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Lesson Plan
One thing to keep in mind about Native American tales is their two-fold function: stories to wile away a long winter's night - and a means of reinforcing cultural norms.
And an overall question to keep in mind -- how does the depiction in their "own" words differ from the picture by the Puritains?
Terms/People to know
Discussion questions
Pima creation
· Is the God here all powerful? How can you tell?
· Obvious question is what differences do you make between the creation
stories?
· And the next obvious question is . . . what similarities?
· Why do both creation stories have a good and evil being? Who prevails
in each?
Trickster Tales
From the Winnebago Trickster Cycle (126-131)
· Why does Trickster call those he meets "younger brother"?
(126)
· Note progession of animals he meets: fox, jay, nit. Why not three nits
or three foxes? And why not a deer? Or a Dove? (126)
· What is does the humor emphasize?
· Cross-dressing
· Why does trickster chew the bulb?
· Note rhythm/structure that is established: first Trickster tricks,
then what happens to him?
· Why fall into the Dung?
· What message does this latter part of the tale relate?
"Ikto Conquers Iya, the Eater" (132-134)
· Why does Ikto decide to let the people out of Iya? They're happy?
What does the inside of Iya seem to represent? A kind of . . . .
· Ikto helps "save" the people - or does he? Note the last
paragraph. Is it ironic?
General questions
· What role does violence play in these tales?
***************************
Mary Rowlandson: A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration
of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson
A short page with some relevant links http://www.wsu.edu/~campbelld/amlit/rowlandson.htm
General comments
· The idea of "remove" is puritan shorthand - it acts as a
reminder that while on earth we are both physically and spiritually separated
(removed) from God.
· These narratives speak to the anxities of a people far from home, trying
to create a western civilization, yet adapt to a "New World" (cf.
Slotkin "The Puritan was no longer sure of his abilit to conquer the wildness
in a righteous manner; instead he felt himself weak enough to be debased by
the wilderness to the level of the depraved natural man, the Indian" (99)
and "They [puritans] had resisted to the best of their ability, the tendency
to acculturate to the Indian way of life fostered by the wilderness" (Slotkin
98)
Title page of the narrative (From www.assumption.edu/users/lknoles/ 2001/amsurveysyl2001.html)
Discussion Questions
· How does this line "the Indians laid hold of us, pullying me one
way, and the children another" (310) connect with Wigglesworth The Day
of Doom?
· Bunyan's pilgrim, Christian, is set upon and isolated: see analogy
on 316, 318 "I myself in the midst, and no Christian soul near me"
· What does she cite as her reason for writing the book?
Portrayal of the natives
· Why refer to the Indians as "hell hounds" (311)?
· Why does the first camp have "a lively resemblance of hell"
(311)?
· Contrast/Compare Bradford's description of the destruction of the indian
village on 188-89 with description on 310-311.
· How does she alienate/separate the Indians from mankind?
· As a mother who has lost her own childern and as a christian, what
is her reaction to the Indian babies - or papooses?
· Does her opinion shift 332 - as she is shown some kindness? See earlier
remark about being glad to see her master and being treated kindly by the old
wife.
· How does she get a bible?
· Is she ever shown kindness by the natives?
· Descriptions of NativesAppearances
Who does she blame for her captivity?
· She almost questions God on 317 "I cannot but take notice of the
strange providence of God in preserving the heathen." What's her answer
for this?
· Why has she stopped smoking? 319 What does King Phillip offering her
tabacco signify, to a puritan audience?
Story of rebirth?
· Why use the word "redemption" (322) to describe being freed?
What is the meaning of the word?
o Interesting economic connection. In a store you "redeem" something
by getting money back: how will she be freed? Why do the settlers want more
land so in a way their desire for "redemption" is the cause of their
problems. If they were solely interested in a religious community, why not live
an ascetic life?
· What does she suggest is needed before she can be redeemed? How does
she show this?
Slavery
· Although she was a captive, what would be another name/label to place
upon her - but one she doesn't use? slave. Yet she knows that she is treated
like a slave 314 "not that he first took me, but I was sold to him by .
. ." and "bade me come again; and told me they would buy me, if they
were able" (321). On her niece "they that owned her" (329) Why
not use the word?
· How much was she fed throughout her ordeal?
· Picking up on indentifcation with her captives - is "glad"
to see her master 329
Structure/style of the story:
· How does the story open? Is it effective?
· Works with contrasts
Religion
· Though understandable, a bit revengeful for modern day ears "
through the Lord's wonderful mercy, their time was now but short" (333).
Cf. Bradford and povidence
Quotes from critics
Slotkin, Richard. Regneration Through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600-1860. Wesleyan University Press.
