Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson

About this book

In February 1676, during the bloody war between the English colonists of New England and the Native American peoples led by the Wampanoag chief Metacom, whom the English called King Philip, warriors attacked the frontier town of Lancaster in Massachusetts. Mary Rowlandson, the minister's wife, was carried off with three of her children; her wounded six-year-old daughter died in her arms. In this narrative she tells of the eleven weeks of her captivity, the 'removes' from camp to camp through the winter forest, her hunger, her bargaining with her sewing and knitting, her meeting with Metacom himself, and her ransom.

Context and significance

Published in 1682, it was one of the first American best sellers and the model for a whole genre of captivity narratives. Rowlandson reads every event as a test sent by God, and quotes the Bible constantly, but she also records, sometimes despite herself, the humanity of her captors. The frontier wars live on in fiction in The Last of the Mohicans.

About the author