Writing Indigenous Femininity: Mary Rowlandson's Narrative of Captivity

Mary Rowlandson's narrative of her captivity offers insight into the ideas of femininity and race in early colonial America through its depiction of Weetamoo, the squaw-sachem of the Wampanoags. Despite evidence that Weetamoo was quite well known as an enemy in King Philip's War, Rowlandson refuses to acknowledge Weetamoo's extraordinary status and power in her own culture. Instead, Rowlandson attempts to cast Weetamoo merely as a failure of the Eurocentric femininity articulated by Increase Mather in his Preface to the text-a femininity that Rowlandson works so hard to claim for herself in her representation of her own maternity, asexuality, and gender-appropriate production and exchange.