A statue of 17th-century English colonist Hannah Duston in Massachusetts has become a flashpoint in the ongoing debate about racist monuments.

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Statues of Hannah Duston face a reckoning in two New England communities. Duston was a 17th-century English colonist who was said to have been captured by Native Americans who then killed 10 of them in order to escape. WBUR's Amelia Mason has this report, which includes descriptions of violence.

AMELIA MASON, BYLINE: The statue of Hannah Duston in Haverhill, Mass., towers over a patch of daffodils in the city's G.A.R. Park. Legend says that in 1697, Duston killed 10 Native American warriors who'd kidnapped her. The statue depicts her holding a hatchet.

RON PEACETREE: That hatchet is supposedly the one that she actually used to, quote, unquote, "scalp the warriors."

MASON: Ron Peacetree of the Haverhill Historical Commission says a number of people Duston killed were children. Historical records suggest she was being taken north not by warriors, but by an Abenaki family. Peacetree says the monument was propaganda to justify westward expansion.

PEACETREE: The propaganda story feeds into the white manifest destiny thing, feeds into the hatred against Native Americans.

MASON: Peacetree is half Haudenosaunee, also known as Iroquois. And he says growing up in the 1960s, his family faced discrimination, like the time a hotel clerk turn them away.

PEACETREE: And he looked at my mom and us four kids and said, I'm sorry, we don't serve your kind here. The place you want is two miles down the road.

MASON: The statue, Peacetree says, helped shape the philosophy that made that discrimination OK. Last year, calls to remove the Haverhill statue ignited a fierce public debate. This month, the city decided to keep the statue but provide space for a Native American monument.

For 79-year-old Lou Fossarelli, who grew up in Haverhill, the compromise changes too much about the legend he knows.

LOU FOSSARELLI: I'm glad they left it where they left it. But I'm not happy that the city is now going to build a monument to the Indians. I know the history. There is no other version.

MASON: Meanwhile, and hour north in Boscawen, N.H., plans are already underway to tell a different story. The state's division of parks and recreation intends to redesign the site of another Duston monument. An advisory committee is considering adding a memorial to Duston's victims and information about Abenaki history.

Here's committee member Craig Richardson, a direct descendant of Hannah Duston.

CRAIG RICHARDSON: Changing the signage, changing the name of the park - you know, it isn't just about Hannah Duston.

DENISE POULIOT: On one hand, as an Indigenous person, we don't want a statue that honors Hannah. On the other hand, we need an outlet in order to share the true history of the region.

MASON: Denise Pouliot, a council leader for the Cowasuck Band of the Pennacook-Abenaki People, is also on the committee. She finds the statue offensive but says it's a chance to set the record straight.

POULIOT: How many historical books have been written based on this false narrative that I can no longer wipe off the shelves?

MASON: In particular, Pouliot hopes to counter the version of the story popularized by the Puritan author Cotton Mather, in which Duston's captors brutally murdered her newborn baby. There is reason to doubt his account, says Barbara Cutter, a professor of history at the University of Northern Iowa. But she says that when considering the New England statues, we shouldn't focus too much on what may or may not have happened in 1697.

BARBARA CUTTER: I think it's really more important to think about what people meant when they supported putting up this statue. It was about an effort to hide the violence of colonization and imperialism.

MASON: How we should judge Hanna Duston is the wrong question, Cutter says. Instead, we should ask ourselves how we choose who to memorialize and what stories we're trying to tell. For NPR News, I'm Amelia Mason.

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