By the end of her captivity, her admiration for their ability to survive in the wilderness with limited resources increases. Despite the growing admiration of the Indian daily life, her attitude always maintains that they are the enemy. Throughout this phenomenal story, Rowlandson describes many images designed to appeal and excite the Puritan mind. Conjoined with the images of food, sexes, and violence, however, are the images of moral piety created by the narrator's description of God's role in the captivity. Through the contrasting images, Rowlandson's captivity displays the divergent feelings of the Puritan community.
Rowlandson recounts many encounters she experiences with the Native Americans. Her characterization of the Indians "savage" and "satanic" qualities contrasts the piety in her writing. Rowlandson exhibits a collision between "civilized" and "savage" in her frame of mind. In the narratives opening, she writes "It is a solemn night to see so many Christians lying in their blood, some here, and some there, like a company of sheep torn by wolves"(Rowlandson 129). Upon reading, this text may seem to be a terrible depiction of the sight at Lancaster on the night of February 10th, but a more in depth analysis might show otherwise. She used the idea of the Bible that depicts Jesus as the shepherd and his followers as an innocent flock of sheep to draw a parallel between the Puritans to be innocent and the Native Americans being wild and barbarous animals.
In another instance, Rowlandson notices a group of men approaching horseback. They were dressed in English apparel, but they turned out to be more Native Americans. She writes, "There was a vast difference between the lovely faces of Christians and foul look of those heathens, which much damped my spirit again"(Rowlandson 130). She also sees the devil in the American Indians after their victories in battles.
