Slides on Mary Rowlandson

1. Errand into the Wilderness

2. FromVirginia to New England
Context to remember:
King James I had split the New World into parts:
Southern part was to be settled by charter members from London
Northern part fell to members in towns of Bristol, Plymouth, Exeter
What was driving English Colonization?
Nationalist desire to dispossess the Spanish
Religious forces unleashed by the Protestant Reformation

3. Protestant Reformation
✤ New relationship with scripture; Bible translated into vernacular
language
✤ Role of print - new media, new readers, new translations, new
interpretations
✤ Anti-sacramentalism - attack on physical and material things;
attack on anything that gets in the way of personal reading and
interpretation
✤ Reform of Church governance; desire to go back to the gospels of
the first Church

4. CultureWars in England
✤ Where is Protestantism going to go? Might it lead to something
called Puritanism?
✤ The logic of Protestantism leads into Sectarianism
✤ Various interpretations of what is primitive
✤ Stripped and purified of all ritual, procedure, ornament
✤ End game today is personal relationship with Christ

5. Religious Reform
✤ Widespread reform, but reformers faced pressure to conform to practices
and teaching of the Church of England
✤ Some reformers remained committed to established church; others sought
to reform it from within; others formally separated
✤ “Puritans” - sought to “purify” the Church of England of the vestiges
of Roman Catholicism
✤ “Separatists” - formed independent churches, each based on a formal
covenant
✤ Other groups such as “The Levelers,” “The Seekers,” “The Quakers,”
“The Familists”

6. PuritanWorldview
✤ Covenant theology (contract with God - group and personal)
✤ Literal authority of the Bible
✤ Typology (biblical forecasts; symbolic events)
✤ Worldly experience was “read” in light of scripture
✤ Original depravity (we are born sinners)
✤ Limited atonement (no ritual or prayer will ensure salvation)
✤ Predestination (God has chosen his elect before we are born)

7. Massachusetts Bay Colony
The colony’s first seal,
depicting a dejected Native
American with arrows
turned downwards, saying
“Come over and help us”

8. Mary Rowlandson
The Captivity Narrative

9. King Philip’s War, 1675-76

10. Historical Context, 1660-1670s
✤ Population of Native Americans was declining. The Was was a last
effort to stem tide of European expansion
✤ Year-long war (5,000 Indians killed, around half that number of
colonists). Skirmish war - Indians would attack and retreat
✤ Effects of European immigration
✤ Decline in Puritanism with population increase
✤ Half-Way Covenant - form of partial church membership to
deal with decline in membership. No conversion experience
needed; just to follow the creed

11. Mrs. Rowlandson’s “Removes”

12. London Edition
Boston Second Edition

14. 1773 Edition

17. Captivity Narrative: uniquely American genre that recounts the
experience of a white European (or later, an American) during
his or her captivity and release from hostile enemy captors
(usually Native Americans)
Jeremiad: usually associated with second generation Puritans.
Jeremiads draw on Old Testament books of Jeremiah and Isaiah
to lament the spiritual and moral decline of a community. Interpret
misfortunes as God’s just punishment for decline. But also read
the decline as proof of God’s love and the group’s status as his
“chosen people”
Popular Early American Genres

18. Captivity Narrative
✤ Why are captivity narratives appealing to Americans?
Why do you think this genre became so popular and
remains popular today?
✤ What about its pattern of remove, initiation, and return
speaks to the American experience?
✤ Why is the genre of captivity narratives dominated by
woman’s experience? Why is gender important to the
genre?

19. “Praying Indians”

20. Title page of John Eliot's Indian Bible, the first Bible printed in North
America. Published in 1663 in Cambridge, Massachusetts.