Colonialism in Two Narratives essays

Colonialism in Two Narratives essays Capture and life with the Indians changed Mary Rowlandson. She would never again take anything for granted, and she became much more spiritual after her ordeal with the Indians. Her capture was a frightening nightmare that ended with the reuniting of her family, but she nearly starved to death before she returned, and she was treated little better than an animal most of the time. Her story is a story of courage and devotion to God, and it illustrates the underlying strength that lives in all of us. Rowlandson discovered many things during her captivity - that she wanted to live, that she dearly loved her family, and that she was a survivor. She also saw the Indians as nothing but savages, even though they spared her life. She wrote, "I was with the enemy eleven weeks and five days, and not one week passed without the fury of the enemy, and some desolation by fire and sword upon one place or other" (Rowlandson). Her captivity resulted from the colonization of native lands, resulting in the revolution of the native tribes, who resented the white man and their blind disregard for what the Indians considered their own. It is difficult to blame the Indians for fighting back, and while Rowlandson's ordeal was certainly frightening and horrible, her capture is simply a result of the Indians fighting for their way of life and their culture, which would ultimately disappear as the Zitkala-Sa's narratives show the other side of the coin. She is a Sioux woman who writes of her childhood, and a life and culture lost to the colonialism of the white man in the Great Plains. Both ordeals are caused by colonialism, with quite different results. Zitkala-Sa's mother laments, "'We were once very happy. But the paleface has stolen our lands and driven us hither. Having defrauded us of our land, the paleface forced us away'" (Zitkala-Sa and Fisher 10). She writes of a happ ...