Short Paper – History

King Philip’s war is the clarification which show that Indian and English have a lot of

opinions differ with each other for a long time. At that time, an English puritan woman who got

captured by Native American clearly shows her personal point of view of the native American

under puritan perception. From my point of view, she is not intended to publish her story work

so her narrative on to everything was very personal and it reflects clearly her point of view, her

social position, and her identity of a puritan at that moment.

As Mary walking me through her narrative, it’s clearly showing that she sees Native

American as non-human living whom live by their instinct and have no knowledge of civilization

and outside world. She also used heavy words to express her antipathy to the native, she called

them “Barbarous creature" and “Black creature", she would rather die than live with them and

compare her life while living with them as hell (Rowlandson pg 5). After reading Mary's

narrative and relating with Taylor, it is really interesting how close Taylor writes about the point

of view of a puritan to native American compares with Mary’s narrative. Taylor describes

puritan and natives are dissident, while native American adored nature, Puritans seem to

appropriate nature. Both Rowlandson and Taylor’s work are for narrating but I can sense the

judgement on their words. For example, Taylor said that: “wilderness was seductive as well as

evil” which connecting with Puritans. But interestingly, through all the bad things that Mary had,

there are things that she compares as miracle. The example is that when an Indian came back

from the fought at Medfield, and he offered to take his bible if she does not have one.

(Rowlandson 7). This story for me is the highlight from the narrative of Mary, because she has

faith in god so the offer of a Indian somehow giving her a light and a reason to live. On the other

hand, there is a time that Mary eliminated her thought of not eating raw meat to live which she
used to call “Filthy trash". In the perspective of Rowlandson, she seems to see everything fairly

depends on the events íntead of using her perception to admit that Indian are non-human and

savage. She started to call them Indian and see they as human at first. After seeing her people

being captured, tortured and killed even when they begged for staying alive. On the other hand,

the faithful of her toward God made she assumes that everything happened because of the will of

God and because God has mercy so he sends the bible for her. But that is not enough to rescue

her to feel a vindictive hatred for the Indian. Her experiences while living with Indian are mostly

suffer, anger and she made a lot of effort to show that she just wants to be united with her family.

Rowlandson’s narrative portrayed clearly the perception of a puritan acts toward the natives.

“Most leading puritans insisted that the colonies needed to shed blood to alienate themselves

from Indian ways, thoughts and bodies" (Alan Taylor 202) according to Taylor, seem like if the

natives were to maculate their lives. The marriage of a Puritan man with a Indian woman can

show how intense it is between Indian and Puritan community. Both of the Puritan man and his

wife be seen as betrayers toward their communities and they both bear with horrible

consequences.

In their mind, the world might end but the conflict between the two nations were still

remain. Both Taylor’s and Rowlandson's narrative helps me to understand the story between

puritan and the native at that time which lead to upcoming event that we are going to cover

through the course.