Panther Captivity]:

What is the thesis?

Article is divided into two sections: the historical context, and addressing the manipulation of

gender for symbolic purposes.

Is the story of the Panther captivity complete fantasy or does Kolodny effectively argue for its

grounding in historical context (the birth of the nation)?

The author of the Panther captivity is unknown and therefore could be male or female; however,

the narrator is Abraham Panther, a male figure. Does the narrator, in addition to the Lady,

function as a hybrid of fact and fictive?

“As such, her first-person narrative, embedded within the Panther letter and thereby interrupting

the masculine hunting story which it would otherwise recount, suggests a subtle readjustment in

Americans’ imaginative vision of the place and person of the white woman in the wilderness”

(Kolodny 333).



The unruliness of the text itself: “Even so cursory a summary should alert readers to the disparate

generic sources underpinning ‘The Panther Captivity’ – these include the male adventure

narrative, the captivity narrative, the sentimental romance, and Indian fertility myths. In the

course of the letter, however, the original meaning or intent of each of these is either quietly

subverted or altogether superseded” (Kolodny 335).

“the white woman’s intrusion into the wilderness paradise of the male – is also the very structure

of the narrative…And ‘the Western wilderness’ that Panther and Camber had ‘imagined totally

unfrequented’ has become, instead, a white woman’s cultivated garden” (Kolodny 341).

“Male figures of greed and violence thus repeatedly breach, or attempt to breach, the precincts of

the lady’s various Dream Gardens, her romantic trysting place, her son, and at the last, her

wilderness abode” (Kolodny 343).

On Carroll’s article [Hannah Dustan]:

What is the thesis?

What is the focus and function of Dustan for each of these male authors? Is it Dustan acting

unruly, or do they act unruly by performing rhetorical drag? What is revealed about the anxiety

of these male authors by looking closely at the function of their representation of Dustan? Are

there historical contexts which must be considered? Do the male authors ignore or embellish

upon historical fact and create a literary fantasy? Can the reader easily distinguish between the

factual and fictive Dustan? Are these male interpretations of Dustan a violation or attack upon

her body?

1. Cotton Mather’s Dustan

Function: political and spiritual; double instrumentality; manipulates modes of female

propriety (by a male author).

1st Mather text, Humiliations Follow’d with Deliverances (a sermon): Dustan is at the

sermon, a physical object. Mather is both judge and executor (legal terms). Double

instrumentality: providential avenger and victim.

Focus: piety.

Function: as an object lesson, requiring disciplinary interpretation; Dustan is a bad

mother and bad neighbor.

2nd

Mather text, A Notable Exploit: Part of a 10 year history, English = good,

French/Indian = evil.

Focus: personal qualities linked to survival.

Function: moral triumph over the evil Indians.



2. Parallels between Dustan and Anne Hutchinson

How are they alike? How are they different? How does Hutchinson’s religious and

“fatherly defiance” stand against Dustan’s act of physical violence?

“Dux Faemina Facta” = linguistically, a heretic (Hutchinson)

“Dux Faemina Facti” = linguistically, a heroine (Dustan)

3. Thomas Hutchinson’s Dustan

Function: attempt to rehabilitate his ancestor, Anne Hutchinson.

4. Nathaniel Saltonstall’s Dustan

Function: establish Dustan as a regional legend; illuminates direction her story will take

in the new century.

5. Timothy Dwight’s Dustan

Function: historiography that is genealogical, and metaphorically familial; fantasy of a

cohesive and homogenous origin of America.

6. B. L. Mirick’s Dustan

Function: to correct the previous Dustan histories.

7. John Greenleaf Whittier’s Dustan

Function: to prove Dustan’s act was one of temporary insanity.

8. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Dustan

Function: a fable of patriarchal ascendency.

9. Henry David Thoreau’s Dustan

Function: a site of identification; a method of experimentation in writing methods (self-

expression.

On Scalping:

Although the article I found, “Scalping During the French and Indian War” describes the practice

of scalping during the French and Indian War (1754-1760), which predates Dustan by 57 years,

the general information provided should be helpful to us.

A French soldier, known by his initials J.C.B., recounts the method of scalping:

When a war party has captured one or more prisoners that cannot be taken away, it is the

usual custom to kill them by breaking their heads with the blows of a tomahawk . . .

When he has struck two or three blows, the savage quickly seizes his knife, and makes an

incision around the hair from the upper part of the forehead to the back of the neck. Then

he puts his foot on the shoulder of the victim, whom he has turned over face down, and

pulls the hair off with both hands, from back to front . . . This hasty operation is no

sooner finished than the savage fastens the scalp to his belt and goes on his way. This



method is only used when the prisoner cannot follow his captor; or when the Indian is

pursued . . . He quickly takes the scalp, gives the deathcry, and flees at top speed.

