Mary Rowlandson Sale Of Land Summary

Mary Rowlandson's narrative of her capture presents native americans in a rather negative and demeaning light. She speaks of them as "barbarous creatures"(130), whom remove her from her family and murder her friends and neighbors. Her view of Native Americans is relatively consistent with the way they were viewed by the majority of the white population during this time period, however, this evaluation was not always accurate. European and white writers often only wrote of natives destroying settlements or senselessly killing. However, the other side of the story was not nearly as well told. Native American leaders like Black Hawk and Petalesharo, offered their prospective on the violence between these two peoples in the form of published accounts

and letters written to white government officials. Historical events recorded by the settlers were not always the most accurate representation of the Native American people, and the contrasting views presented by Native American leaders of the time need to be observed and taken into consideration when evaluating the relations between these two opposing sides during the 17th century.  
The chief infraction made by the whites in the eyes of the Native Americans was the seizure of their land and the sale of it that occurred thereafter.

The Natives viewed their homelands and hunting grounds as having been given to them by their creator at the dawn of their creation. Black Hawk, the Native leader of a tribal resistance band following the war of 1812("Lincoln/Net"), says in regards to the buying and selling of land "My reason teaches me that land cannot be sold. The Great Spirit gave it to his children to live upon, and cultivate, as far as is necessary for their subsistence; and so long as they occupy and cultivate it, they have the right to the soil"(586). His position on this issue prompted the beginning of "Black Hawks War", during which he lead a band of assorted tribes across the Mississippi river in order to reclaim lands that had been lost following the treaty of St. Louis in 1804. In his explanation, he argues that "I had appealed in vain, time after time, to our agent, who regularly represented our situation to the great chief at St. Louis, whose duty it was to call upon our Great Father to have justice done to us; but instead of this, we are told that the white people want our country, and we must leave it to them"(588)! This offers us sound reasoning and a different perspective than the one given to us by Mary Rowlandson in the account of her capture. She writes of them as senseless killers, when in fact, they only sought to defend and reclaim the

lands from which they were being driven prior to and during King Philip's War. They were fighting fiercely for their homeland and their right to be left alone and unmolested by the encroaching white settlers. 
Rowlandson speaks of the natives as Godless savages, referring to them as "Pagans"(131) and "merciless enemies"(131).

She views the natives the same as New England settlers viewed them all throughout their early conflicts with them, as heathens or God-less devils. This however, was not the case at all. The Natives practiced a form of religion not entirely different from the white based Christianity that the settlers practiced. The Natives often referred to "their creator" or "their mother" as their supreme object of worship and they attribute their creation and all of the events in their lives to the actions of this "creator". Petalesharo says, in reference to his form of religion, "Him who made us and placed us on this earth. I feel grateful for the Great Spirit for strengthening my heart for such and undertaking, and for preserving the life which he gave me. The great spirit made us all-he made my skin red, and yours white; he placed us on this earth, and intended that we should live differently from each other"(589). This concept of a singular creator bears striking similarities to the Christianity practiced by the settlers. They were in fact not the  Godless heathens that Rowlandson makes them out to be, but instead they practiced a devout form of their own religion based upon the individualism and creation that Petalesharo speaks of in his aforementioned

speech.  
The captivity narrative of Rowlandson tells a tragic and hostile tale but it is misleading in the fact that it gives an account of a Native attack, but it does not present us with any of the perspective or reasoning of the attackers. She does not mention that the Natvies are killing to reclaim their stolen land, and she does not speak of the thousands of Native Americans killed off by the white settlers through either the introduction of new diseases, enslavement, or preemptive strikes on Native settlements. The speeches and statements given by the Native American leaders provide us with a profound perspective from the other side of this conflict. Black Hawks provides us with his reasoning behind the aggression towards white settlers, and Petalesharo gives us some insight into the religion of these people who were previously thought of as "Ungodly Savages". Relations became strained between these two groups only due to the aggressive and greedy nature of the white settlers actions when they came from Europe.