Stripped Clothing and Identity in Colonial Captivity Narratives

StrippedClothing and Identity in Colonial Captivity Narratives

W E N D Y L U C A S C A S T R OUniversity of Central Arkansas

abstract This article examines the preoccupation of English colo-nists with their state of dress during captivity by Indians as reflected in theirsubsequent narratives. This concern is linked to the conflation of clothingand person, and the anxieties exhibited by the colonists during their impris-onment illustrate how important clothing was to their construction of iden-tity, particularly in the New World, where the fear of degeneration was everpresent.

In May 1754 rumors of conflict between France and Britain reached thefrontier community of Charlestown, New Hampshire, then the northernmostsettlement on the Connecticut River. Susannah Johnson, pregnant with herfourth child, heard reports that Indians were ‘‘on their march for our destruc-tion.’’ For three months she and her neighbors expected the worst, certainthat at any moment ‘‘some secreted savage might start forth to take theirscalp[s].’’ On August 20 news arrived that Mr. Malony’s family had beencaptured on the Merrimack River, about fifty miles from the Johnsons’ home.This news was particularly disturbing because her husband was at the timeaway tending to business, having left Susannah to care for her fourteen-year-old sister, Miriam, her six-year-old son, Sylvanus, and her two daughters,

I wish to thank Ken Barnes, Jim Brodman, Lorien Foote, Jennifer Patterson Par-rack, and David Welky, who read and commented on an initial draft of this article.Many thanks go to Jenna Silvers at EAS for her help with illustrations, the UniversityResearch Council at UCA, which provided funding, and Lisa Jernigan at InterlibraryLoan, without whom this article would have been nearly impossible. For their com-ments and advice in helping refine my argument, I am particularly grateful to ElaineForman Crane, an anonymous reader, and Richard Godbeer (who continues to gra-ciously lend his critical eye and brilliant insights to all my projects).

Early American Studies (Spring 2008)Copyright � 2008 The McNeil Center for Early American Studies. All rights reserved.

105Castro • Stripped

four-year-old Susanna and two-year-old Polly. ‘‘The fears of the night werehorrible beyond description,’’ she later wrote, ‘‘and even the light of day wasfar from dispelling painful anxiety.’’1

But on August 24 her fears were lifted upon the return of her husband.He brought news from Connecticut that war was expected, though not untilthe following spring, which gave the members of the community ample timeto put their affairs in order and to move closer to the nearest fort, where herfather was second in command. Joy swept through the small town and theJohnson family spent the next few days receiving frequent visits from friendsand neighbors, celebrating the relief from danger, the return of her husband,and the harvest of ripe melons. Mrs. Johnson lamented only that in her lastdays of pregnancy she could not enjoy the festivities as she would have liked,yet she ‘‘boasted with exultation’’ that she should ‘‘with husband, friends, andluxuries, live happy, in spite of the fear of savages.’’ On the evening of August29, the festivities went on until midnight, when all ‘‘retired in high spirits.’’2

Just after sunrise the next day, Mr. Larabee, a neighbor, arrived to start aday of work for Mr. Johnson. Johnson ‘‘slipped on his jacket and tro[u]sers’’and opened the door to see not only Larabee but also a party of Indiansbehind him. In an instant they were inside, ‘‘some upstairs,’’ others ‘‘all overthe house,’’ seizing all the adults, some having been pulled from their beds,and binding them. ‘‘To complete the shocking scene,’’ she remembered, ‘‘mythree little children were driven naked to the place where I stood,’’ and upon‘‘viewing myself I found that I too was naked.’’ Having taken control of thehouse, the Indians began to plunder household goods, including three gownsand a petticoat (as will become clear, it is significant that she chose to focuson this detail), which they bundled up and took with them. Captives andcaptors then moved behind a rise about three hundred feet from the Johnsonhome to better pack the plunder, and one Indian returned, she assumed, ‘‘tofire the buildings.’’3

What did Susannah Johnson mean by nakedness? Were she and her chil-dren literally without clothing? Were they scantily clad by eighteenth-centurystandards and therefore nearly naked? Were they metaphorically naked inthat they were exposed to their captives with nothing to protect them? Was

1. Susannah Willard Johnson Hastings, A Narrative of the Captivity of Mrs. John-son: Containing an Account of Her Sufferings, during Four Years with the Indians andFrench (1796), Garland Library of Narratives of North American Indian Captivities(hereafter referred to as Garland), vol. 23 (New York: Garland, 1976), 11–13.

