Dougherty-Rowlandson Blog

The Sovereignty and Goodness of God, also known as A Narrative of the Captivity and Removes of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson is an autobiographical story written by Mary Rowlandson concerning her experiences following her capture by Native Americans at Lancaster, Massachusetts on February 10, 1675. The Native Americans and British settlements in New England had lived in peace as neighbors for some 50 years. However, when the British settlements started a westward expansion into Indian territory, the Native Americans conducted raids on the settlements in what became known as Philip’s War, named for the leader of the Wampanoag tribe. Lancaster was a Puritan settlement located adjacent to Native American territory where Mary Rowlandson, her husband and three children made their home. Both Mary Rowlandson and her youngest child were wounded and together with her remaining children were taken captive and carried off. This story tells of the hardships suffered by the Rowlandson family at the hands of the Native Americans and Mary Rowlandson’s change in status from a well to do and leading member of her community (Joseph Rowland, her husband, was well known minister) to a captive and servant of the Native Americans with an uncertain future. This narrative was written after her release from captivity and is credited with starting a new style of writing called “captivity narrative. “
The initial horror and fear experienced by Mary Rowlandson is detailed as is her sorrow and grief when her six year old daughter dies in her arms and she is separated from her other two children. At the outset of her narrative, she characterized the Native Americans as savages, and murderous wretches and compared them to wolves with the Puritans being the sheep (“like a company of sheep torn by wolves”). This reference to the biblical theme of good versus evil and the innocence of the Puritans versus the savagery of the Native Americans is reflected throughout the story. A Bible given to her by one of the Native Americans provided her not only with comfort ( her “life saver”) but it also provided her with readily recognizable references to scripture . In other words, she found a reason for her sufferings in the Puritan beliefs which espoused the all powerful nature of God, his responsibility for all things, both good and bad and his capacity for punishment and forgiveness. In fact, she believed that God was responsible for the Native American attacks on the colonists because he wanted to teach them a lesson for wavering in their faith and choosing a more material life. Thus, her narrative served as an example from which the Puritans could learn and redeem themselves. She also stated that she deserved her plight because it was God’s way of punishing her, but through his mercy, she was redeemed. The Puritan view of Christian thought and practice were critically important to Mary Rowlandson and she espouses Puritan doctrine throughout her narrative.
The longer she was a captive in this wilderness, however, the more she became concerned with degenerating into savagery herself (becoming uncivilized and without God) by association with the Native Americans. She was particularly upset with her willingness to eat horse liver and bear meat which previously nauseated her (“ I thought I never tasted pleasanter meat in my life”). She was adopting the ways of the savage, or so she thought.
The line between savagery and civilized behavior became further blurred by the many kindnesses afforded her by the Native Americans, such as providing her with food, lodging, and respect by allowing her to sew for compensation. To many of the Native Americans, she was not a slave, but a person. She greatly admired Quinnapin, her master (married to King Philip’s sister) for his kindnesses ( he instructed Onux, one of his wives, to tend to Rolandson’s needs and provides a meal of beans, meat, and ground-nut cake). She also liked, although distrusted, King Philip. With the savages exhibiting traits similar to the Puritans, Rolandson had to cope with the dichotomy posed by her dependence on God, on the one hand, and the good graces of the devil natives, on the other.
​She attempted to accommodate this dichotomy by using another wife of Quinnapin, Wettimore, to contrast the savage’s negative traits with her own positive characteristics. Wettimore was vain and interested in wealth and status and was particularly mean to Rolandson.
​Eleven weeks into her captivity and after many disappointments about her release, Rolandson was ransomed with twenty pounds (English money) from donations by the church and Puritans, many of whom she did not know. Her children were also released for smaller sums. Subsequently, the family eventually set up a new home in Boston.
​This recitations from the Puritan faith and their application to real events is similar to those found in Anne Bradstreet’s poems. Although the subject matter is different and Bradstreet’s poems were contemporaneous with the events she was describing, both authors still attempted to explain their hardships by integrating them with the Puritan faith and concepts.