"The Indian war and captivity narratives, for example, grew out of the fact that many pious and literate New Englanders were continually falling into the hands of the Indians or attempted to explain their actions in battle. Once in literary form, the experience became available as a vehicle for justifying philosophical and moral values which may have been extrinsic to the initial experience but which preoccupied the minds of the reading public . . . . [after many of these had been printed] the experience would be reduced to an imitable formula, a literary convention, a romantic versions of the myth. When enough literature had been written employing the convention, it might become a sort of given between writer and audience, a set of tacit assumptions on the nature of human experience, on human and divine motivations, on moral values, and on the nature of reality. It is at [21] this point the convention has some of the force of myth: the experience it portrays has become an image which automatically compels belief by a culture-wide audience in the view of reality it presents" (Slotkin 19-21)
on why the early puritans liked narratives
"it pitted the English Puritan colonists against a culture that was antithetical
to their own in most significant aspects. They could emphasize their Englishness
by setting their civilization against Indian barbarism; they could suggest their
own superiority to the home English by exalting their heroism in battle, the
peculiar danger of their circumstances, and the holy zeal for English Christian
expansion with which they preached to or shot at the savages. It was within
this genre of colonial Puritan writing that the first American mythology took
shape - a mythology in which the hero was the captive or victim of devilish
American savages and in which his (or her) heroic quest was for religious conversion
and salvation . . . . If the first American mythology portrayed the colonist
as a captive or destroyer of Indians, the subsequent acculturated versions of
the myth showed him growing closer to the Indian and the wild land" (Slotkin
21)
"The sufferer represent the whole, chastened body of Puritan society; and the temporary bondage of the captive to the Indian is the dual paradigm - of the bondage of the soul to the flesh and to the temptations arising from original sin, and of the self-exile of the English Israel from England. In the Indian's devilish clutches, the captive had to meet and reject the temptation of Indian marriage and/or the Indian's "cannibal" Eucharist. To partake of the Indian's love or of his equivalent of bread and wine was to debase, to un-English the very soul. The captives' ultimate redemption by the grace of Christ and the efforts of the Puritan magistrates is likened to the regeneration of the soul in conversion. . . . Through the captive's proxy, the promise of a similar salvation could be offered to the faithful among the reading public" (94-95)
"they [captivity narrative] completely dominate the list of frontier narratives published in America b/t 1860 and 1716, replacing narratives of soldierly exploits in the sermon-narrative literature. It almost seems as if the only experience of intimacy with the Indians that New England readers would accept was the experience of the captive (and possibly that of the missionary) (Slotkin 95).
"The captivities were presented in sermon-narrative form, each beginning with a biblical text and prefaced by a doctrine section in which the moral principles demonstrated in the narrative were defined and offered to the reader as a lesson and a warning to reform his life" (Slotkin 96)
Argues that Edward's "Sinners" uses imagery and rhetoric from the captivity narratives (97)
"They [puritans] had resisted to the best of their ability, the tendency to acculturate to the Indian way of life fostered by the wilderness" (Slotkin 98)
"In the captivity narrative, the Indians become the instruments of God for the chastisement of his guilty people . . . . All interest in the landscape of the wildness disappears" (Slotkin 99)
Interesting argument
"The Puritan was no longer sure of his ability to conquer the wildness
in a righteous manner; instead he felt himself weak enough to be debased by
the wilderness to the level of the depraved natural man, the Indian. The safest
way of discovering the wilderness, therefore, was as the unwilling captive of
the wilderness's familiar demons. One could then justify the gaining of intimate
knowledge of the Indian life as the result of the divine agency" (Slotkin
99-100)
Notes fear of cannibalism - therefore captives would be afraid to eat meat offered by their captors (Slotkin 100)
Central myths of Christianity "the fall of man, the apocalypse, and divine
judgement" (Slotkin 101)
Notes that, like the fall and apocalypse, the captivity and other narratives
"begin with man in a happy condition of innocence or complacence. By divine
intervention, this happiness is disrupted; man is alienated from his happy state
and plunged into a trial and ordeal in which his soul is in peril. Ultimately
(assuming the soul is not predestined for hell) the experience results in a
figurative rebirth, the attainment of a new soul. All are myths of self-transcendence,
of initiation into a new state of being" (Slotkin 101). Cf. our reaction
to 9/11
Most importantly for Slotkin, it suggests that only through "violence" can this transcendence be attained" (102) cf. 9/11
Hartman, James. Providence Tales and the Birth of American Literature
"Providence tales are stories that relate the activities of God on earth"
(Hartman 1)
Last Revised August 2002
David Bordelon