Native American Captivity The late seventeenth century was filled with haste and distrust between the Native Americans and the English settlers. One account, Mrs. Mary Rowlandson’s A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, reveals the story of her own captivity by a Native American tribe. A poem in response, Captivity, was written almost three hundred years later. Though the poem is written in the aftermath of Native American conflict and by a women of half-German descent, the poem mirrors multiple aspects of the story. One mirrored aspect is the spirituality of the women. In both the narrative and poem, the captured women are of English descent and are Puritan. Puritans are deeply spiritual people who have faith in God, and this is evident …show more content…
One point which challenges the points in the narrative is the journey experienced. The narrator in the poem travels throughout the wilderness with her captive, eventually joining the captor, accepting her afflictions, and losing her vexations. Yet, in the narrative, Rowlandson is only in captive for eleven weeks according to the University of Pennsylvania. This challenges the exaggeration of Rowlandson’s account. When writing her story in the seventeenth century, Rowlandson had to appeal to certain social norms in Puritan society. For the narrator in the poem, the lifetime of captivity and acculturation in the captor’s life argues that Rowlandson could have experienced much longer captivity. In addition, the poem challenges the narrative’s view of endurance. In the poem, while the narrator has not eaten, she has not starved and endured the hunger. Yet, in the narrative, Rowlandson has nothing to eat and emphasizes her hunger in the story. Yet despite the similarities and differences, both works reflect the religious and spiritual and individual and societal complexities of the Native American