Clash of cultures: conflict and coexistence

Puritans and Native Americans

What scholars call the "captivity narrative" has had a remarkable life of its own in American culture: stories about this kind of "captivity" continued to be told as entertainment, in Hollywood films like "The Searchers" or "Dances With Wolves," long after anyone had been abducted by a Native American tribe and held captive. It is worth inquiring why this particular type of story maintains its fascination for an American audience, by returning to where these narratives first came from, and how they were told in the centuries before Hollywood movies existed. In Colonial America, the life of Mary Rowlandson presents an excellent way to examine the clash of cultures. Rowlandson was born in England but came to New England as a Puritan colonist: she was then abducted during the "First Indian War" and held for several months before a ransom was paid and she was released to her husband. An examination of certain facts about Rowlandson's story may enable us to better understand the colonial "clash of cultures" in its larger historical context.

The title-page of Rowlandson's own account of her kidnapping, which was published in 1682, identifies her as "A Minister's Wife in New-England," and it is this fact that governs the way the colonists understood the clash of cultures. The title-page advertises an account of "the Cruel and Inhumane Usage she underwent amongst the Heathens, for Eleven Weeks time" but it also advertises the "Last Sermon" preached by the author's husband, the Reverend Joseph Rowlandson. The subject of that "last sermon" is "the Possibility of God's Forsaking a People that have been near and dear to him." It is crucial to understand the cultural peculiarity of the Puritans that were colonizing New England at this time to understand why Mary Rowlandson's story should be told in this way. Faery (1995) has indicated that Rowlandson's text contains an anonymous preface which was written by the famous Puritan preacher Increase Mather, and so therefore Mary Rowlandson's kidnapping tale is sandwiched between the work of two Christian ministers: "When the first edition of Rowlandson's text appeared, it was literally bracketed by the voices of Puritan clergymen: Mather's preface precedes her narrative, and Joseph Rowlandson's last sermon, preached just days before his death, followed it in early editions. The preface makes clear why this tale written by a woman must be enclosed by authoritative male voices: their function is to foreclose the possibility of her text's being read in ways that would render Puritan race and territorial politics subject to critique" (Faery 126-7). In other words, the notion that perhaps Mary Rowlandson's kidnapping might be justified in light of the original inhabitants having a claim to the land, and in terms of the war that was being conducted between the English colonists and the Native Americans, cannot be expressed in a work like this. The Puritans had a strong religious ideology, and that ideology would govern the way in which they understood everything that happened to them -- even a kidnapping by "Heathens."

To a certain degree, the Puritans believed in what was called "typological reading." This was a religious belief that everything that happened in life was a sign or symbol (or "type") of God's message for true believers. In this "typological reading" of the book of nature, the Puritans were Christian "chosen people" and that North America represented their "promised land," giving them a sense of Old Testament self-righteousness about establishing a faith-based community in Massachusetts. When we consider that these Puritans were mostly fleeing an England which, in the 17th century, had undergone tremendous bloodshed during a Civil War fought over the Puritan definition of Christianity -- and which led to an act of regicide, an establishment of a commonwealth under the Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell, the invasion of Ireland and the massacre of Roman Catholics at Drogheda, and ultimately the restoration of the English monarchy as a way to maintain peace and religious consensus -- we can understand that the New England colonists including Mary Rowlandson were hardly motivated by sheer racism in their attitude towards the Native Americans. These were people whose idea of God had justified the beheading of the King of England, Charles the First, who could hardly be accused of being a godless heathen; in fact, he was beheaded because his Christian God was insufficiently Puritan. In some sense, the Native Americans were hardly the only victims of Puritan self-righteousness: before going to war with Native Americans, the Puritans had treated the King of England and the population of Ireland with the same lofty contempt.

For that reason, Rowlandson's story of her captivity is more full of Biblical quotations than any attempt to understand the social structure or mores of the Native Americans that abducted her: they were "heathens" and that was enough understanding as far as the Puritans were concerned. But at the same time, the way Rowlandson's story is told is meant to reinforce the cultural narrative of the Puritans at the same time that it denies the cultural narrative of the Native Americans: Downing (1981) reports, concerning the conflict in which Rowlandson's kidnapping occurred (known as King Philip's War or the "First Indian War") that "Increase Mather and other Puritan divines explained the Indian uprising as a sign of God's displeasure, exhorting their congregations about the dangers of 'backsliding'." (Downing 254). In other words, the clash of cultures that we see in Mary Rowlandson's kidnapping is used to strengthen the Puritans self-definition. It is used to reinforce the sense of community among hostile alien presences that do not believe in their Christian God, but it is also used to force the Puritan community itself to examine its own conscience and try to appease that Christian God through righteous behavior.