# Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson

**Author:** Mary Rowlandson
**Tags:** Lancaster (Mass.), King Philip's War, 1675-1676, Massachusetts, Indian captivities, Rowlandson, Mary White, approximately 1635-1711, Biography
**Price:** Free
**Formats:** DOCX, EPUB, FB2, PDF, TXT
**Downloads:** 38
**Added:** 10.07.2026
**URL:** https://samolit.com/books/95863

## Description

On February 10, 1676, at the height of King Philip's War, Native warriors from the Narragansett, Nipmuc, and Wampanoag nations attacked the frontier town of Lancaster, Massachusetts. Among those seized was Mary Rowlandson, wife of the town's minister, who would spend the following weeks marched through the wilderness of New England as a captive. This firsthand account, first published in 1682, recounts her ordeal in vivid, unflinching detail: the violence of the raid, the deaths of neighbors and kin, the hardships of hunger and exposure, and her uneasy relationships with her captors before her eventual ransom and return to colonial society. Framed through the lens of Puritan faith, the narrative interprets every trial as evidence of divine providence, transforming personal suffering into spiritual testimony. Widely regarded as one of the earliest and most influential works in the American captivity narrative tradition, and among the first books published by a woman in the colonies, it offers a rare window into the fears, beliefs, and daily struggles of colonial New England during one of its most brutal conflicts, as well as a complex, often contradictory portrait of its Indigenous participants.