Comparing Mary Rowlandson's Abolition Of Slavery And Summary

Abraham Lincoln quoted when passing the 13th amendment “I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated states and parts of states, are and henceforward shall be free.” When Americans typically think about slavery, they think about African American slaves that began in 1620 and ended in 1865 when President Lincoln abolished slavery with the 13th amendment. Slavery actually began much earlier than that starting around the 1600’s with Native Americans. Native Americans were captured, and named savages during the english settlement. After the Native Americans were captured, they were either kept as slaves in America, or they were sold to Europeans as slaves. Bartolom`e De Las Casas, a european apologist for Native American rights, wrote about the horrific wrong
doings that the Europeans imposed on the Native Americans. If Bartolom`e De Las Casas writings were compared to Mary Rowlandson’s A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson (a story about Mary Rowlandson’s time when she was held captive by Native Americans) it is shown that Mary Rowlandson is treated much better than the Native Americans were. Why would the Native Americans treat an english settler well even though the english settlers didn't treat them well? I believe that if Bartolom`e De Las Casas writings, and Mary Rowlandson’s A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson are looked at it is shown that the Native Americans that were named savages were not in fact savages at all, but it was the English settlers who where in fact the savages. The definition of a savage is a member of a people regarded as primitive and uncivilized. When I think of someone who is savage, I think of someone who is uncivilized, and possibly even mean or wicked, which the Native Americans were not. The Native American were also said to have no government, and no religion. These accusations were all founded to be untrue. Christopher Columbus even explains to the King and Queen of Spain that the Native Americans will be great slaves because they are so willing to help. Time after time the Natives prove to be kind in the narrative that Mary Rowlandson writes.
Throughout her narrative the native do very kind things like giving her a bible, and allowing her to keep it and read it. She also is allowed to see her son, and read the bible to him. She is allowed to go see him at his tribe, and he is allowed to come see her at her tribe. Although they start Mary at the beginning of they story the Natives eventually allow her to have food. The Native Americans also allow Mary to knit, which she really enjoys, to trade her creations for food. In the end Mary is sold back to her husband, which ultimately shows that the Natives were kind people. In the beginning of Mary Rowlandson’s narrative the Natives aren't so nice. The Natives had rebelled against the English Settlers, killing their men and capturing the women and children. Mary Rowlandson and her children are captured. Mary talks about how she is starved, and threatened to be punished if she doesn't do what she is asked, but the hardships that Mary endured were nothing compared to what the Native Americans endured during their enslavement by the English
Settlers “And the Christians, with their horses and swords and pikes began to carry out massacres and strange cruelties against them. They attached the towns and neither the children nor the aged not the pregnant woman nor women in childbed, not only stabbing them and dismembering them but cutting them to pieces as if dealing with sheep in the slaughter house.” This quote by Bartolom`e De Las Casas paints a vivd image of European invasion on Native Americans, and the extremely cruel things that were done to them and their families. Bartolom`e De Las Casas talks about them throwing the babies in the river. “And for the pitiful Indians who died of hunger and thirst, there is no remedy but to cast them into the sea. And verily, as a Spaniard told me, their ships in these regions could voyage without compass or chart, merely by following for the distance between the Lucayos Islands and Hispaniola, which is sixty or seventy leagues, the trace of those indian corpses floating in the sea, corpses floating in the sea, corpses that had been cast overboard by earlier ships.” In this quote Bartolom`e De Las Casas talks about the death toll of the Native Americans when they were on the ships taking them to England. The Native were thrown of the ship so plentifully that the sailing Spaniards were able to follow them without a map or compass. Bartolom`e De Las Casas also talks about some of the jobs that the Natives had as slaves the worse one was being a pearl diver. Where the Natives would dive for pearls in very dangerous waters. The Native Americans when through very hard times as slaves, and Mary Rowlandson also faced very hard times as a captive. If you compare the two and everything that they had to go through, then it is very easy to tell that the English settlers were the savages. The Englishmen treated the Natives and their families as if they were nothing. They had no mercy on the Natives letting them die, and be slaughtered. The Native American had every right to rebel against the English settlers after everything they put them through. After everything the Englishmen put them through as slaves, the Natives still treated their English captive, Mary Rowlandson, with kindness. The way the Natives treated Mary Rowlandson tells me that the Natives were not the savages that the English Settlers were the savages.