Animal Appetite

soul-searching and a consultation with Rita, I asked Tracy Littlefield’s permission to tell Brat about her unknown half-brother, Drew. Tracy granted it. Brat was, naturally, more than slightly shaken by the news. She has since seen pictures of Drew and has insisted on helping Tracy with his college tuition, but she hasn’t yet met Drew face to face. I don’t know whether he knows about her. Or about Gareth, either. Although Gareth is now taking his medication and is reported to be doing as well as he ever does, I can’t imagine that he’ll ever be ready to meet Drew. I’m not supposed to tell you anything else about Brat. Actually, I don’t know any more. Rita really does respect the confidentiality of her clients.
    Finally, Rita’s bet. And a few words about Hannah Duston. Treat this as therapy, okay? Privileged communication. And so far I know, there really is no proof that Hannah’s captors were Abenaki. That was just Professor Foley’s best guess. From what I’ve read, it was a good one, though. The western branch of the Abenaki inhabited what are now the states of Vermont and New Hampshire. In the seventeenth century, epidemics reduced their population from about ten thousand to five hundred. The English razed Abenaki villages and paid bounties for Abenaki scalps. The survivors, Jesuit converts who sided with the French Catholics against the English Protestants, traveled in family bands that took captives. The roving bands often used birchbark canoes. They eventually returned to longhouses, in Canada, for example, but when on the move, they stayed in wigwams. So it computes. Hannah’s captors. Abenaki. But here’s the kicker: According to the Abenaki belief system, the Abenaki are descended from animals and retain so strong a continuing spiritual relationship that animals and people are, in essence, two forms of the same being. Every band was linked not just to animals in general but to a particular species, a totemic animal. Sound familiar? A book I read showed a present-day Abenaki woman sitting in front of her house in Vermont. Just guess what she was patting.
    Now, look. There are more than fifty million dogs in the United States. Lots of people have dogs. Both before and after the seventeenth century, Native Americans of the Northeast had dogs. 1 have no evidence that Hannah’s captors were even Abenaki. If they were, their to-temic animal could’ve been the fox or the wolf or the badger or anything at all. It really doesn’t matter.
    What nags at me is an account I came across in an obscure essay by John Greenleaf Whittier called “The Boy Captives.” Whittier was from Haverhill. The essay mentions Hannah Duston. Mainly it’s about two boys, Isaac Bradley and Joseph Whittaker, who were taken captive in Haverhill in 1695, ended up with an Indian family near Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire, and escaped. The Indians didn’t just go after the boys, but, damn it, pursued them with dogs! The boys hid in a hollow log. The dogs found them and started to bark. As Whittier wrote, though, one of the boys “spoke in a low tone to the dogs, who, recognizing his familiar voice, wagged their tails with delight and ceased barking.” The boy then successfully diverted the dogs by tossing them pieces of moose meat. When the Indians appeared, the dogs left with them. The boys made it home.
    Boys taken captive in Haverhill in 1695. Same place as Hannah and only two years earlier. Taken to New Hampshire. Just like Hannah. Captured by people with dogs, in the plural, dogs that had socialized with the captives. I remind you that I know almost nothing about Hannah’s captors. Abenaki? Abenaki whose emblem was the dog? Don’t ask me! And especially don’t ask whether the members of that Abenaki family consisted of twelve members in human form and a little pack of spiritual relatives that wagged their tails at Hannah Duston and licked the hands that later slew their masters. The great miser, history, reluctantly doles out stingy little scraps. Hannah Duston, Mary Neff, and Samuel Leonardson killed ten people. Hannah Duston returned to Haverhill with ten scalps. History has chosen not to tell us whether Hannah’s captors had dogs. Hannah presumably killed the children to prevent them from sounding an alarm and summoning help. If her captors had dogs, wouldn’t she have slain the animals for the same reason? If she slaughtered children, her tender mercies toward dogs would surely have been