Melissa Sandifer

March 29, 2010

Ethnology in Captivity Narratives

While reviewing the syllabus on the first day of class, I admit, I rolled my eyes and thought to myself how incredibly boring all the readings would be and I began to dread the semester.  Half way through the semester now, I can honestly say that Early American literature is not as excruciatingly boring as I thought it would be, in fact, I have found quite a bit of the readings very enjoyable.  I would have to say that the captivity narrative is where most of my interest lies.  This interest is what set me on my pursuits to find out more about captivity narratives.  I had no idea in the beginning where to focus my interest, so I read about a few captives and their stories.

            After reading the captivity narratives, a few thoughts came to mind one of the first being, why are these stories important to modern day Americans.  Then I had another question, do these stories really have significance in explaining what the frontier was like back then and how the tribes of Indians behaved.  These are questions I set out to answer through my research, but specific answers were not so easily had. 

             Through research I found that some scholars believe these captivity stories are important to modern day Americans, because they are ethnographic.  Ethnography is a type of research method done usually about a society or culture and by another person spending time with this particular society/culture for a time being and documenting what is seen.  Through observation, among other things, ethnography is used to describe the personality, temperament, habits and overall life of those being observed.  The writers of the narrative become the ethnographers and in turn some of their stories become ethnography. 

It has been suggested that the captivity narratives can be read as accounts or sources of information on Native American cultures, because they help explain who the Indians were and what some of their common practices were (Ben-Zvi 1).  Pertinent ethnological information includes; the way the Indians captured their captives, the way the land was used to satisfy their needs, and things such as dancing and other activities they participated in.  This is the information that really puts a face on different Indian tribes and helps historians to define certain tribes.  Author of Shawnee Captivity Narrative, Dwight L. Smith, believes that when looking at captivity narratives as ethnography there are a few factors one must consider: the motive for which the story was written, the time that lapsed between the return and the writing of the story, and the writing ability of the captive or his ghost writer (31).  Smith also states that not all material in a captivity narrative is useful; most contain fragmented ethnography (31).     

The Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson is important because it was the first captivity narrative written.  It is also important because it was written by her and not too long after her return from captivity.  There are fragments in her narrative that can be considered ethnographic.  In her narrative, Mary explains, “They (the Indians) quickly fell to cutting dry trees, to make rafts to carry them over the river…on the Saturday they boiled an old horse’s leg which they had got, and so we drank of the broth” (11).  This is the sort of information that is important to Americans today.  Through this account of Mary Rowlandson’s adventure, scholars learn that the Indians were skillful when it came to making things from the earth and when they hadn’t the time to seek food or none was too be found, they knew how to nourish themselves through a simple broth.  In captivity narratives readers learn information about Indians that might have been lost without the writings.  Through readings I have learned that some tribes seem to be somewhat kind to their captives, while others only bestow cruelty to the ones they have captured.  Mary Kinnan’s captivity was a very harsh scene, her child was “scalped and slaughtered” and her husband was “scalped and weltering in his blood, fixed on me his dying eye” (Kinnan 1).  The accounts of the cruelness of some tribes are beneficial for how historians depict certain Indian tribes for modern America.  Not all tribes were cruel, and some captives, such as Cynthia Ann Parker and Mary Jemison, chose to stay with their captors.  They were adopted by their tribes and even married and had children.  These very different accounts are important to American history.  Through there completely different captivity stories, readers and historians get a close look at how the numerous Indian tribes were somewhat diverse in the way they acted.

            Through my research I have come to conclusion that some captivity narratives do contain ethnological substance, which is very beneficial for modern Americans to learn about who the Indians really were.  Readers see that some were violent people, while others were caring enough that the captives chose to stay for the remainder of their life.  It is easy to see that the Indians knew how to feed off the land and how to use what was around them to get the supplies they needed.  These captivity narratives are essential to American history and explaining the danger of living on the new frontier in the 1600 to the 1800.

Works Cited

Ben-Zvi, Yael. "Ethnography and the Production of Foreignness in Indian Captivity Narratives." The American Indian Quarterly 32.1 (2008): 1-11. Print.

Kinnan, Mary. “True Narrative of the Suffering of Mary Kinnan.” Elizabethtown (1795): Print.

Rowlandson, Mary. “Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson.” Boston (1682): Print.

Smith, Dwight L. “Shawnee Captivity Ethnography.” The American Society for Ethnohistory  (1995): 29-41. Print.

Wikipedia, "Ethnography". March 25, 2010 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnography>.