The captive narratives of Susannah Johnson and Mary Rowlandson both contain continuous Christian religious language and imagery that reveals the nature of English perceptions of Native Americans during the eighteenth century. Particularly in Mary Rowlandson’s “A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson”, religious imagery and language is used to demonize her Native American captors. This sort of demonizing imagery is also present towards the beginning of Johnson’s “The Captive Narrative”, and even her ultimate words of redemption for her imprisoners shows a correlation between Christianity and the author’s attitude towards the Native Americans.
Christianization was a widespread effort during the eighteenth century during the colonization of North America. Native American peoples were othered by European settlers and were in many cases forced into conversion and assimilation through brutality. First Nation Journalist Daniel N. Paul discusses the demonization of these Native peoples on his website that he titles “We Were Not The Savages: First Nation History”. In his article “Systemic Racism in Canada and Nova Scotia”, Paul writes about the Canadian colonization, claiming that: The long term goal was to bring the Native peoples from what the white supremacist politicians and bureaucrats described as their ‘savage and unproductive state’ and force (English style) civilization upon them, thus making Canada a homogeneous society in the Anglo-Saxon and Christian tradition” (Paul). The unconverted Natives were seen as savage pagans who needed to be saved by Christianity. In her narrative, Rowlandson uses the word heathen to describe the Natives who have captured her. The word heathen is used to describe an unconverted person who is not Christian, Muslim, or Jewish (“heathen”). Johnson discusses the presence of a French Friar in the settlement where she is held captive, and explains that he “lived in the midst of them for the salvation of their souls” (Johnson, 860). Christianity was crucial in mediating European settler’s understanding of Native Americans. This can be seen in the narratives of Johnson and Rowlandson, both of whom utilize hell imagery, allusion to the crucifixion of Jesus, and the following of Christian practices, to portray and interpret their Native American captors.
Johnson and Rowlandson both utilize references and imagery of hell in reference to their captors, alluding to traditional demonizing images of Native Americans. Rowlandson describes the Native’s use of fire to destroy her home she describes her experience, “the house on fire over our heads”, creates images of people surrounded by fire in a hellish landscape (Rowlandson, 24). In her text, Johnson directly references traditional depictions of hell when she describes the settlement of her captors, St. Francis, by writing the noise that came from it, might be supposed the centre of Pandemonium” (Johnson, 858). Pandemonium refers to the capital of hell in Milton’s Paradise Lost, which is a classic depiction of hell. Rowlandson also draws upon classical images of hell as she describes her night with her captors She writes “oh the roaring, and singing, and dancing, and yelling of those black creatures in the night, which made the place a lively resemblance of hell!” and creates imagery of the dancing Natives around the fire (Rowlandson, 25). These images of Natives dancing around fires hold many similarities to classical images of a fiery hell.
This image calls upon traditional stereotypes of Native Americans and depicts them dancing among flames. The fiery dance evokes images of hell for religious Europeans.
Both Johnson and Rowlandson texts describe the forced stripping down of the European settlers during their native captivity. Johnson describes how her children were “driven naked” to her own naked self upon their capture. The image of the naked captives also returns the reader to religious images of hell, where captives are held naked. In particular, Sandro Botticelli’s Punishment of the Panderers and Seducers and the Flatterers from his imaginings of Dante’s Inferno contain similar imagery to that which is used to describe the experience of Native captivity in Johnson and Rowlandson’s narratives. The illustration shows naked prisoners being led by dark demonic figures which harp back to Rowlandson’s description of the natives as “black creatures” (Rowlandson, 25).
Sandro Botticelli’s “Punishment of the Panderers and Seducers and the Flatterers” from his imaginings of “Dante’s Inferno”
While Johnson and Rowlandson actively engage with traditional religious hell imagery in their narratives, their texts, particularly that of Rowlandson, also contain allusions to the crucifixion of Jesus which highlights the struggles of European captives and demonize their Native captors. As is mention above, both Johnson and Rowlandson describe instances where the European prisoners are stripped down by the Natives, and often this action is done right before the moment of death. Rowlandson describes the death of a man by his Native imprisoners where they “knocked him on the head, stripped him naked, and split open his bowels” (Rowlandson, 24). Later in the text Rowlandson also describes the brutal death of a woman who was imprisoned with her, and later killed. She describes that the Native Americans “gathered a great company together about her, and stripped her naked, and set her in the midst of them; and when they had sung and danced about her (in their hellish manner)” (Rowlandson, 26). These two instances, especially the later, allude to the tenth station of the cross where Jesus is stripped of his clothing and mocked by the soldiers who captured him. The Gospel of Matthew describes the scene of Jesus’ crucifixion: “They spat on him, and took the reed and struck him on the head. After mocking him they stripped him” (Matthew 27:30-31). The two passages hold many similarities in the mocking and stripping of the victims, and create a metaphor which portrays the Native captors as killers of a Christ like figure.
