ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts covered in the preceding chapters of this book. The book attempts to survey the 'impact of America' on the earliest written accounts of British-indigenous encounter. The importance of Mary Rowlandson's narrative to American culture is almost universally recognized, and is often presented as the very origin not only of American literature, but American identity itself. In the case of John Underhill's maidens and Rowlandson herself, however, the experience of the captive is understood explicitly as a confrontation with an unfamiliar culture. In the wake of the United Colonies' defeat of the Narragansetts, towns like Wethersfield could return to the peace they had enjoyed since the Treaty of Hartford of 1638 forced the Pequots to submit to English-Narragansett authority.
