Differences And Similarities Between Franklin And Mary Rowlandson

Mary Rowlandson and Benjamin Franklin to this day remain two of the prominent figures from their time in their descriptions and accounts of the culture and interactions among the Native Americans and the colonials. It is interesting to look at their widely different opinions on the Native Americans. The difference in time certainly must have had some impact on their differing point of views. As another century of learning to cohabitate with the colonials surely had to have some effect on how Native Americans treated and dealt with them. Rowlandson has negative and resentful remarks about the Native Americans. Her disparaging views of the Native Americans are based from her personal experience as a victim of inhumane acts and as a prisoner

of the Native Americans during King Philips’s War. On the other hand, Franklin’s opinions are based from his observations from the instances and encounters of the diplomats, missionaries, and interpreters with the American Indians a century later. Though Franklin might have heard of the atrocities of the Native Americans many years ago, Franklin’s perceptions of the Native Americans are non-critical and non-judgmental. Rowlandson makes the use of the Bible in a sense of dehumanizing the Native Americans as unbelievers, unworthy of respect and sympathy for their vastly different way of life, and its incompatibility with the gospel. Whereas Franklin desists from using the Bible as a means to further his ideas or differentiate the Native Indians from the Christian colonials.
Franklin takes into consideration that the Native American societies are different, their behaviors and practices are distinct, though each with its own set of rules to establish an alternate form of civility.

According to Franklin, “perhaps, if we could examine the Manners of different Nations with Impartiality, we should find no People so rude, as to be without any Rules of Politeness; nor any so polite, as not to have some Remains of Rudeness” (Franklin 927). Franklin presents more positive aspects of the Native Americans’ etiquette and formality. He talks about how the Native Americans show their hospitality by providing victuals and skins to rest on and offering pipes and tobacco to strangers. He also talks about how it is uncivil to enter a village without a notice. However, Rowlandson focuses on what defines Native Americans for their violent and immoral characteristics. She states, “Little do many think what is the savageness and bruitishness of this barbarous Enemy” (Rowlandson 489). Rowlandson recalls how she was refused to be given a spoonful of meal. She also remembers the unexpected and merciless attack by the Native American to Lancaster. Perhaps, she would find Franklin’s comparison of the Native American to the norms of Americans and Europeans as naïve and far too

kind.
Franklin has a manner of being fair to the Native Indians and the understanding as to how they can see the hypocrisy among the colonials as with the story of a Native American’s acquaintance of an interpreter he knew, who tried dealing with the merchants on the Sabbath day only having to wait while they “hear and learn good things”.

The Native American was offered less for his furs than before they went to church, which he thinks was unfair and a way to swindle the Native Americans. He mentions, “they pretended of meeting to learn good Things, the real purpose was to consult how to cheat Indians in the Price of Beaver” (Franklin 930). Franklin feels genuinely for the Native Americans for the inconsistencies with the colonials they habitually tolerate. In contrast, Rowlandson considers only the Native Americans’ hypocrisy at events such as they are grieving with their lost lives while joyfully celebrating the unjustified killings of the Englishmen. She says, “they mourned (with their black faces) for their own losses, yet triumphed and rejoiced in their inhumane, and many times devilish cruelty to the English” (Rowlandson

509).