Savages always announce their valor by a deathcry, when they have taken a scalp . . .

When a savage has taken a scalp, and is not afraid he is being pursued, he stops and

scrapes the skin to remove the blood and fibres on it. He makes a hoop of green wood,

stretches the skin over it like a tambourine, and puts it in the sun to dry a little. The skin

is painted red, and the hair on the outside combed. When prepared, the scalp is fastened

to the end of a long stick, and carried on his shoulder in triumph to the village or place

where he wants to put it. But as he nears each place on his way, he gives as many cries as

he has scalps to announce his arrival and show his bravery. Sometimes as many as 15

scalps are fastened on the same stick. When there are too many for one stick, they

decorate several sticks with the scalps. (Bray)

In her own words:

Hannah Duston's Conversion Statement to the Haverhill Congregation, 1724. (Nathaniel

Hawthorne in Salem)

Full text of Hannah Dustan’s conversion statement available here:

http://www.hawthorneinsalem.org/Literature/NativeAmericans&Blacks/HannahDuston/MMD20

97.html

http://www.hawthorneinsalem.org/Literature/NativeAmericans&Blacks/HannahDuston/MMD2097.html

http://www.hawthorneinsalem.org/Literature/NativeAmericans&Blacks/HannahDuston/MMD2097.html



Hannah Dustan on the Web:

http://www.hawthorneinsalem.org/Literature/NativeAmericans&Blacks/HannahDuston/I

ntroduction.html

http://www.hannahdustin.com/index2.html

http://jillthinksdifferent.blogspot.com/2007/04/chapter-21-hannah-dustin-memorials.html

http://www.rickleonard.net/2009/05/samuel-leonard-taken-by-indians/

http://members.mva.net/galaca/p16hdstat.html

http://www.nhhistory.org/store/det.aspx?UPC=16511

http://hoardedordinaries.wordpress.com/2007/05/15/hannah-get-your-axe-2/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/zenmama/499584275/in/set-72157623277099395/

Images:

Can the two statues of Hannah Dustan act as a substitute for her physical body? If so, can we

consider them additional sites of reading? In what way do these statues interpret and/or

manipulate the story of Dustan?

First, pictures of the Dustan statue at Haverhill, MA. (Nathaniel Hawthorne in Salem)

http://www.hawthorneinsalem.org/Literature/NativeAmericans&Blacks/HannahDuston/Introduction.html

http://www.hawthorneinsalem.org/Literature/NativeAmericans&Blacks/HannahDuston/Introduction.html

http://www.hannahdustin.com/index2.html

http://jillthinksdifferent.blogspot.com/2007/04/chapter-21-hannah-dustin-memorials.html

http://www.rickleonard.net/2009/05/samuel-leonard-taken-by-indians/

http://members.mva.net/galaca/p16hdstat.html

http://www.nhhistory.org/store/det.aspx?UPC=16511

http://hoardedordinaries.wordpress.com/2007/05/15/hannah-get-your-axe-2/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/zenmama/499584275/in/set-72157623277099395/



(Nathaniel Hawthorne in Salem)

These are the four panels on the base of the statue. Can we find evidence from the various texts

to support these miniature stories?



Second, pictures of the Dustan statue Contoocook Island, Penacook, New Hampshire. (Nathaniel

Hawthorne in Salem)

“The 35 foot granite monument and statue of

Hannah Duston was placed at the site of the

escape in 1874. The front, or Westerly side of

the monument, is inscribed with the following:

"Heroum Gesta Fides-Justitia. Hannah Duston

Mary Neff, Samuel Leonardson March 30,

1697, Midnight.” (Nathaniel Hawthorne in Salem)

“The monument was erected in 1874 on the site

of the escape. On the easterly side of the

monument, facing the river, the following

comment is inscribed: March 15 1697 30. The

War-Whoops-Tomahawks-Fagot and Infanticides

were at Haverhill, the ashes of the camp-fires

at night and ten of the tribe are here.”

(Nathaniel Hawthorne in Salem)

“Southerly side:

Statua 1874

Know ye that we with many plant it;

In trust to the state we give and grant it,

That the tide of time may never can't it

Nor mar, nor sever;

That Pilgrims here may heed the Mothers,

That truth and faith and all the others

With Banners high in glorious colors,

May stand forever

Graces.”

