In this piece Rowlandson portrays her captivity among the Native American’s during King Philip’s War, begun by the Native Americans as a protestation against English brutality and apathy regarding their culture and way of life.
Rowlandson’s faith and naivety are quite striking. First, she fails to realize the motives of the Native Americans, portraying them simply as brutal, animalistic creatures with scant morals or intellectual insight. She never reflects upon the possible wrong which the English have perpetrated against the Native Americans — the powerful uprooting of the Native American culture, their loss of home and resources, their pervasive illness, their economic disadvantage. She never contemplates the fact that her destroyed home, the English’s destroyed cities, were once the free domain of the Native Americans. She considers the starvation, the immorality, the ever-present fear of rape, the brutality of the Native Americans, instead of these very same conditions that the English colonizers imposed upon the former. I am not defending the Native Americans — but revealing the contemporary reality of their way of life.
Second, Rowlandson attributes every incident that occurs to her as manifestations of God’s every-present supervision and omniscience.
When the English army with new supplies were sent forth to pursue the enemy, and they understanding it, fled before them till they came to Banquaug river, where they forthwith went over safely; that that river should be impassable to the English. I can but admire to see the wonderful providence of God in preserving the heathen for further affliction to our poor country (261),she says. Yet, too, “Another thing that I would observe is the strange providence of God, in turning things about when the Indians was at the highest, and the English at the lowest” (262). Further, “Though many times [the Native Americans] would eat that, that a hog or a dog would hardly touch; yet by that God strengthened them to be a scourge to His people” (262). The arrival of the English army is God’s salvation; their delay is God’s reprisal. Her travails are evidence of God’s punishment; her recovery is evidence of His reward. The Native American’s savageness is God’s reprimand of her and castigation of the iniquity of the English, while an opportunity to demonstrate His power. Her faith is Rowlandson’s contradiction; for her, there is seemingly no agency possible for people, for all is in God’s hands.
