ABSTRACT
When Mary Rowlandson emerged from the clutches of a tribe of Algonquian Indians in May 1676 after nearly 12 weeks of captivity, she had no way of knowing that the narrative which spawned from her saga would in turn spawn arguably the first uniquely American literary genre: the Indian captivity narrative. Written with earnest, bland prose and penned as a genuine firstperson account of her captivity, Rowlandson’s narrative recounts 20 “removes” or journeys in which she suffered-among other things-starvation, depression, spiritual corruption, and the death of her youngest daughter, Sarah. Still, through the “sovereignty and goodness of God,” the civilized white Puritan woman was able to withstand the horrific conditions of the uncultivated Indian savages. Historian Richard Slotkin (1996) notes that Rowlandson’s narrative provided America with its first coherent mythical literature-a literature that, though originally relaying factual accounts, later would become manipulated by others for their own motives. Influential Puritan minister Increase Mather, most scholars agree, likely had a hand in crafting Rowlandson’s narrative so that it functioned as a warning to his Puritan settlers about what might happen should their faith in God falter. More than simply an isolated account of the tribulations of 17th-century American life, Rowlandson’s written account blazed the trail for later forms of the captivity narrative-a genre predicated upon the relocation of the protagonist into unknown and oftentimes violent surroundings where survival results solely from moral redemption and spiritual fortitude in spite of threats or temptations to an otherwise savage form of life.
