Native Americans

1. What does Mary Rowlandson's work lead the reader to believe about the Natives? Be descriptive (words, tone, etc.).

Mary Rowlandson’s work leads the reader to believe that Native Americans were the ones who were immoral and deplorable. Her tone was very cutting about Natives and painted the colonists as Christian Martyrs. She continually described Native Americans has heathens, ravenous beast, and murderous wretches (1). She glossed over why the Native Americans were responding in such a violent way. Rowlandson never mentioned that Native Americans were being sold into slavery, dying from disease spread by the colonist, forced out of their land, forced to convert to Christianity, murdered, tricked, and abused. She failed to mention that the violence that occurred on Feb 10, 1676 in Lancaster was a direct response to the acute abuse Native Americans were experiencing at the hands of the colonists.

1. Viewing the excerpts from "500 Nations," how did the Native Americans feel about this same time period and event?

What the Native Americans felt about this time period is that they were being crucified by the colonists. The Native Americans believed that they were being robbed of their culture and religion, their land, their families and ultimately their lives. They felt like the image of Matacomet being viewed as welcoming of the colonists/ a humanitarian was a skewed version of what really happened. The Native Americans did not want two enemies so they tried to create good will between the Natives and the colonists to form an alliance with them for their weaponry before anyone else could and also not end up on the wrong side of the colonists’ guns (2). The colonists took advantage of that good will and manipulated, sold, converted, and abused the Natives. The colonist refused to sell anything that would be seen as an advantage to the Natives to keep the upper hand (2). The Natives believe that the cause of Metacomet’s war was a collection of hostile events that have been brewing over the years and not over a single event, the murder of John Sassamon (1).