Poelker Rowlandson Blog

Having faced some of nature’s harshest weather as well as the loss of electricity brought by hurricane Isaac in the past week, it seems appropriate that we would read Mary Rowlandson’s captivity narrative in which she recounts a battle with the wilderness and the struggle to survive as a Native American prisoner in a culture far different from her own, without the comforts of her colonial lifestyle. For her, the suffering is part of God’s plan, as much a test of her faith as a way for him to show his power and mercy on her as one of the chosen “saved.”

While her attitude toward her captors is squarely negative, describing “the savageness and brutishness of this barbarous enemy” in the First Remove, and alluding to their madness and inconsistency as best described in the Tenth Remove when she writes, “Sometimes I met with favor, and sometimes with nothing but frowns.” Still, Rowlandson’s ability to find a useful niche in such a brutish (as she describes it) society is an example of some sympathy toward their culture as well as a testament to her strength as a character and as a person. In the Eighth Remove after meeting King Philip, Rowlandson begins earning food and money by knitting various articles of clothing for members of the tribe:

During my abode in this place, Philip spake to me to make a shirt for his boy, which I did, for which he gave me a shilling. I offered the money to my master, but he bade me keep it; and with it I bought a piece of horse flesh. Afterwards he asked me to make a cap for his boy, for which he invited me to dinner. I went, and he gave me a pancake, about as big as two fingers. It was made of parched wheat, beaten, and fried in bear's grease, but I thought I never tasted pleasanter meat in my life. There was a squaw who spake to me to make a shirt for her sannup, for which she gave me a piece of bear. Another asked me to knit a pair of stockings, for which she gave me a quart of peas. I boiled my peas and bear together, and invited my master and mistress to dinner; but the proud gossip, because I served them both in one dish, would eat nothing, except one bit that he gave her upon the point of his knife.

In providing for herself, even when faced with such adversity, many would find a cause for pride and an opportunity to speak one’s own praises. Rowlandson, though, focuses all her glory on her God. Just as in the concluding Remove she explains, “Though some are ready to say I speak it for my own credit; but I speak it in the presence of God, and to His Glory,” Throughout the text, she gives testament to God, describing her suffering as a way that God, rather than punishing her, has offered his mercy. Having, by luck, acquired a Bible, Rowlandson constantly refers to it to help her understand her situation, and in some cases uses her trials to help her understand parts of the bible. (Fifteenth Remove: “And now could I see that Scripture verified (there being many Scriptures which we do not take notice of, or understand till we are afflicted) ‘Thou shalt eat and not be satisfied’.”) Her sense of salvation in the midst of great danger can be seen best at the end of the Sixth Remove:

The Indians were as thick as the trees: it seemed as if there had been a thousand hatchets going at once. If one looked before one there was nothing but Indians, and behind one, nothing but Indians, and so on either hand, I myself in the midst, and no Christian soul near me, and yet how hath the Lord preserved me in safety? Oh the experience that I have had of the goodness of God, to me and mine!

It may seem a little odd to praise God for putting her through a trial of extreme discomfort and causing her to witness such terrible violence and the loss of her home and one of her children. In the Puritan frame of mind though, it seems that the emphasis is placed not on the suffering, but on the fact that she ultimately survived. As Rowlandson points out, human beings cannot understand God’s methods, and letting his children go through terrible trials is a necessary part of the path to salvation.