2. Ibid., 14–15.3. Ibid., 16–17.

106 Early American Studies • Spring 2008

she using the word because it was part of the language used in captivitynarratives with which she knew her readers were already familiar? Mrs. John-son certainly realized that captivity was no novel experience. ‘‘Our countryhas so long been exposed to Indian wars,’’ she wrote in the introduction toher narrative, ‘‘that recitals of exploits and sufferings, of escapes and deliver-ances, have become both numerous and trite.’’4

Modern scholars of both history and literature would agree with Mrs.Johnson. By the time of her captivity and subsequent publication of her expe-riences, captivity narratives had become a genre with recognizable patterns,characters, and sensational details. As such, they provide historians with twolevels of analysis: first, a recounting of events from the moment of captivityto redemption, including how the captive and captors interacted, and, second,the author’s own interpretation of the events and actors, usually with a fullyconscious knowledge that the account would be published. As a result, theyreveal not only the behaviors of captives and captors, but also the fears, cul-tural lens, and prejudices of their authors. Captivity narratives allowed readersto experience captivity vicariously, from the safety of their homes, in muchthe same way that seduction literature engaged its readers a century later—though the latter focused on sexual danger rather than cultural superiorityand difference. It was thus important to record not only instances of Indians’acting ‘‘surprisingly civilized,’’ but also the moments that reaffirmed the beliefthat Indians were ‘‘savages.’’ The first colonial captivity narrative, publishedin 1682, set the parameters for the genre in this regard. Mary Rowlandson’saccount of her 1675 captivity reflects this dichotomy. She received manykindnesses—for example, protection from violence, a Bible, and food fromher Indian captors; yet she contradicted these kindnesses with accounts ofbeatings, starvation, and brutality. As a Puritan minister’s wife, she quotedscripture frequently during her account and often attributed her captors’ kind-ness to Providence. ‘‘I cannot but admire at the wonderfull power and good-ness of God to me,’’ she wrote midway through her narrative, ‘‘though I wasgone from home, and met with all sorts of Indians, and those I had no knowl-edge of, and there being no Christian soul near me, yet not one of themoffered the least imaginable miscarriage to me.’’ Later captivity narratives,written by both men and women, clearly modeled their accounts on Row-landson’s, adding their unique experiences as captives while painting a similarpicture of Indians as both kind and savage.5

4. Ibid., 8.5. June Namias, White Captives: Gender and Ethnicity on the American Frontier

(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993), focuses on the importanceof gender and how individuals experienced and wrote about their captivity. Gary L.


Despite their long history, one theme in these narratives has been largelyoverlooked as scholars have sought to make sense of these accounts: captives’preoccupation with what they described as nakedness and constant descrip-tions of their various states of dress. Such fascination is revealed in a numberof ways: through description of Indian dress (usually made near the time ofcapture), their own state of undress, and their sense of spiritual nakednessamong savages. Captives’ attention to dress also reveals Indian uses of Englishclothing, nakedness as a precursor to adoption or death, and clothing as partof their redemption as they return to ‘‘civility’’ (by which seventeenth-centuryAnglo Americans meant the state of being civilized). The colonists sittingsafely in their homes, who read these narratives with both fascination andhorror, knew exactly what nakedness meant and why, short of torture anddeath, it was perhaps the worst part of captivity. It literally stripped them oftheir social identity. Unclothed, they were neither English nor Indian: therewere no visual markers of status, which derived from the social cues associatedwith clothing. Indian dress and Indian nakedness disturbed English colonistsbecause they viewed Indian culture as diabolical, licentious, and savage. YetIndian culture was at least in opposition to English culture and as such wassomething for colonists to resist. For the colonists, then, nakedness essentiallyequaled social death, a fate perhaps as frightening as physical death at thehands of Indians.6 �Susannah Johnson’s description of the actual process of being taken captivewould have been familiar to Mary Rowlandson a hundred years earlier. Re-gardless of the geographic location, the way that Indians took captives inboth the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries seems to have been fairly con-

Ebersole, Captured by Texts: Puritan to Postmodern Images of Indian Captivity (Char-lottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1995), examines captivity narratives throughthe lens of religion, focusing on their meaning and messages to the larger society andwhy they hold such fascination for their readers, whether Puritans or modern-daymoviegoers. See Mary Rowlandson, The Sovereignty and Goodness of God, ed. NealSalisbury (1682; rept., Boston: Bedford St. Martin’s, 1997), 84.

