On February 10, 1676, in the midst of the conflict between colonial settlers and indigenous peoples known as King Philip’s War, the garrison in which Mary Rowlandson, a minister’s wife and mother of three, was living with 36 other people in the frontier town of Lancaster, Massachusetts was attacked by the Wampanoag, under the leadership of Metacom, who was known to the English as King Philip.
Rowlandson and a group of others were captured and taken by the Indians through what for her was uncharted territory, from one place to another, well in front of an army of English colonists. So began a three-month ordeal during which Rowlandson’s six-year-old daughter died of her wounds and Rowlandson herself suffered malnourishment, the physical ordeal of traveling long miles by foot, and the distress of wondering whether she would survive or see her husband and remaining children again. (Incidentally, she was never carried in a canoe as the 1857 illustration above suggests.) Rowlandson was finally released for a 20-pound ransom in early May. About two years later, around the time of the death of her husband, she sat down to record an account of her extraordinary captivity.
Rowlandson’s narrative requires some contextualization. The situation was far more complicated than a few sentences can summarize, but historian Pekka Hämäläinen lists some of the issues that led up to King Philip’s War: the colonists’ clearing of trees, the building of fences that restricted the movement of both wildlife and the native peoples themselves, and the introduction of livestock that routinely trampled the crops of Native Americans, as well as the colonists’ refusal to recognize the Indian tribes as sovereign nations and treat them accordingly. They had also enslaved hundreds of Indians. “By early 1675,” Hämäläinen writes, “Metacom and the Wampanoags had seen enough.”
Mary Rowlandson’s narrative is still assigned reading in high schools, colleges, and graduate programs today, but it’s probably safe to say that it’s no longer read as she intended. A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson was an instant bestseller and was printed in at least 30 editions, as well as in numerous anthologies. As the introduction to the piece in the Norton Anthology of American Literature notes, Rowlandson’s story “combined high adventure, heroism, and exemplary piety,” and it followed a recognizable genre of captivity narratives—“a genre which has proven to be an integral part of our American literary consciousness.”
In spite of both its overt racism and its Puritan piety, neither of which will land with most readers today, Rowlandson’s account is undeniably fascinating—I think, in part, because those qualities that made it a bestseller in its own time continue to be, for the most part, the qualities that make a book succeed today: stories of “high adventure, heroism” and, if not piety, then a moral sense of good versus evil, which can be complicated, just as it is in Rowlandson’s narrative. Unbelievable violence, survival, hardship, deprivation, conflict, and war are themes that continue to draw audiences today. I think one reason people search them out is that we may be rehearsing what we might do if, God forbid, we ended up in a similarly treacherous situation.
Rowlandson herself had given this some thought:
I had often before this said that if the Indians should come, I should choose rather to be killed by them than taken alive, but when it came to the trial my mind changed; their glittering weapons so daunted my spirit, that I chose rather to go along with those (as I may say) ravenous beasts, than that moment to end my days….
Her racist depiction of her captors would have been unremarkable to her colonial readers. But Rowlandson’s narrative also did something a little bit unexpected. Quietly, but frequently, it undermined the status quo thinking. Tucked into her tale are numerous accounts of acts of kindness by her captors toward her, such as when one Indian, returning from an attack on Medfield, Massachusetts, offers her a Bible he had taken. She is allowed to keep it and read it, and it provides her with a great deal of comfort. Rowlandson certainly wasn’t making any sort of overt plea for peace or open minds. But there are contradictions in her voice, as at least one teacher of the text points out. These must have given some readers pause.
If you want to read Rowlandson’s story for yourself, it can be found in the public domain at Project Gutenberg. Does it remind you in any way of bestsellers today?