(Jill’s World of Research, Reaction and Millinery)



The original title and second page of Cotton Mather’s Magnalia Christi Americana: Or, the

Ecclesiastical History of New-England from the 1702 printing. (ACLS Humanities E-Book)

Images of Lady Columbia, as mentioned in the Kolodny article. This is a woodcarving, but I

picked it because the image is more Native American in appearance. How do you imagine the

physical appearance of the Lady? (Eagles of the 1800’s)



Image of Lady Columbia from an 1863 Thanksgiving poster – note the sheathed sword and

shield. (Atlas Shrugs)



Recommended readings:

Armstrong, Nancy, and Leonard Tennenhouse. "The Problem of Population and the Form of the

American Novel." American Literary History 20.4 (2008): 667-85. MLA International Bibliography. Web.

12 Sept. 2010.

Burgett, Bruce. "Every Document of Civilization Is a Document of Barbary? Nationalism,

Cosmopolitanism, and Spaces Between: A Response to Nancy Armstrong and Leonard Tennenhouse."

American Literary History 20.4 (2008): 686-94. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 12 Sept. 2010.

Cairney, Christopher. "The Need for Strangeness: Captivity Narratives and Issues of Race and

Gender in Early America." Close Encounters of an Other Kind: New Perspectives on Race, Ethnicity, and

American Studies. 216-222. Joensuu, Finland: Faculty of Humanities, University of Joensuu, 2005. MLA

International Bibliography. Web. 12 Sept. 2010.

Carroll, Lorrayne. "'Affecting History': Impersonating Women in the Early Republic." Early

American Literature 39.3 (2004): 511-552. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 12 Sept. 2010.

Castro, Wendy Lucas. "Stripped: Clothing and Identity in Colonial Captivity Narratives." Early

American Studies 6.1 (2008): 104-36. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 12 Sept. 2010.

Cutter, Barbara. "The Female Indian Killer Memorialized: Hannah Duston and the Nineteenth-

Century Feminization of American Violence." Journal of Women's History 20.2 (2008): 10-33. MLA


Derounian-Stodola, Kathryn Zabelle. "Captivity and the Literary Imagination." The Cambridge

Companion to Nineteenth-Century American Women's Writing. 105-121. Cambridge, England: Cambridge

UP, 2001. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 12 Sept. 2010.

Derounian-Stodola, Kathryn Zabelle. "Captivity Narratives." Teaching the Literatures of Early

America. 243-255. New York, NY: Modern Language Association of America, 1999. MLA International

Bibliography. Web. 12 Sept. 2010.

Derounian-Stodola, Kathryn Zabelle. "The Captive as Celebrity." Lives Out of Letters: Essays

on American Literary Biography and Documentation. 65-92. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 2004.

MLA International Bibliography. Web. 12 Sept. 2010.

Fiedler, Leslie A. "The New Western: or, The Return of the Vanishing American." Frontiers of

American Culture. 113-122. Lafayette: Purdue Univ., 1968. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 12

Sept. 2010.

Fitzpatrick, Tara. "The Figure of Captivity: The Cultural Work of the Puritan Captivity

Narrative." American Literary History 3.1 (1991): 1-26. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 12 Sept.

2010.

Hartman, James D. "Providence Tales and the Indian Captivity Narrative: Some Transatlantic

Influences on Colonial Puritan Discourse." Early American Literature 32.1 (1997): 66-81. MLA


Johnson, Cynthia Brantley. "Hawthorne's Hannah Dustan and Her Troubling American Myth."

Nathaniel Hawthorne Review 27.1 (2001): 17-35. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 12 Sept. 2010.

Levernier, James A. "Hannah Duston." American Women Prose Writers to 1820. 107-112.

Detroit, MI: Thomson Gale, 1999. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 12 Sept. 2010.

Logan, Lisa M. "'Cross-Cultural Conversations': The Captivity Narrative." A Companion to the

Literatures of Colonial America. 466-479. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005. MLA International

Bibliography. Web. 12 Sept. 2010.

Mackenthun, Gesa. "Captives and Sleepwalkers: The Ideological Revolutions of Post-

Revolutionary Colonial Discourse." European Review of Native American Studies 11.1 (1997): 19-26. MLA


Ortells Monton, Elena. "Pathos and Ethos: A Study of the Rhetorical Appeals in Women's Indian

Captivity Narratives." Revista de Estudios Norteamericanos 9.(2003): 81-94. MLA


Pratt, Amy. "The Pleasure of Being Lost: 'The Panther Captivity' and the Metaphysics of

Commerce." Mosaic 34.1 (2001): 1-18. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 12 Sept. 2010.

Simpson, Audra. "From White into Red: Captivity Narratives as Alchemies of Race and

Citizenship." American Quarterly 60.2 (2008): 251-57. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 12 Sept.

2010.



Slotkin, Richard. Regeneration Through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier,

1600-1860. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan U.P, 1973. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 12 Sept.

2010.

