Mary Rowlandson's survival trough the wilderness
             With the arrival of the Puritans to Plymouth Colony in New England there was immediately negotiated peace with the Indians that lived nearby: the Wampanoag Indians. When Metacom, also know as Philip, became the new king of the Indians, he turned against the settlers. There are many theories why he was against the English settlement, but only when an English settler killed a Native American, in 1675 he started a war by attacking the town of Swansea. This went on for 14 months. One particular town that the Indians destroyed on February 20, 1676 was Lancaster, hometown of Mary Rowlandson, a minister's wife and a mother. The Indians took her captive and separated her from her family for eleven weeks. Mary Rowlandson wrote a book about her captivity and restoration called; A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson. In this book she described what happened to her during those eleven weeks. However, there is an underlying text that deals with issues of the Puritan culture and the Indian culture. Without knowing it, Mary Rowlandson made it trough the wilderness and the experience of Indian captivity, because she altered her views regarding the wilderness, religious faith, the Indians and preconceptions about race and gender of seventeenth-century New England.
             The Puritan concept of wilderness is quite simple: places where no Christians live and therefore are no Christian facilities, is wilderness. The Indians lived in the wilderness, where there were no rules, boundaries or recognizable markers. "For Rowlandson, wilderness is a place that is not home –no walls, furnishing, hearth, food, health or comfort" (Logan, Lisa. "Mary Rowlandson's captivity and the 'place' of the woman subject" Early American Literature 28 (1995): 225-277). However, after a certain amount of time spend with the Indians Rowlandson felt at...