The Native American Indians were an important part of the Colonial Period. Native American Indians had been around North America thousands of years before Pilgrims and Christopher Columbus. For instance, the Hopi Indians are traced back in North America at around 8000 B.C. (The Hopi p.94). The Indians believed in harmony with the natural world, and that people had no right to harm the earth or any animals that lived on it. Native American Indians have managed to endure more than four centuries of foreign intruders and have been able to sustain their culture despite the strong pressures
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to adopt the Colonial way of life. So how can we think of Indians as such savage creatures? One reason is the way history has portrayed them. Another is from reading stories of people captured and scalped.
One of the most famous captures was of a puritan woman named Mary Rowlandson. She was able to write about her Indian captures as somewhat kind and friendly. This is far from what we have perceived of them. Mary Rowlandson believed what most Puritans did, that God was testing her faith and humbleness. Mary believed that her final escape was a lesson to “make us the more to acknowledge his hand and to see that our help is always in him.”(American Literature p.136).
One of the Colonial Periods famous lady poets was Anne Bradstreet. Anne Bradstreet was a puritan poet, whose poems portrayed a deeply felt experience of American Colonial life. Most of Bradstreet’s works may be placed into one of two distinct periods. The “public” poems, like: “The Tenth Muse”, which was structurally and thematically formal, and the “private” poems like: “In Memory of My Dear Grandchild Elizabeth Bradstreet”, which are meditations on death in which Bradstreet questions her religious faith. Bradstreet was the daughter and wife of Massachusetts governors. The Bradstreet’s came from Northampton, England, where they left to sail across the ocean to America. They felt that the Church of England was corrupt, distracting, and taking away
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from the word of God. I believe that Anne’s strong belief in God fits well into the Colonial period. Most foreigners left their own countries to flee to the New World and establish colonies, that was the way God wanted them to live. In the mid 1600’s, women even those educated did not hold high positions, or even worked. All they had in life was their families and God. I can see how Anne Bradstreet’s poems were mainly about her family, and all her works had God in them.
Some critics feel that Bradstreet somehow forced herself to keep on the straight and narrow path of righteousness. “Anne Bradstreet’s poems reveal that she struggled with the conflict between her love for her children and husband and her devotion to God; repeatedly, she reminds herself of her duty as a wife and mother to assist her family in the service of God. To love them for their own sake would indicate a dangerous attachment to this world. (Poetry Criticism Volume 10 p.41). When I read her poem “Before the Birth of One of Her Children”, I felt her pain from the loss of her child. I feel that her writings are a true form of her heart.
With every tear she cried for her baby, I felt as though I was there with her. The way she talks about grief and her tears, you and I might have given up on faith, but hers
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remained steadfast and true. She mentions that God can grant you life or he can take it away. In Anne Bradstreet’s “Upon the Burning of Our House July 10, 1966”, she again states how important it is in God’s eyes to be humble, and thankful for what you have, because it can be easily taken away. Even though her family lost everything, she knows God holds bigger treasures in heaven above.
Another critic states “Bradstreet’s strength as a poet is more a result of her ability to exploit Puritan norms than it is of her ability to subvert them…[The] anger and rebellion against God expressed in Bradstreet’s poems and meditations do not constitute evidence of rebellion against Puritanism, as they do for a number of her critics, but are act typical of the Puritan struggle for salvation” (Amanda Porterfield p.86). Again, I feel Anne Bradstreet’s poems fit into the Colonial period, because that period for women meant they lived for God and their families. I do believe that if Anne Bradstreet was alive today, she would be a well published poet, and probably an English Professor.
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The Colonial Days were a new experience for our English settlers. Both the pilgrims and puritans saw God in everything. God gave them trials and tribulations so they could learn to be humble and meek. From the capture of Mary Rowlandson, to Anne Bradstreet’s personal poems, we can see how much God had influence on their every thought, and every action. Our Native American Indians, whose lands were taken from them and sometimes abused. I really have a new found respect for our early settlers and our Native American Indians. Without their presence in the Colonial Times, we as American’s would probably not be able to co-exist. Through our past, with all the trial and errors, we have a great country, and a wonderful look back to our past Colonial Life.
