It is difficult not to feel some compassion for Mary Rowlandson’s tribulations; taken into captivity, she lost her home, her family, her comforts, and her freedom.  Surrounded by the unfamiliar – to be generous – hungry, tired, and desolate, she turned to the only security from which she believed she could not be separated: her faith.  Rowlandson’s story was arguably the first in a long line of epic “American” adventure stories in which a hero enters into a chaotic situation or dead-defying struggle only to emerge victorious (or redeemed).  For her, the foundation of her successful release from captivity appears to have been her Puritan faith.  But it is difficult to discern whether her faith was confirmed by her tribulations or was it reshaped?  Did her struggles and deprecations teach her compassion and empathy for the struggles and deprecations of her Indian captors?

It is not clear to what extent this story is history, myth, propaganda, and/or truth.  However, it does seem clear that Rowlandson understood her purpose in writing the narrative: to express the possibility of redemption with faith in God and his wisdom.  Nevertheless, perhaps this was more than an expression of Puritan religious teaching but a reflection of the realities of life in a foreign and hostile environment.  Survival in frontier America was no more guaranteed or knowable than salvation.

Denis Brennan