Cabeza De Vaca Mary Rowlandson Comparison

Although from very different times periods with very different stories, Mary Rowlandson, Cabeza de Vaca, and Olaudah Equiano have one thing in common. They were all captured and all lived to tell their accounts. Mary Rowlandson was born in 1636 in England. During the course of her life, she married Joseph Rowlandson and journeyed with him to the new world. There she was captured by the Native Americans and lived to tell about it in her memoir, The Sovereignty and Goodness of God. De Vaca was born in Spain around 1490. Very little is known about his life but it is known that he boarded an expedition to the new world in 1527. He encountered many obstacles during his exploration and tells his story in the narrative Cabeza de Vaca: The Narrative

During the raid on her town, both Rowlandson and her child were injured. Their capturers never forced them to do work, made sure their injuries were taken care of and basically treated her as one of their own. The Natives were constantly moving as the English were chasing them, but were still able to provide groundnuts, beans, roots, and corn to Rowlandson and the child. Throughout her memoir, Rowlandson continued questioning why the Natives could outrun the English considering all of their obstacles. She believed in the Puritan theology of Calvinism and was constantly asking herself what she did to be put in this situation. Rowlandson considered that the reason her people were not catching up to the Native Americans to be that God still had a lesson to teach

He was taken from his home in Africa and forced on a ship with four hundred other men and women who were also being removed from their home. They spent two to four months on this ship, stacked on top of each other, with feces, urine, and vomit surrounding them. There was no ventilation and constant cruelty. The whole time Olaudah Equiano was on the ship, he could not help but think of his sister. He was worried the English would take his sister’s virtues and innocence. He expressed this concern in his narrative when he says, “I commit to the care of your innocence and virtues, if they have not already received their full reward, and if your youth and delicacy have not long since fallen victims to the violence of the African trader” (519). As soon as the ship landed in the Americas, Equiano was sold. He was taken to Barbados, Virginia, and then straight back to England where he was then promised money and freedom if he fought in the British Navy during the Seven Year’s War. But afterwards, he was denied those promises. There is no doubt that his life was difficult and tortuous, but Equiano found a way to not only improve his life, but other African American’s lives as