6. One exception to this is James Axtell’s 1975 article ‘‘The White Indians ofColonial America,’’ originally printed in William and Mary Quarterly and later in-cluded in his 1985 book, The Invasion Within (New York: Oxford University Press,1986). Yet the general pattern Axtell describes, from exchange of shoes for moccasinsearly on, to exchange of European for Indian dress, did not occur with the regularityhe implies. Indeed, many captives made it to redemption without ever receiving moc-casins, and many adoptees were at first given only an Indian blanket; other pieces ofclothing came later.


Figure 1. A 1624 line engraving from John Smith’s Generall Historie of Virginia.Note that Smith is depicted in layers of English clothing, in contrast to the partlyclothed Indians. The Granger Collection, New York, image 0014464.


sistent. It happened quite quickly, often in the early morning hours. Occa-sionally solitary workers were taken out of the field at midday, more on awhim as Indians retreated with their intended captives toward their villages,and sometimes soldiers were taken during battle. Some colonists were killedright away, usually adult men; others were bound and made to watch as theirhouses were looted and often set on fire. The bound captives were thenloaded with their own belongings, now Indian booty, and marched to anIndian encampment. This was most often the first ‘‘remove,’’ with many moreto follow, and slow-moving or injured captives were killed along the way.

Despite the chaos, violence, and fear surrounding these initial moments ofcontact, many captivity narrative writers made a point of giving a physicaldescription of their captors, including their appearance, which was most often‘‘naked’’ and ‘‘painted.’’7 Jonathan Dickinson described the two Indians whotook his family hostage as ‘‘being naked except a small piece of platted workof straws w[h]ich just hid their private parts and fastened behind with aHorse-Tail in likeness made of a sort of Silk-grass.’’ Their hair was tied ‘‘in aRol[l] behind in which stuck two bones shaped one like a broad Arrow; theother a spear head.’’ James Smith, taken near Fort Pitt during the French andIndian War, was surprised suddenly by a large number of Indians runningtoward him ‘‘stripped naked, excepting breech-clouts, and painted in the mosthideous manner, of various colors, though the principal color was vermillion,or a bright red; yet there was annexed to this, black, brown, blue, &c.’’ Wil-liam Scudder described a similar scene when he was taken captive whilestanding guard during the Revolutionary War. ‘‘To see so many savages ap-pear rushing towards us almost naked and painted up with their warlike fig-ures with such engines of death in their hands,’’ he wrote in his journal, ‘‘mustmake the stoutest heart that ever existed quake with fear.’’ Captives includedthese descriptions not only to address the reader’s curiosity, but also as a wayto distinguish themselves from the ‘‘uncivilized’’ Indians, whose actions anddress marked them as such. Several captivity writers included sections andappendixes devoted to detailed descriptions of Indian clothing. John Filsonnoted stature (‘‘well formed’’ with ‘‘limbs clean and straight’’), hairstyles

7. See, for example, Matthew Bunn, Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Mat-thew Bunn (1796), Garland, vol. 21, 7; [Anonymous] [Moses Van Campen], A Nar-rative of the Capture of Certain Americans at Westmoreland, by Savages (1780), Garland,vol. 13, 4; [Anonymous], The Redeemed Captive: A Poem (1787), Garland, vol. 18, 10;Elizabeth Hanson, An Account of the Captivity of Elizabeth Hanson (1760), Garland,vol. 6, 5; Nehemiah Howe, Narrative of the Captivity of Nehemiah Howe (1748),Garland, vol. 6, 3; John Mayhem, Gallic Perfidy: A Poem (1758), Garland, vol. 8, 9,11; Jean Lowry, A Journal of the Captivity of Jean Lowry (1760), Garland, vol. 8, 9.


(shaved or plucked ‘‘except a patch about the crown, which is ornamentedwith beautiful feathers, beads, wampum, and such like baubles’’), and jewelry(ears pierced and ‘‘adorned with silver pendants, rings, and bells, which theylikewise wear in their noses’’), in addition to clothing (‘‘a bit of cloth aboutthe middle, a shirt of the English make, on which they bestow innumerablebroaches to adorn it, a sort of cloth boots and mockasons, which are shoes ofa make peculiar to the Indians, ornamented with porcupine quills’’).8

