If you go a few miles north of Concord, New Hampshire, there is an island with a large statue of a woman. A plaque says, "The war whoop tomahawk faggot & infanticides were at Haverhill the ashes of Wigwam-Camp-Fires at night & of ten of the tribe are here."

...What?

This statue is of Hannah Duston, a woman who lived in colonial America in the 1600s and 1700s. During the French and Indian Wars, Native Americans frequently kidnapped colonists in frontier areas and brought them to French Canada, who would ransom them back. In 1697 there was a raid in Duston's town Haverhill, and they captured her, her newborn baby, and her nurse. As they were marched up north, the baby wouldn't stop crying so one of the Native Americans smashed it to death against a tree. One night they were camping on an island, and Duston took a tomahawk to bash in ten of their heads, including children, and then scalped them. She then returned home and lived for another forty years.

Duston's story wasn't well known until over a century later when the United States was trying to find its own identity, and she seemed like a homegrown type of a hero perfect in the age of Manifest Destiny. Nowadays she's much more controversial considering our current views toward Native Americans and that children were amongst the killed. Descendants of that tribe are doubtful of the story considering babies are believed to be sacred in their culture and would be extremely unlikely they'd kill her newborn.

Still, this story explains the plaque somewhat. The faggot refers to the burning of the Haverhill, infanticides and tomahawks the Native Americans, and the ashes the evening fires on the island. Yet even with this information, this plaque is an assault on grammar. I spent a long time trying to figure this out, and I think they meant to put in a period and some commas in there: "The war whoop, tomahawk, faggot, & infanticides were at Haverhill. The ashes of Wigwam-Camp-Fires at night & of ten of the tribe are here." Even then it's not even passable.

Let's start with the first sentence. First off, the infanticide didn't happen at Harverhill, it happened later. So that's just wrong. Second, what the hell does "the war whoop and tomahawk" mean? You mean... the attack? Why didn't you just say that? I'm still unsure that's what it means. Is the tomahawk a reference to Duston? Because again that's incorrect since it didn't happen at Haverhill. Then the second sentence is just a mess. Why are there hyphens there? There weren't even wigwams at that location; they were just camping for the night. Why even mention that at all? The fact there were camp fires has very little to do with her story. Now look at the second half. Please explain to me what the sentence "of ten of the tribe are here" means. Why is that "of" there? Who constructs a sentence like this?

Seriously, it's like the guy writing this decided to not create anything useful at all. Was there no oversight? No editing? Was the person chiseling this into the rock thinking, "Man, I wish I knew what this means." Did no one at the dedication ceremony notice this and point it out? I've read English from a thousand years ago and it makes more sense than this shit. There are rules for plaques, and usually it's who, what, where, when, and why. This guy did none of that. If I went there, I would leave more confused than when I arrived.