prev It Happened on FEBRUARY 10 next

MARY ROWLANDSON CLUNG TO GOD’S PROMISES DURING HER CAPTIVITY AND RESCUE

[Mary Rowlandson carrying her wounded child, from Henry Davenport Northrop's Our greater country; being a standard history of the United States... [public domain] Wikimedia] 


“When we are in prosperity, Oh the little that we think of such dreadful sights, to see our dear friends and relations lie bleeding out their hearts-blood upon the ground,” So lamented Mary Rowlandson. On this day, 10 February 1675,* during King Philip’s War, Narragansett Indians attacked Lancaster, Massachusetts. As Rowlandson fled her burning house, she was shot in the side and her six-year-old daughter, Sarah, was shot through the body. 

Through the negotiations of colonial leaders and her minister husband (who had been away pleading for reinforcements when the disaster fell), she was ransomed for twenty pounds after being held hostage eleven weeks and five days. Five years later, in part “to declare the works of the Lord” as she had read in Psalm 118:17, she wrote America’s first “captivity narrative” which she titled The Sovereignty and Goodness of God: Being a Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson

In it she remarked, “I had often before this said, that if the Indians should come, I should chuse rather to be killed by them than taken alive, but when it came to the trial, my mind changed; their glittering weapons so daunted my spirit, that I chose rather to go along with those (as I may say) ravenous bears, than that moment to end my days.” 

The book’s two prominent themes were the misery of her captivity and God’s never-failing presence. “It is not my tongue or pen can express the sorrows of my heart, and bitterness of my spirit, that I had at this departure: but God was with me in a wonderful manner, carrying me along and bearing up my spirit, that it did not quite fail.”

The first night of her captivity, the Indian encampment bore “a lively resemblance of hell.” The second day it began to snow. The cold made her stiff and she could scarcely attend her feverish, wounded babe. “I must sit all this cold, winter night, upon the cold snowy ground, with my sick child in my arms, looking that every hour would be the last of its life; and having no Christian friend near me, either to comfort or help me.”

Later, at the Indian town called Wenimesset (New Braintree), another captive suggested oak leaves would relieve her wounded side. Rowlandson tried the remedy and it helped. However, Sarah died there on 18 February. In her anguish, Rowlandson asked the Lord for relief. Almost immediately she learned that her son Joseph and daughter Mary were alive in a village about six miles away. Soon she was able to speak with Joseph. And when an Indian raiding party returned the next day, one gave her a Bible from his plunder. She felt Jeremiah 31:16 was given her as a promise: “Thus saith the Lord, refrain thy voice from weeping, and thine eyes from tears, for thy work shall be rewarded and they shall come again from the land of the enemy.”

Unable at first to eat, by the second week she became so ravenous she could eat almost anything. She earned food by knitting articles of clothing for her captors. She divided her book by “removes,” a remove being each time her captors changed location. In the thirteenth remove, she was told her son had been cooked and eaten. She reassured herself with the thought that the Indians were great liars, and so it proved. At the site of her twentieth remove, her ransom came, and she was able to return to her folk. Soon afterward, Joseph and Mary got home and the family was reunited to live in a house rented for them by kindly folk in Boston. Eventually they moved to Connecticut. 

Rowlandson remarried after her husband’s death, to Captain Samuel Talcott, and died a widow in Wethersfield, Connecticut, in 1711. The Norton Book of American Autobiography says that because of Rowlandson’s strong voice, “her memoir became a model for later writers who wrote about periods of crisis that were also times of spiritual transformation.” 

Dan Graves


* This story uses Rowlandson’s own dates. Under the new calendar the attack would be 21 February 1676 and Sarah’s death the 29 Feb, which is how some more recent histories date the events.

----- ----- -----

The stories of many captives who found strength in God can be found in Christian History #123, Captive Faith

Subscribe to daily emails

Containing today’s events, devotional, quote and stories