Community and Conflict: Captivity Narratives and Cross-Border Contact in the Seventeenth
Century
History Skill: Interpreting Documents; Media Type: Document
In the colonial period, many initial contacts were
peaceful between
Native Americans and settler communities in North America; at times,
people of all cultures shared goods, foodstuffs, and even land without
resorting to violence. Soon, however, disease devastated the coastal
tribes of New England and the Chesapeake, who lived closest to the
ever-expanding settlements. Moreover, encroachment on farm and game
lands, destruction of crops by European livestock, and the threat posed to
their cultures by the entry of missionaries, dependence on European trade,
and access to liquor irrevocably changed Native American societies and led to a variety of forms of
resistance.
In New England, the initial tolerance offered settlers by Algonquian
tribes soured after the first generation. In June of 1675, "King
Philip," a Wampanoag Indian leader who had formerly lived among the
Christian "praying Indians," called upon Native Americans to
unite against English encroachment. His action touched off the most
violent and destructive frontier war in the colonies, as the Wampanoags
were joined by other northeastern Algonquians, including the Nipmucks,
Pocumtucks, Narragansetts, and Abenakis. King Philip's War represents the
first attempt at pan-Indian resistance to colonization; by the time Philip
was shot and the fighting died down in August 1676, more than half of New
England's settlements had been destroyed and settlers had been pushed back
nearly to the coast. Some settlers spared in the initial attacks found
themselves
taken captive across the frontier and living among Native Americans. The
war proved even more ruinous to the Algonquians than it did to the
English-- whole communities were decimated by battle, disease, and
starvation, and many survivors were sold as slaves to work on Caribbean
plantations.
Mary Rowlandson's narrative of her captivity, a document from the era,
provides a window into both Puritan and Native American cultures during
this conflict. European settlers remained fascinated with the
peoples they were to succeed in defeating, and the narratives of returned
hostages like Rowlandson became bestsellers. Begun in the heat of war,
these narratives provide a fascinating glimpse of Algonquian culture
before its destruction. They also reveal the points of conflict between
natives and settlers that would haunt frontier encounters for generations to come. Rowlandson
was taken hostage from her home at Lancaster, Massachusetts, in February
1676; her narrative, published six years later, tells of her time among a
people who were hungry, fleeing for their lives, and yet still fiercely
resisting European expansion. How did Mary Rowlandson interpret her
experience, and what does her interpretation tell us about the broader
project of colonization?
Neal Salisbury, ed., The Sovereignty and Goodness of God by Mary Rowlandson with Related Documents (1997).
1. Mary Rowlandson believed the English army failed to pursue her captors across the Bacquaug River because ___________.
a. God took pity on the plight of Native Americans
b. the English army was too small
c. the sins of the captives made them unworthy of redemption
d. the stoutest Native American fighters kept the English army at bay
2. Rowlandson's Native American captors ___________.
a. rejected every aspect of the settlers' culture
b. tried to emulate whites
c. showed no knowledge of white society
d. had previously been in close contact with settlers
3. Mary Rowlandson got enough food to survive her captivity because ___________.
a. her captors had more food than they needed
b. her captors valued her skills
c. she knew how to forage for food in the forest
d. her captors wanted to keep her alive so that they could
collect ransom money
4. In Rowlandson's narrative, the Algonquians are pictured as ___________.
a. greedy, cruel, and uncivilized
b. pagans who enjoyed life to its fullest
c. illiterate Indians without a stable culture
d. a people in flight
1. Using specific references from the
text of the narrative, explain why Mary Rowlandson wrote the document.
2. Mary Rowlandson explains that she has quit smoking tobacco. Why do you think she wants her readers to know this?
3. Rowlandson's captors ask her several times to make garments for them. What does their interest in textiles demonstrate?
4. What words does Rowlandson use to depict her captors? How would you describe her relationship based on her interactions with them?
Explain the contradiction between her attitude about the Indians and her actual
experience.
5. How does Rowlandson account for her survival during this ordeal?
How would you explain her survival?
1. Compare Rowlandson's interpretation
of King Philip's War with those of contemporaries who were not taken
captive. The Present State of New-England with Respect to the Indian
War
and A New and Further Narrative of the State of New-England by Nathaniel
Saltonstall are both available in reprint editions, as is John Easton's
1675 account, A Relacion of the Indyan Warre. Did her time spent among the
Algonquians give Rowlandson a different perspective than other writers
had?
2. Rowlandson's narrative provides a glimpse of Algonquian women through
the eyes of a colonial woman. Using information from the full text
of the narrative found in Neal
Salisbury, ed., The Sovereignty and Goodness of God by Mary Rowlandson with Related Documents (1997), compare the
domestic skills and responsibilities of colonial women and Native American
women in seventeenth-century New England. Additional sources to
enrich your research include Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Good Wives: Image and Reality in the
Lives of Women in Northern New England, 1650-1750 (1987), and James
Axtell, ed., The Indian Peoples of Eastern America: A Documentary
History of the Sexes (1981).
3. Unlike Rowlandson, a number of English captives in succeeding years
chose to remain with their Native American captors. Research the
experience of these so-called white Indians and compare their
possible motivations and perspective to that of Mary Rowlandson.
Sources to begin your research include James Axtell, "The White
Indians of Colonial America," William and Mary Quarterly 32
(1975), 55-88, and John Demos, The Unredeemed Captive: A Family
Story from Early America (1995).
Bedford source: Neal Salisbury, ed., The Sovereignty and Goodness of God by Mary Rowlandson with Related Documents (1997).
Print sources: For an exploration of the experience of English captives among Native Americans, see John Demos, The Unredeemed Captive: A Family Story from Early America (1995). On King Philip’s war, see Richard I. Melvoin, New England Outpost: War and Society in Colonial Deerfield (1989), and Jill Lepore, The Name of War: King Philip’s War and the Origins of American Identity (1998).
Internet sources: For various colonial visual images of Native Americans and links to other Native American sites, see American Historical Images on File: The Native American Experience at <http://www.csulb.edu/projects/ais/nae/>. Of particular interest are the seventeenth-century woodcuts by Theodore de Bry, which can be found at <http://www.csulb.edu/gc/libarts/am-indian/woodcuts/>. The Smithsonian Institution National Museum of the American Indian maintains a site at <http://www.si.edu/cgi-bin/nav.cgi>.