Title page of one of the surviving 1682 editions of Mary Rowlandson’s captivity narrative.

This image of the title page is from one of the surviving 1682 editions of A True History of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson.  Mrs. Rowlandson was taken captive during a raid on Lancaster, Massachusetts during King Philip’s War; a war initiated by Metacom (Philip was his english name), sachem of the Wampanoag tribe, over strained relationships with New English settlers and encroachments on their lands and sovereignty.  Other regional tribes joined as allies of Metacom or independently as enemies of the New English settlers.  Mrs. Rowlandson and about twenty other survivors, mostly women and young children, were taken in what Native cultures called a Mourning War, in which captives were taken from neighboring or hostile people and gradually incorporated into the captors tribal unit to replace loved ones and replenish the population.  The bloody nature of the Lancaster raid can be attributed to deep seated hostilities between the Invasive and Native populations.  Many English captives were returned; those that were not had been assimilated or died.  Most Native captives were not so lucky.  Most were killed before they could be taken, others fled to neighboring tribes; those that were not dead and could not flee were sold into regional or foreign slavery, usually to the Caribbean sugar islands.  Christian Indians, Native people who had adopted Protestantism and the English language, were usually exiled to Praying towns or reservations.

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