Gender, religion and race: Unpacking the propaganda in Anglo-Indigenous captivity narratives, 1675-1885
Loading...
Date
2025-08
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of New Brunswick
Abstract
This thesis explores seventeenth and nineteenth century Anglo-Indigenous captivity narratives as propaganda that served to reflect and reinforce settler anxieties, racial ideologies, and gender expectations in colonial North America. Anglo-Indigenous ‘captivity narratives’ were autobiographical tales of white individuals who had been captured by Indigenous people in North America during European colonization, from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries. This thesis analyzes the seventeenth-century narrative by Mary Rowlandson in New England, which is largely considered the first captivity narrative, and the nineteenth-century narratives by Theresa Gowanlock and Theresa Delaney in Western British North America. Together the narratives illustrate both change over time and place, as well as continuity in the captivity narrative genre. The role of gender, race, and religion is key to understanding how the narratives functioned as propaganda that turned settlers further against Indigenous people as a common enemy. The authors emphasized the gender and racial differences between Indigenous people and people of European descent and sensationalized their experiences of captivity to justify European and American colonial expansion and the enslavement and attempted erasure of Indigenous peoples. This thesis combines literary and historical analysis to argue that the writing and publication of these three captivity narratives sought to elevate white women while vilifying Indigenous women and more broadly Indigenous people and their practices. This literary practice served as a powerful way to shore up racial boundaries and justify settler-colonialism as a nation-building project.