Complex sentence: Emerson was the great-great-granddaughter of Hannah Emerson Duston, a colonial Massachusetts Puritan mother taken captive by Indians and escaped by scalping all ten of her captors.
Split into simpler sentences: Emerson was the great-great-granddaughter of Hannah Emerson Duston, a colonial Massachusetts Puritan mother. The mother was taken captive by Indians, and escaped by scalping all ten of her captors.