Mary Rowlandson
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Mary Rowlandson (1635-1711) was a colonial American woman, who wrote a vivid description of three months she spent living with Native Americans. Her short book, A Narrative of the Captivity and Restauration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, is considered a seminal work in the American literary genre of Captivity Narratives.
Rowlandson lived in Lancaster, Massachusetts, where she was the wife of a minister. On February 10, 1675, during King Philip's War, her house came under attack and she was taken captive, along with three of her children. For three months, she was forced to accompany her captors as they trekked through the forest, under what she describes as horrible conditions, as her captors attempted to elude the English army. She describes the odyssey as twenty distinct "Removes," until she was finally reunited with her husband. During that time, one child died and another was separated from her, but throughout she sought solace in the Bible--the text of her narrative is replete with verses and references describing conditions similar to her own.
Rowlandson's book, published in 1682, set the tone for many subsequent captivity narratives in which the emerging American community developed a sense of "us against the other" (in this case, the Native American population), who often came into violent confrontation. According to these accounts, it is the strength of character of the Americans, bolstered by religion and destiny, that helps them to survive in the "Wilderness" (a term Rowlandson frequently uses). At the same time, it protects them when they are forced to accommodate themselves to the conditions of North America through a process of acculturation with Native culture and knowledge. By laying the groundwork for these in her account, Rowlandson effectively created the first uniquely American literary genre.