The presence of these descriptions, even if included at the urging of thepublisher, reminds us that colonists were fascinated by the physical appear-ance of Indians. Many early accounts of the New World and travel journalsincluded detailed descriptions of Indian dress. Thomas Hariot’s A Brief andTrue Report of the New Found Land of Virginia (1588) included descriptions ofIndians and their clothing; these were accompanied by the German engraverTheodore de Bry’s images after the artist John White’s drawings. The de-scriptions and drawings of flora and fauna that Hariot included in the firstedition were absent from the second, in which the focus was, rather, on im-ages of Indians, their habitations, and manners. Richard Hakluyt, thesixteenth-century compiler of exploration accounts, wanted to use Hariot’sbook to encourage English migration to the New World. Hariot and Hakluytunderstood that images of Indians from the New World would fascinate peo-ple living in England. Hakluyt hoped that this fascination might encouragepeople to invest in colonial ventures and also to become colonists. White’sdrawings, with their attention to dress and adornments such as tattoos andjewelry, were an essential component of Hariot’s work. De Bry alteredWhite’s original watercolors, however, preserving their dress and adornmentsbut altering the faces and body positioning so as to appeal to English sensibil-ities. In White’s pictures the Indians have long feet and hands and distinctlyindigenous-looking faces. In de Bry’s engravings the feet and hands havebeen shortened and fattened, and the faces are distinctly European looking.

8. Jonathan Dickinson, God’s Protecting Providence, Man’s Surest Help and Defence(1699), Garland, vol. 4, 5, 6; James Smith, An Account of the Remarkable Occurrencesin the Life and Travels of Col. James Smith, during his Captivity with the Indians (1799),Garland, vol. 24, 6–7; William Scudder, The Journal of William Scudder (1794), Gar-land, vol. 22, 36; John Filson, The Discovery of Kentucke and the Adventures of DanielBoon (1784), Garland, vol. 14, 98–100. See also sections devoted to dress in Alexan-der Kellet, A Pocket of Prose and Verse by Alexander Kellet (1778), Garland, vol. 11,12–15; Smith, An Account, 77–78; Henry Grace, History of the Life and Sufferings ofHenry Grace (1764), Garland, vol. 10, 42; Peter Williamson, French and Indian Cruelty(1757), Garland, vol. 9, 24–26; and Charles Rouso, Memoirs of Charles Dennis RusoeD’Eres (1800), Garland, vol. 25, 97–100.


De Bry also added backgrounds to several pictures and changed the figures’positions so they would look more natural to a European audience. The sec-ond edition also included descriptions and images of a nearly naked Pict manand woman. The couple, painted all over with stars, suns, and animal faces,were entirely nude with the exception of iron rings around their necks andothers around their waists to hold swords. The images were included ‘‘toshowe how that the Inhabitants of the great Bretannie have bin in times pastas sauvage as those of Virginia.’’ If, at one time, Scottish men and womenhad themselves been naked savages before the Romans and later the Englishbrought them Christianity and civility, then any other naked savage theymight encounter could be equally transformed. Europeanizing Indian bodiesmade Indians appear more redeemable, in essence turning them into un-clothed and tattooed Picts.

Hakluyt understood that his readers were interested in what Indians werewearing more than their features; they were looking for a difference betweenthemselves and Indians, and that was most clear in their dress and adorn-ments. This was especially the case in Elizabethan England, where clothingfunctioned as a metonym—a substitute—for identity. Especially in the the-ater, Shakespeare’s English audiences conflated clothing and identity, partic-ularly since most female roles were performed by boys. Stephen Orgel hasillustrated that gender as performance was commonplace in Renaissanceplays: the female character (played by a boy) often must adopt male dress asa key part of the plot. According to Orgel, ‘‘There are scarcely a handful ofinstances in which anyone sees through a disguise in English Renaissancedrama.’’ This is due to ‘‘cultural assumptions about costume.’’ For example,in Twelfth Night Viola and Sebastian are twins because they are dressed inidentical costumes, not because they were played by twins. Furthermore,Viola spends much of the play disguised as a man; yet when she decides toreclaim her female identity, it is not only the correctly gendered clothes thattransform her into a woman, but her original clothes that are left with thecaptain. As Orgel explains, ‘‘This is the dress that is Viola. The costume isthe real thing; borrowing a dress from Olivia or buying a new one to getmarried in are not offered by the play as options. Clothes make the woman,clothes make the man: the costume is of the essence.’’ Indeed, the metonymyof clothing and identity prompted the passing of sumptuary laws to preventdressing above one’s class and the writing of Puritan antitheatrical pamphletswarning against boys being turned into women through wearing women’sclothes. From the English cultural perspective, differences in clothing, partic-ularly a lack of clothing by English standards, marked less-clothed people assavage and uncivilized, in opposition to themselves. This was a designation


the English easily imposed on both the ‘‘naked’’ Irish and later Indians, asthey were accustomed to using clothing as a litmus test for identity.9

