Rowlandson, Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson

Like I mentioned last week, this is a time period during which people were out and about, experiencing the world in new, and sometimes terrifying, ways. During the first few years of a hundred-year westward expansion, European settlers, many average joes, had unprecedented contact with indigenous peoples. While some settlers (namely the French) established more amicable relationships with native peoples, others values and beliefs discouraged such fraternization (the Puritans). The Puritans tended to wind up having weird, terrifying, and antagonistic encounters with Indians. Mary Rowlandson is a fine example, and her narrative reveals much about the expectations that she and her contemporaries had about native peoples. Fortunately,contrary to her expectations, she was spared much poor treatment. For more information about Mary Rowlandson, see  http://www.wsu.edu/~campbelld/amlit/rowlandson.htm