This process toward total Hybridity culminates when these two cultures
begin to blend and warp together. Before, these two cultures are forced
together, the way a round peg might fit in a square hole. Rowlandson hybridizes
to avoid starvation and death. Her choices are limited. However, as she
counsels a praying Indian with her bible, she moves out of that space and more
toward total Hybridity.
“Her [Quinnapin’s] arms from her elbows to her hands were covered with
bracelets; there were handfuls of necklaces about her neck, and several sorts
of jewels in her ears. She had fine red stockings, and white shoes, her hair
powdered and face painted red that was always before black.” (Rowlandson P.
128)
As Rowlandson learns to live with the Natives’ culture, the Natives
have already learned to live with English culture. In the passage above,
Rowlandson sees Hybridity on full display on one woman. Quinnapin wears a
number of bracelets up her arms and her face is painted red, but her hair is
powdered, a popular English affectation. Although these fashions come from
different cultures, they’ve been fused together and are part of a new culture,
all their own.
The above mentioned is only some of the ways the Natives adopted
European cultures. Rowlandson writes – concerning a battle -, “…one that was
afterward killed upon a weekday, were slain and mangled in a barbarous manner,
by one-eyed John , and Marlborough's Praying Indians, which
Capt. Mosely brought to Boston, as the Indians told me…” (Rowlandson P. 121) A
title like Captain isn’t typically used by Native Americans. Also, the name
John is
Christian. The Natives adopted these names when Europeans washed up on American
shores.
The Natives are, at one point, mistaken for the English. Rowlandson
recounts of her time returning to King Phillip’s camp to be ransomed. Her heart
leapt at the sight of men dressed in white stockings, with military ribbons on
their shoulders. Rowlandson writes “…they were dressed in English apparel, […];
but when they came near, there was a vast difference between the lovely faces
of Christians, and foul looks of those heathens…” (Rowlandson P. 21) In the
earlier incarnations of Hybridity, it was considered like black ink spilt on
white paper. Before, social theorists only examined the occupied and not the
occupiers and believed that the colonized peoples were being forced to become
more like their colonizers. In reality, the colonized peoples and the
colonizers are unconsciously making a new culture, separate from the two old
ones. Native Americans might have picked up the guns of English soldiers, but
they also picked up their ways and adjusted them to suit a Native American
lifestyle. The English, unaccustomed to the unforgiving new world, picked up
Native American ways in order to survive. The English in America would not look
like the English in England. Nor would the Native Americans be the same as
their ancestors.
As Mary Rowlandson attempts to cling to her English world, she becomes
more hybridized. She becomes someone who takes her rest on the ground. She
becomes someone who cherishes the taste of ground nuts and scolds ‘Poor
Indians’ for not paying her for work completed. In spite of herself, she steps
away from her English way - if only a little – and steps forward into a new
Hybridized world.
NOTE: The quoted text is cited from two separate sources: The Norton
Anthology (P.118 – P.134) and the Project Gutenberg website (P.1 - P.34) for
the “Removes” not included in the Anthology.