British colonists had not lost this conflation of clothing with identity. In1629 clothing was at the center of the Thomas-Thomasine Hall controversyin Warraskoyack, Virginia. Hall, who had been raised as a girl, dressed some-times as a man, sometimes as a woman. As the historian Kathleen Brownhas illustrated, ‘‘For Hall, the social expression or performance of genderidentity was as malleable as a change of clothes and seems to have beenpartially motivated by opportunities to work.’’ Most members of the commu-nity seem to have accepted this performance, based in large part on Hall’sclothing, as proof of his sexual identity. When Hall was accused of havingintercourse with a female servant, his sexual identity was called into question,the ultimate result being his appearance before the General Court in James-town. The court’s final decision was to physically label Hall as a hermaphro-dite by ordering him to be clothed both in male breeches and femaleheaddress and apron. The historian Mary Beth Norton’s analysis of the Hallcase also calls attention to the importance of clothing and identity. ‘‘Many ofthe key questions about Hall were couched in terms of what clothing T [Hall]should wear, men’s or women’s.’’ Rather than declare Hall to be male orfemale, authorities in the case ‘‘instead issued instructions about what sort ofapparel T was to put on.’’

By the second half of the seventeenth century, colonists in Massachusettsfound themselves in a similar controversy caused by the conflation of identityand clothing, in particular periwigs. Though some of the concern of men

9. For examples, see John Smith, Generall Historie, in Karen Ordahl Kupperman,ed., Captain John Smith: A Selection of His Writings (Chapel Hill: University of NorthCarolina Press, 1988); David Pietersz de Vries, ‘‘From the ‘Korte Historiael EndeJournaels Aenteyckeninge’ by David Pietersz de Vries, 1633–1643,’’ Johannes Mega-polensis, ‘‘A Short Account of the Mohawk Indians, by Reverend Johannes Megapo-lensis, 1644,’’ and [Anonymous], ‘‘Journal of New Netherland,’’ all in J. FranklinJameson, ed., Narratives of New Netherland, 1609–1664 (New York: Charles Scrib-ner’s Sons, 1909); Thomas Morton, New English Canaan (1657); Rev. John Hecke-welder, An Account of the History, Manners, and Customs of the Indian Nations, whoonce Inhabited Pennsylvania and the Neighboring States (Philadelphia: Abraham Small,1819); and Benjamin Hawkins, Letters, Journals, and Writings of Benjamin Hawkins,vol. 1, 1796–1801, ed. C. L. Grant (Savannah: Beehive Press, 1980). See the accountof the traveler Fynes Moryson in Edward M. Hinton, Ireland through Tudor Eyes(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1935), 75–76; Stephen Orgel, Imper-sonations: The Performance of Gender in Shakespeare’s England (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1996), 102–5. See also Jonas Barish, The Anti-theatrical Prejudice(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981).


such as Nicholas Noyes and Samuel Sewell was religious, a large portion ofthe problem related to the importance of clothing as a crucial symbol ofidentity and therefore interaction. For example, old men could don periwigsto cover their gray hair and would therefore not be accorded the respect towhich they were entitled. Likewise, young men could use them to makethemselves look older in an attempt to usurp such respect. Noyes cautionedthat wigs were often ‘‘used for disguise by the worst of men, as by shaven-crowned popish priests, highway robbers, etc.’’10

Colonists did not reserve this conflation of identity with clothing for them-selves; rather, both Christian Indians and bi-ethnic (mixed-race) Indiansfound that their dress would be subject to careful scrutiny. Many New En-glanders felt that Christian Indians had not converted their loyalty along withtheir religion. Even dressed as whites, they were still Indians, though notcompletely so. This was complicated during King Philip’s War, when theEnglish had a difficult time distinguishing who was an enemy Indian, whowas a Christian Indian disguised in Indian dress to fight more effectively forthe English, and who was an Indian ally. This inability to decipher between‘‘good’’ and ‘‘bad’’ Indians caused the English to issue brass medals to Chris-tian Indians. The medals seemed to be the one way that English colonistscould tell friends from foes. Otherwise, according to Nathaniel Saltonstall,the English could not ‘‘know a Heathen [Indian] from a Christian [Indian]by his Visage, nor Apparel.’’ Since Christian Indians who dressed in Englishclothes looked just like enemy Indians who wore stolen English clothes, onlythese medals would distinguish them from one another. Likewise, bi-ethnicIndians often dressed in a mixture of English and Indian clothing to broad-cast through dress their dual heritage. This was disconcerting to colonists,who wanted to be able to categorize these individuals as either Indian orEuropean and determine where their loyalty rested. Perhaps the best exampleof this is Andrew Montour, whose famous mother, Madame Montour, made