In the tenth Station of the Cross Jesus is stripped of his clothes before his crucifixion.
Rowlandson continues to make allusions to the Gospel, in particular to the moment of Jesus’ death. In the death of the woman, Rowlandson reveals to the reader that at the time of her death, the woman is supposed to have “not shed one tear, but prayed all the while” (Rowlandson, 26). This faithful death is similar to the death of her sister, which she describes earlier in the text. Rowlandson describes how her sister called out to God, “she said, Lord, let me die with them, which was no sooner said but she was struck with a bullet, and fell down dead over the threshold (Rowlandson, 25). These moments of prayer, and especially the moment of her sister’s appeal to God, allude to the death of Jesus. Right before his death it is written in the Gospel of Luke that “Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, ‘Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.’ Having said this, he breathed his last” (Luke 23: 46). Rowlandson creates a connection between her sister’s death and the death of Jesus by describing this appeal to God, and again places the Native American peoples in the role of the villain through allusion the Christian biblical narrative.
Both Johnson and Rowland’s final conclusions of their captivity are mediated through their religious experience with the Native peoples. Rowland describes how the Natives who held her captive did not observe the Christian traditions, specifically the Sabbath, and also kept her from doing so. She explains her experience writing: “when the Sabbath came, they bade me go to work; I told them it was Sabbath-day, and desired them to let me rest, and told them I would do as much more tomorrow; to which they answered me, they would break my face” (Rowlandson, 26). Not only is she unable to practice her Christianity, but she also threatened with brutal violence. This inability to practice her religion creates an insurmountable distance between Rowlandson and her captors and leads her to see the Natives as the other. She continuously laments over having “no Christian friend near me, either to comfort or help me” (Rowlandson, 26). Johnson’s religious experience in captivity differs greatly from Rowlandson’s, and she describes the presence of Christianity in the settlement where she is captive. Johnson explains that “There was a church, in which mass was held every night and morning, and every Sunday; the hearers were summoned by bell; and attendance was pretty general” (Johnson, 860). Johnson’s experience stands in stark contrast to Rowlandson’s, and leaves her with a very different opinion of her Native captors. Johnson concludes her text by commenting on the civility of her captors and the sympathy they showed in sharing their food with their prisoners and adopting them into their families. Johnson’s experience with her Native captors led her to see beyond the savage stereotype which they held, which was fostered by her opportunity to see their similarities to the ‘civilized people’. Her experience further supports the idea that the Christianization of the Native peoples made them more accessible and tolerable to the European settlers. Johnson and Rowland both mediate their experiences with their Native American captors through their Christian religion, and their contrasting religious experiences during their captivity leave them with opposing understandings of Native American Peoples.
Works Citied
“heathen.” Dictionary.com Unabridged. Random House, Inc. 03 Mar. 2013. <Dictionary.com http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/heathen>.
Paul, Daniel N. “Systemic Racism in Canada and Nova Scotia.” We Were Not The Savages: First Nation History. N.p., 31 Aug. 2008. Web. 02 Mar. 2013.
Women Writers, 1660-1800 
This is a really fabulous post because you have taken our historical readings and shown how they are implicated in colonial cultural erasure/genocide in both the historical past and the present. I think that the way you contrast our two texts this week through the lense of Christianity gets right to the heart of the attitudes both texts express, especially because you have deconstructed so many of the allusions. I hadn’t noticed the depth of meaning in the scene when Johnson’s children are “driven naked”–thank you!
Reading your analysis makes the texts all the more chilling, because it allows us to see how it is that genocidal programs such as residential schools were justified for so many generations.