Compare And Contrast Mary Rowlandson And James Smith

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The Americans had many problems with the Native Americans during the Colonial period. Sometimes the Americans were even taken as captives by the Indians. In New England alone, an estimated 1,641 with captives were taken between 1675 and 1763. Among two of these were Mary Rowlandson and James Smith. Mary Rowlandson was a reverend’s wife from Massachusetts during the seventeenth century and James Smith was cutting a wagon trail in Pennsylvania during the eighteenth century. Even though they were both taken to be used in the Indian villages, because of their gender, their time with the Indians differed greatly in how they were treated and how their thoughts of the Indians were influenced. Mary Rowlandson was captured and spared to live during King Philip’s war in 1676. The Indians came to her town, burned buildings, and …show more content…

An example of this is when her master’s child passed away, and she was just grateful for the extra room that was in the wigwam now. During the Third Remove, while Rowlandson’s child was dying, the only comfort she had was the Indians’ offerings to “quickly knock [her] child on the head” and to this she said they were miserable comforters. However while she was held captive, she only had one truly kind and comforting experience with the Indians. This was when the old squaw told Rowlandson could lodge in her wigwam, and gave her a mat to lay on and a rug to put over her. Because she was a Puritan woman, she was probably led to believe that she was superior over the Indians, making it more difficult to accept them. She did not like the fact that the work the Indian women did could just about equal the work the men did back in New England. Rowlandson felt she was much more civilized than her captors. Mary Rowlandson’s views on the Indians are obviously show through her writings, as she used derogatory terms, referring to them as heathens and

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