“(in one word,) Diabolical” On Mary Rowlandson and Misunderstandings
I’ve always been an enthusiastic reader, but my most voracious “book season” came when I visited my grandparents in Virginia during the summers. If I had exhausted the supply of library books I’d brought with me, I’d usually go sifting through my grandparents’ attic for some old magazines or a manageable novel. I remember when I was about ten, one of the volumes I came across was Mary Rowlandson’s tale of her captivity with a Native American tribe. Unfortunately, the antique style of writing and unfamiliar spelling baffled me within the first few pages and I abandoned the book, presumably to read the joke section of a Reader’s Digest.
I’ll admit—even a few years after my first encounter with it, Rowlandson’s narrative is something of a tough read. The subject matter is heavy— she details months of frightening slave-like captivity, harsh physical conditions, and even the death of her six-year-old daughter. And the story’s readability isn’t aided by Rowlandson’s tendency to lay it on pretty thick with Scripture references and Puritan buzzwords. Rowlandson undoubtedly went through quite a harrowing ordeal, and I felt sympathy with her grief as she was separated from her family members by distance or death. But even a true story can have a great deal of rhetorical purpose. Stories are told for a reason—to achieve a goal or spread an idea. Mary Rowlandson’s narrative is no exception.
Just like Cabeza de Vaca’s desire to see Spanish rule in the New World flourish and thrive, Rowlandson’s goal was to affirm the sovereignty and Providence of God, because she believed that surrendering to God’s will was the surest path to success in the savage wilderness of the colonies. Unfortunately, since Rowlandson viewed her captivity as a divine trial and/or punishment, she could not view her Indian captors as human as much as beasts, agents of terror and retribution. (Some of her favorite nicknames for the natives include: “Barbarous Creatures,” “Infidels,” and “bloody Heathen.”)
Of course, conflicts are going to arise whenever two different cultures come into contact. Everyone involved has to adjust to a shared terrain and a lifestyle of compromise. When this doesn’t work out, fear and anger can cause people to lash out at the unfamiliar. Though it was morally wrong for the Native Americans to attack and capture Rowlandson and her fellow settlers, it was also the settlers’ mistake to assume that the challenges of settling in a new land stemmed from some primal evil, rather than human beings’ failure to understand one another. Just because you’re looking for God in the wilderness doesn’t mean you ought to make devils out of men.
Rowlandson, Mary White. “Captivity and Restauration of Mrs Mary Rowlandson.” 1682. Lauter, Paul, ed. The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Boston: Wadsworth, 2006. 480-493, 496-497, 502-514. Print.
