Compare And Contrast Mary Rowlandson And James Smith

The Americans had many problems with the Native Americans during the Colonial period. Sometimes the Americans were even taken as captives by the Indians. In New England alone, an estimated 1,641 with captives were taken between 1675 and 1763. Among two of these were Mary Rowlandson and James Smith. Mary Rowlandson was a reverend’s wife from Massachusetts during the seventeenth century and James Smith was cutting a wagon trail in Pennsylvania during the eighteenth century. Even though they were both taken to be used in the Indian villages, because of their gender, their time with the Indians differed greatly in how they were treated and how their thoughts of the Indians were influenced.
Mary Rowlandson was captured and spared to live during King Philip’s war in 1676. The Indians came to her town, burned buildings, and

killed most of the people. She and her baby were shot in the side by one of the Indians before they were captured. James Smith was making a wagon road in 1755 when he was captured and spared to live. The Indians killed and scalped the other man he was with. Each of them played very different roles in the Indian civilizations. Indian men were to become farmers or blacksmiths, and Indian women were to become housewives, in keeping with European American concepts of "civilized" divisions of labor.
Mary Rowlandson was used as a servant in the Indian tribe. An Indian squaw, who had a title similar to the Queen, named Weetamoo was her mistress. The Indians moved nineteen times while she was held captive. Rowlandson was used to do the everyday woman’s work. The Indian women’s jobs were typically cooking, hauling water, washing dishes, making household items, including pottery and clothing; and child rearing. Many of the Indians would also ask her to make them articles of clothing and in return, they would give her food or other essential items. She was clearly an outsider because she was not considered an Indian. The Indians treated her aggressively and would not grant her any freedom. Once, she was nearly beat to death by her mistress because she had been in another wigwam looking for food. She did not have many good encounters with the Indians while she was there and because of this she deemed them as savages.
Unlike Rowlandson, Smith had a relatively easy time with the Indians. He was almost immediately adopted into the tribe and was considered one of them. The usual object in thus adopting a prisoner was that he might fill the place of someone who had died. Which was the case for James Smith. He was used in the tribe to do the men’s work. Men were responsible for hunting, defensive and aggressive warfare, manufacturing of weapons, and nearly all society wide political and religious operations. They trusted him go on hunting trips miles away from the society and was even rewarded a rifle for staying alive after being lost for a couple of days. He was always treated nicely and was never once beaten. In contrast to Rowlandson, Smith rarely starved, because the Indians shared all they could with him. Because he had such great experiences with the Indians, he considered them to be good people, and even family.
Mary Rowlandson greatly disliked her captors and found it very difficult to sympathize with the Indian.

An example of this is when her master’s child passed away, and she was just grateful for the extra room that was in the wigwam now. During the Third Remove, while Rowlandson’s child was dying, the only comfort she had was the Indians’ offerings to “quickly knock [her] child on the head” and to this she said they were miserable comforters. However while she was held captive, she only had one truly kind and comforting experience with the Indians. This was when the old squaw told Rowlandson could lodge in her wigwam, and gave her a mat to lay on and a rug to put over her. Because she was a Puritan woman, she was probably led to believe that she was superior over the Indians, making it more difficult to accept them. She did not like the fact that the work the Indian women did could just about equal the work the men did back in New England. Rowlandson felt she was much more civilized than her captors. Mary Rowlandson’s views on the Indians are obviously show through her writings, as she used derogatory terms, referring to them as heathens and

savages.
Unlike Rowlandson, Smith did not feel superior over the Indians. He saw everyone as equal. This could be because he was adopted to fill a spot of a deceased male in the tribe. The Indians performed a ceremony in the water and “every drop of white blood was washed out of [his] veins”. Smith felt compassion and respect for the Indians. At one point he was tempted to run away because he was so starved but dismissed the thought because he was “tenderly concerned” to let them “parish with hunger”. So he packed up all the meat he could and brought it back to the Indians. Smith respected the Indians and the Indians respected him in return. He was given much more freedom than Rowlandson, which left him with a kind heart and no hard feelings towards the Indians.
A major difference in the experiences Mary Rowlandson and James Smith faced was because of gender. It determined the freedom, treatment, and title that was given to them. These factors help shape and reflect their views of the Indians. The treatment because of their gender encouraged judgment of the people around them and affected their view.