Rowlandson partakes, and through this, she begins to blur the lines between her life in Lancaster and her time in captivity.įollowing the epigraph, the first stanza relates the group crossing a stream and Rowlandson falling into the raging water only to have her captor pull her up out of the water by her hair. ![]() In the same remove, Rowlandson describes the Native Americans killing a deer with a fawn in its stomach, cooking it, and eating it. Now moldy, Rowlandson still partakes and it sustains her. (This is one thing that I cannot answer, but it warrants discussion at some point.)Įrdrich begins “Captivity” with an epigraph attributed to Rowlandson: “ He (my captor) gave me a bisquit, which I put in my pocket, and not daring to eat it, buried it under a log, fearing he had put something in it to make me love him.” The epigraph brings together a scene from the fourteenth remove where Rowlandson talks about being hungry and quenching that hunger with “crumbs of cake that an Indian gave girl” upon their capture. As well, this downplaying could be due to the input that Increase Mather or other Puritan ministers had on Rowlandson’s text. Rowlandson, perhaps afraid of backlash from the community, downplays her feelings towards those who took her captive. Told from Rowlandson’s point of view, like her narrative, “Captvity” chronicles Rowlandson’s time as a “ prisoner the Wampanoag.” The path that Erdrich traces for Rowlandson mirrors Rowlandson’s own experience from one of initial fear and dismay to a sort of acceptance and respect for those who took her from Lancaster. ![]() In many ways, Erdrich’s poem touches on the themes and threads mentioned above however, I will not have time to discuss each of these aspects today.Įrdrich’s poem initially appeared in 1984, a little over 300 years after the publication of Rowlandson’s narrative in 1682. Today, I want to take the time to look at Louise Erdrich’s “Captivity,” a poem that interrogates and questions the ways that we read Rowlandson’s text. It presents students with an early example of that distinctly American genre the captivity narrative, it highlights the role of women in colonial America, it illuminates the colonists’ feelings towards Native Americans, and it serves as a text that showcases Puritan thought during the late 1600s. I always enjoy teaching Mary Rowlandson’s Narrative for a myriad of reasons. Apes was evidently born "in the woods" in Massachusetts, his father "a half-breed who joined the natives and married a descendant of King Philip". The 1914 Hubbard Sale said, "The author was an Indian Preacher of the Pequod Tribe, who espoused the cause of the Indians." His leadership of the tribe ended the crudest forms of exploitation by the Massachusetts government and predatory whites. ![]() "If all the statements of the author, who claims to be a lineal descendant of the tribe, which suffered such murderous slaughter at the hands of Captains Church and Underhill, are true, there is a long score of wrongs to be settled with the State of Massachusetts." Field 43. The Experience of William Apes, A Native of the Forest.
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