Introduction

As you have seen in lesson 3.1, missionaries’ letters inform us of the social dynamics that prevailed in Mi’kma’ki. As privileged witnesses, the missionaries provide glimpses of the daily life of the Mi’kmaq, the Wolastoqiyik, and the Abenakis with whom they had to share their lives. The letters illustrate the many difficulties the missionaries faced while trying to adapt to life among people whose visions of the world were not shaped by western and Christian tenets. While distorted by eurocentric lenses, their testimonies serve as valuable ethnographic documents.

In lesson 3.2, you will access other types of documents that provide valuable information on the interactions between the Indigenous, French, and English populations in Mi’kma’ki: captivity narratives and deeds of sale for enslaved people.

Captivity narratives were published accounts of settlers who were captured in wars or raids and held by French or Indigenous peoples. They were kept for ransom or to be used in prisoner exchanges during diplomatic negotiations. These stories were very popular in the 17^th and 18^th centuries, to the point of becoming a literary genre. Filled with drama, action, and emotion, some captivity narratives read like adventure stories, while others are reminiscent of religious pilgrimages. For New England colonists, narratives like those of Rowlandson and Gyles were set in a familiar world, a violent environment torn by conflicts and wars, and where being taken as a prisoner was a common risk. Those stories served to demonstrate that people who had returned from captivity had been able to keep their moral integrity, even after living among those they considered uncivilized.

Mary Rowlandson and her three children were captured in February 1676 by a group of Algonquian-speaking Wampanoags, Narragansetts, and Nipmucs during the conflict known as King Philip’s war, or Metacom’s war (1675-1676), one of the bloodiest conflicts in American history. The hostilities were sparked by accumulate frustrations provoked by the relentless encroachment of English newcomers into Indigenous land. Both sides committed atrocities, and the relationship between English settlers and Indigenous peoples was deeply affected.

While none of the Wabanaki nations participated in King Philip’s War, they suffered its repercussions. British settlers’ hostility extended to all northeastern Indigenous nations, drawing few distinctions between the Indigenous nations of the northeast, affecting their relations with the Mi’kmaq and the Wolastoqiyik as well. Conflicts with New England settlements pushing further north, and with New England fishers along the coast of Nova Scotia, meant that settlers saw the Mi’kmaq as enemies requiring annihilation. That contributed to decades of ongoing conflict – and occasional open warfare – stretching far north into Maine and Nova Scotia.

John Gyles’ captivity was also part this context of war and tension between New England, New France, and the Wabanaki Confederacy. In August 1689, Gyles, aged nine, was captured by a party of  Wolastoqiyik in Pemaquid, Maine. His mother, sisters, and brothers suffered the same fate, while his father was killed during the attack.

Rowlandson spent eleven weeks with her captors, relocating multiple times until she was ransomed later that spring. John Gyles’ captivity with the Wolastoqiyik lasted six years, at which point he was sold to a French settler. He spent an additional three years in Acadie before eventually returning to Boston as a free man.

[You’ll encounter Gyles again in Module 4, as a translator in British-Wabanaki treaty negotiations during the 1710s and 1720s.]

We can imagine how traumatizing these experiences were, and how they affected the hostages’ perceptions of their captors. Rowlandson’s youngest child died in her arms. Her other two children were separated from her. She suffered from cold and hunger. While Gyles survived physical torments, he saw his brother tortured to death. As Puritans, the notion of being incorporated into an Indigenous society – a Catholic one, no less – made them dread losing their “Englishness” and their souls as much as they feared losing their lives. To different degrees, their faith in God and their hopes of future ransom and return to their people helped them to survive their ordeals.

Despite the hostages having privileged access to the daily life of their captors, their captivity narratives inform us more about the lenses through which they translated their experiences, than about the communities in which they were held. Having been forced into participation in the lifestyles of those whom they considered to be uncivilized people, their accounts gave reassurance that even once taken, one could return – that redemption was possible even after events that they perceived as God’s punishment for sinners.

Their testimonies also showed readers that captives could retain their identities and not be permanently changed by exposure to those who were commonly depicted as cruel and barbarous. The captives’ survival of their ordeals, the dramatic renditions amplified with descriptions of “savage Indians,” offered New Englanders a sense that people of faith – such as themselves – could endure in this dangerous world. The captives, and by extension the readers of captivity narratives, were exemplars of good Christians overcoming the dangers posed by “savages” and Catholics.

Instructions

Documents

Captivity Documents

1. 1. The soveraignty & goodness of God: together, with the faithfulness of his promises displayed: being a narrative of the captivity and restauration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson: commended by her, to all that desires to know the Lords doings to, and dealings with her: especially to her dear children and relations. (Cambridge, printed by Samuel Green, 1682).

Rowlandson divided her narrative into the twenty removes she was forced into by her captors. Each section describes the events that took place, as well as the emotions Rowlandson felt during each relocation. The excerpts we chose are the Fifth and Sixth removes, relocations which took place when the English army pursuing them was getting close. The narrative illustrates how Rowlandson’s emotions wavered between hope and despair throughout her ordeal, and how she found solace in her faith.

• 1. • Fifth and Sixth Removes: Excerpt from Mary White Rowlandson [Opens in new window]
     • Whole document: Narrative of Mary White Rowlandson [Opens in new window]

  2. ---

     Memoirs of odd adventures, strange deliverances, &c. in the captivity of John Gyles, Esq; commander of the garrison on St. George’s River. Written by himself. ; Eight lines in English from Homer’s Odyssey (Boston, in N.E.: Printed and sold by S. Kneeland and T. Green, in Queen-Street, over against the prison., MDCCXXXVI. [1736]).

Gyles’ Memoirs reads more like an adventure story. The excerpt we chose is the third chapter Of further Difficulties and Deliverances. While Gyles is still considered to be and treated as a captive, he participates in regular activities like hunting and fishing with some of his captors, and demonstrates an interesting level of personal agency.

• • • • Chapter III, Of further Difficulties and Deliverances: Excerpt from John Gyles [Opens in new window]
      • Whole document: Narrative of John Gyles [Opens in new window]

Slavery Documents

Note that the links below all open in new windows.

1. 1. On 27 April, 1753, a young boy named Jean, aged 11 years old, is sold in Louisbourg to Sr Joseph Bete to become his slave.
   2. On 11 October, 1757, the enslaved Jacques, just arriving from Martinique, is sold to Mr Pierre de la Croix in Louisbourg.
   3. On 28 December, 1753, the enslaved Tousaint, a baker by trade, is auctioned in Louisbourg with specific conditions.
   4. On 1 March, 1753, the Sr Cassaignoles agrees to sell his slave Catherine to Cupidon, who wants to marry her.
   5. No date, probably 1727, the enslaved Panis Louise is brought from Montreal to Louisbourg, to be sold to the innkeeper Jean Seigneur.
   6. On 1 October, 1749, in Louisbourg hospital, an enslaved man known as Baptiste is recognized by a group of city officials as a slave belonging to a religious congregation.

Further Reading