Mary Rowlandson Captivity Summary

Throughout history, there have been many literary studies that focused on the culture and traditions of Native Americans. Native writers have worked painstakingly on tribal histories, and their works have made us realize that we have not learned the full story of the Native American tribes. Deborah Miranda has written a collective tribal memoir, “Bad Indians”, drawing on ancestral memory that revealed aspects of an indigenous worldview and contributed to update our understanding of the mission system, settler colonialism and histories of American Indians about how they underwent cruel violence and exploitation. Her memoir successfully addressed past grievances of colonialism and also recognized and honored indigenous knowledge and identity.

Food is an essential thing needed to survive. In A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson; Rowlandson faced many challenges that she had to overcome. During her captivity, her biggest challenge was finding food every day. Her captors’ food was different compared to the food she was used to in her Puritan society in Europe. This forced her to adapt to her captors’ eating habits if she wanted any food. Although, these eating habits went against Rowlandson’s religious beliefs, she realized that she was willing to eat nearly anything to make it out of captivity alive. Rowlandson’s attitude towards her captors’ food changes drastically over the course of her captivity because she wants to survive.

The speech that was read by Chief Red Jacket to defend the religious beliefs of his people is a powerful piece of literature that is underrated. The speech describes the feelings that were caused by the religious intolerance from the Americans. Currently, the United States have started to appreciate the impacts of the Native Americans and other minorities in history. However, a piece of history that has been quite hidden is the religious intolerance of Native Americans. Chief Red Jacket utilizes repetition, pathos, and rhetorical questions to convince the Americans to tolerate the religion of the Native Americans.

Petalesharo’s writing reflected the treatment of Native Americans during the 1800s. Being a Native American himself, Petalesharo was able to give perspective on a point in history typically viewed from a white man’s opinion. The excerpt “Petalesharo” explains how the Native American was able “to prevent young women captured by other tribes from being sacrificed”, making Petalesharo well liked by the Americans (588). Petalesharo gave the “Speech of the Pawnee Chief” infront of Americans to convey the differences between Native Americans and Americans through emotion, logic, and credibility, which showed how the two groups will never be the same, but still can coexist in the world together.

The prescribed question that I have chosen is Power and Privilege: “How and why is a social group represented in a particular way?”

The Iroquois creation story is a renowned Native American myth written by a Tuscarora historian, David Cusick. He is also the author of David Cusick’s Sketches of Ancient History of the Six Nations, which is known to be the first Indian-written history printed in the English language (Radus). The Iroquois creation myth exists in twenty-five other versions. It describes how the world was created from the Native American perspective. It begins with a sky woman who falls down into the dark world. She is pregnant with twins. Sky woman lands on a turtles back, which ends up growing and becomes a part of island with time. The sky woman gives birth to twin boys, the good mind, and the bad mind. She dies when the bad mind decides to come out of her

The arrival of the first Europeans in the Americas is dramatically captured through the many writers who attempted to communicate what they saw, experienced and felt. What is more, the very purposes of their treacherous travel and colonization are clearly seen in their writings; whether it is poetry, history or sermons. Of the many literary pieces available today, William Bradford and John Winthrop’s writings, even though vary because the first is a historical account and the second is a sermon, stand out as presenting a clear trust in God, the rules that would govern them and the reason they have arrived in the Americas.

While we read a handful of chapters in Black Elk Speaks, one chapter in particular caught my attention more than the rest. Chapter 21, “The Messiah” was a rather captivating one, in not only its content, but also the unfolding of the previous two chapters that leads up to the content in that of chapter 21. The aspect of chapter 21 that are most captivating to me is the realization of everything that is taking place out west, while Black Elk isn’t present. While these chapters not only give us insight to the Wasichus’ movement west and the treatment to which they displayed towards the Black Hill people, we are also exposed to the individual struggle to which Black Elk himself is overcoming. For his in particular, he’s not only an individual who is suffering from

Americans have been intrigued by captivity novels and works for centuries. It could be the sense of danger and unpredictability that makes them so interesting and popular. Or maybe the idea that captivity was quite possible for readers in previous centuries made captivity narratives popular in Colonial Times. Speaking of Colonial Times, two popular captivity narratives that took place in that era that have many similarities and differences are; A Narrative of the Captivity of Mary Rowlandson and The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano.

Although Native Americans are characterized as both civilized and uncivilized in module one readings, their lifestyles and culture are observed to be civilized more often than not. The separate and distinct duties of men and women (Sigard, 1632) reveal a society that has defined roles and expectations based on gender. There are customs related to courtship (Le Clercq, 1691) that are similar to European cultures. Marriage was a recognized union amongst Native Americans, although not necessarily viewed as a serious, lifelong commitment like the Europeans (Heckewelder, 1819).

Thesis: The English were a prideful group, entangled in ethnocentrism, that caused a condescending and harsh treatment of the Native Americans, while the Native Americans were actually a dynamic and superior society, which led to the resentment and strife between the groups.

A Narrative of Captivity by Mary Rowlandson and The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano by Olaudah Equiano are two generally read imprisonment accounts , which, individually, relate the encounters of a grown-up white lady caught by Indians and an eleven-year-old Black male caught for the American slave market. Looking at these two accounts uncovers fascinating similitudes and contrasts and in addition in the encounters and responses of these two prisoners. Like distinctive Puritans of her day, the purpose for Mary Rowlandson’s narrative was to express God 's inspiration in her life. In this

In the nineteenth century, America was at one of its peaks of racial debate, with people starting to question whether it was right for the African Americans to stay enslaved, or if it was time to start the process of freeing the slaves and allowing them to live a better life. However, most people did not even question how the Native Americans were being treated or forced to change almost every aspect of their lives to “please,” as if they could ever be, the white people. William Apess’ The Experience of Five Christian Indians is an example of some of the harsh ways that Indians were treated before and even after they were “forcibly” converted to Christianity.

The Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson is a personal account, written by Mary Rowlandson in 1682. In her accounts, Rowlandson tells the readers of what life in captivity was truly like for her. Mary Rowlandson ultimately lost everything by an Indian attack on her town of Lancaster, Massachusetts in 1675. After the attacks, she is then held prisoner and spends eleven weeks with the Wampanoag Indians as they travel to safety. What is different about these accounts is that Rowlandson truly opens up to the reader about the hardships that she faced. Rowlandson shows a captivating personality as she struggles to recognize her identity. The repetition of the ideas of food, along with the use of the word

In A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, Mary Rowlandson retells her story as a captive of the Wampanoag Indians. In Louise Erdrich’s poem “Captivity”, Erdrich responds to Rowlandson by telling a story about a captive of a Native American tribe through the eyes of the captive. Throughout their stories, both authors utilize diction to produce a specific tone that conveys their overall theme. Through analysis of both authors’ diction choice, it is evident that Rowlandson’s hopeful tone supports her theme of exclusive belief in God, whereas Erdrich’s desperate tone supports her message that beliefs are susceptible to change.