Previous Next

When I came I asked them what they had done with it? then they told me it was upon the hill: then they went and shewed me where it was, where I saw the ground was newly digged, and there they told me they had buried it: There I left that Child in the Wilderness, and must commit it, and myself also in this Wilderness-condition, to him who is above all. 

The Third Remove also brings about the death and burial of Rowlandson’s youngest daughter, which Rowlandson speaks of in the quotation above. Rowlandson’s daughter has been suffering for over a week from the wound she received on the morning of the attack. Now God has put the child out of her misery, but Rowlandson, understandably, grieves for her. Also troubling is the fact that the girl does not receive a proper Christian burial in a Puritan churchyard. For family members and loved ones, a funeral and burial provide important closure, and without them, Rowlandson lacks this sense of finality.

When Rowlandson emphasizes having to leave her daughter “in the wilderness,” she explicitly compares her daughter’s state to her own, and the quotation above can be applied to all of Puritan society. All the settlers are far from home, far from the country where their ancestors were born. They are building a civilization on the edge of the wilderness, but they fear that their settlements will not be enough to keep the wilderness out. The future of every individual is uncertain, as is the future of the society as a whole. This uncertainty exists for every human society, but the geographic and psychological isolation of the Puritan settlers intensifies it. In the face of this terrifying ignorance of the future, Rowlandson claims, the only thing to do is to have faith in God.

Previous section Important Quotes Explained Page 2 Next section Important Quotes Explained Page 4

Popular pages: The Sovereignty and Goodness of God

Take a Study Break