Srikanth, Rajini. "Ventriloquism in the Captivity Narrative: White Women Challenge European

American Patriarchy." White Women in Racialized Spaces: Imaginative Transformation and Ethical Action

in Literature. 85-103. Albany, NY: State U of New York P, 2002. MLA International Bibliography. Web.

12 Sept. 2010.

Tolouse, Teresa A. "Hannah Duston's Bodies: Domestic Violence and Colonial Male Identity in

Cotton Mather's Decennium Luctuosom." A Centre of Wonders: The Body in Early America. 193-209.

Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 2001. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 12 Sept. 2010.

Weis, Ann-Marie. "The Murderous Mother and the Solicitous Father: Violence, Jacksonian

Family Values, and Hannah Duston's Captivity." American Studies International 36.1 (1998): 46-65. MLA


I have not included dissertations within the recommended readings/MLA bibliography due to

space constraints. However, they are valuable to a researcher because as I learned in graduate

school, the works cited page of a dissertation can be a gold mine for the reader. At least ten

popped up in my search for captivity narratives in the MLA database (and that was just searching

through the first two hundred hits); this leads me to believe that some of those dissertations will

be expanded into journal articles or books within the near future. For example, Lorrayne

Carroll’s dissertation, titled "'Taken from Her Own Mouth': Women's Captivity Narratives and

the Uses of Female Authorship.” One can infer the subject matter has been much expanded in

her book, Rhetorical Drag.

Works Cited

Bray III, George A. "Scalping During the French and Indian War." Archiving Early America.

Spring/Summer 1998. Web. 12 Sept. 2010.

<http://www.earlyamerica.com/review/1998/scalping.html>.

Carroll, Lorrayne. "'Peculiar Efficacy and Authority': Hannah Dunston's Missing Voice."

Rhetorical Drag: Gender Impersonation, Captivity, and the Writing of History. Kent,

Ohio: Kent State UP, 2007. 55-108, 205-211. Print.

DePauw, Vernon. "Lady Columbia." Eagles of the 1800's. Web. 13 Sept. 2010.

<http://www.vldwoodcarver.com/2005lady.html>.

Derounian-Stodola, Kathryn Zabelle, ed. "Hannah Dustan." Women's Indian Captivity

Narratives. New York: Penguin, 1998. 55-60. Print.

Derounian-Stodola, Kathryn Zabelle, ed. "Explanatory Notes." Women's Indian Captivity


Derounian-Stodola, Kathryn Zabelle, ed. "Panther Captivity." Women's Indian Captivity


"Discourse." The Columbia Dictionary of Modern Literary and Cultural Criticism. Ed. Joseph

W. Childers and Gary Hentzi. New York: Columbia UP, 1995. 84-85. Print.

Duston, Hannah. "Hannah Duston's Conversion Statement to the Haverhill Congregation, 1724."

Nathaniel Hawthorne in Salem. Web. 13 Sept. 2010.

<http://www.hawthorneinsalem.org/images/image.php?name=MMD2315>.

Geller, Pamela. "Give Thanks This Day." Atlas Shrugs. 27 Nov. 2008. Web. 13 Sept. 2010.

<http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2008/11/giving-thanks-t.html>.

"Historiography." Oxford English Dictionary: The Definitive Record of the English Language.



Web. 12 Sept. 2010.

"Images Related to "The Duston Family.” Nathaniel Hawthorne in Salem. Web. 12 Sept. 2010.

<http://www.hawthorneinsalem.org/Literature/NativeAmericans&Blacks/HannahDuston/

Images.html>.

Jill. "Chapter 21: The Hannah Dustin Memorials." Jill's World of Research, Reaction and

Millinery. 10 Apr. 2007. Web. 12 Sept. 2010.

<http://jillthinksdifferent.blogspot.com/2007/04/chapter-21-hannah-dustin-

memorials.html>.

Kolodny, Annette. "Turning the Lens on "The Panther Captivity": A Feminist Exercise in

Practical Criticism." Critical Inquiry 8.2 (1981): 329-45. JSTOR. Web. 01 Jan. 2010.

Mather, Cotton. Magnalia Christi Americana, Books I and II. Ed. Kenneth B. Murdock and

Elizabeth W. Miller. Cambridge: Belknap, 1977. ACLS Humanities E-Book. Web. 12

Sept. 2010. <http://hdl.handle.net/2027/heb.07496.0001.001>.

"Ventriloquism." Oxford English Dictionary: The Definitive Record of the English Language.

Web. 12 Sept. 2010.

Documents

Jennifer “Jay Jay” Stroup · 2011-12-15 · “Male figures of greed and violence thus repeatedly breach, or attempt to breach, ... to the end of a long stick, and carried on