Cruel or courageous? A new reading of Mary Rowlandson's captivity narrative.

Were Native people cruel - or courageous? Join us in our discussion of Mary Rowlandson's 17th century captivity tale for an entirely new view.
Many Americans learn about Mary Rowlandson in high school. Her tale of traveling with Indigenous people as a prisoner in 1676, during King Philip's War, is still read in US high schools and colleges.
Far fewer Americans know about Weetamoo, the Pocasset saunkskwa with whom Rowlandson travelled, who did all that bravery and humanity could to try to prevent the outbreak of the bloodiest war in what we call “American” history.
View the recorded video of the Partnership book club discussion of July 12, 2022, in which we read Dr. Lisa Brooks' groundbreaking book Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip's War and Rowlandson's short captivity narrative, The Sovereignty and Goodness of God. Led by Lori Rogers-Stokes and Lance Young, we focus on award-winning historian Lisa Brooks' eye-opening retelling of the Rowlandson captivity narrative through the lens of Weetamoo and the Indigenous experience.
Who were the equally "beloved kin" Weetamoo fought for? Who were the Indigenous people, nations and individuals, who inherited a broken, nearly irreparable world after the war? We can read Rowlandson’s narrative as it’s traditionally been viewed, as a story of Puritan providentialism and the colonists’ terror. Through Lisa Brooks’ uncovering of the other side of the story, we gain a fundamentally new understanding that challenges the story we thought we knew.