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Authors

Hannah Dustan

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Questions for Discussion and Writing

This set of brief writings about Hannah Dustan allows us to look at the shape-shifting of a legendary Colonial figure, and the ways that a historical event can evolve over time, depending on the cultural values and requirements of each return to the past.  In Dustan’s lifetime and in the decades after, she was written about and memorialized as a woman of uncommon courage and an instrument of divine justice; in later times, as views of womanhood and family and Native Americans have all transformed, so has the image of Hannah Dustan.

1.  Do an on-line search for some other American historical figure whose image has changed with the passage of time, for example, Buffalo Bill, Kit Carson, George Armstrong Custer, Thomas Jefferson, Booker T. Washington, or Mark Twain.  What was said publicly about these people at the end of their respective lives?  What views do you find in print about them now, and how do you account for the difference?

2.  History and the daily news are full of stories about acts of uncommon heroism or violence.  In the welter of such stories, why do a few become famous, holding the imagination of poets, novelists, and artists?  What do you think is the cultural process by which these narratives are chosen over so many others?