10. Kathleen Brown, Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs: Gender,Race, and Power in Colonial Virginia (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,1996), 76–77; Mary Beth Norton, Founding Mothers and Fathers: Gendered Power andthe Forming of American Society (New York: Knopf, 1996), 190; for more on the peri-wig controversy in colonial Massachusetts, see Richard Godbeer, ‘‘Perversions ofAnatomy, Anatomies of Perversion: The Periwig Controversy in Colonial Massachu-setts,’’ Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society 109 (1998): 1–23; NicholasNoyes, ‘‘An Essay against Periwigs,’’ in John Demos, ed., Remarkable Providences:Readings in Early American History (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1991),254; Nathaniel Saltonstall, Present State of New-England with Respect to the IndianWar (1676), 33.


his mixed heritage undeniable. He was described by a Moravian missionary,Count Zinzendorf: ‘‘Andrew’s cast of countenance is decidedly European,and had not his face been encircled with abroad band of paint, applied withbear’s fat, I would certainly have taken him for one. He wore a brown broad-cloth coat, a scarlet damasken lappel-waistcoat, breeches, over which his shirthung, a black Cordovan neckerchief, decked with silver bugles, shoes andstockings, and a hat. His ears were hung with pendants of brass and otherwires plaited together like the handle of a basket.’’ Clearly Montour com-bined Indian and English clothing, some of the latter worn in the Indianfashion, with Indian paint and body ornaments. Dressed this way, his geneticmakeup was reflected in his outward appearance. For him, hybridity was areflection of his inner self, his identity. The layers of clothing revealed hiscomplex, layered ethnicity and allowed him to transmit varying levels of com-munication to different audiences simultaneously. Yet sending conflictingprinciples of his identity through his hybrid dress caused Montour problems,mainly in terms of his loyalty’s being questioned by Indians and Englishalike.11

Since the move across the Atlantic had not removed this connection be-tween identity and clothing, colonists’ own states of undress, once they wereseized by raiders, was as significant and worrisome to them as the Indians’nakedness. Susannah Johnson was not alone in finding herself and her littlechildren ‘‘naked’’ when the chaos of capture finally ended. Throughout bothseventeenth- and eighteenth-century captivity narratives, colonists repeatedlydescribed being stripped of their clothing and being naked. It is their use ofthe word naked that is most significant, as captives used it to describe threeconditions: complete nudity, a lack of clothing they were accustomed to, anddefenselessness from the elements and their captors. Mary Jordan and herfamily were ‘‘dragged naked out of the house and tied severally with cords’’when they were taken captive from their home. In 1756 Robert Eastburn wastaken captive while traveling with thirty tradesmen on his way to Oswego,New York. The Indians stripped him of his ‘‘Cloathing, Hat, and Neckcloth(so that [he] had nothing left but a Flannel Vest, without Sleeves).’’ That

11. William C. Reichel, ed., Memorials of the Moravian Church (Philadelphia: J. B.Lippincott, 1870), 1:95–96; see Nathan Joseph, ‘‘Layers of Signs’’ in Mary EllenRoach-Higgins, Joanne B. Eicher, and Kim K. P. Johnson, eds., Dress and Identity(New York: Fairchild Publications, 1995), 80. For more on Andrew Montour, seeJames Merrell, ‘‘ ‘The Cast of His Countenance’: Reading Andrew Montour’’ in Ron-ald Hoffman, Mechal Sobel, and Fredrika J. Teute, eds., Through a Glass Darkly:Reflections on Identity in Early America (Chapel Hill: University of North CarolinaPress, 1997).


evening when he met a French general who had joined his captors, Eastburnasked for clothes, as he was ‘‘almost naked.’’ When Charles Saunders wascaptured by the Shawnee in 1763, he and his fellow captives were ‘‘strip’d of[their] Shoes and Coats’’ so that they ‘‘stood almost naked, exposed to theinclemencies of a tempestuous Night.’’ Despite the Indians’ having dressedFrederic Manheim in a ‘‘piece of blanket, a pair of mockasons or shoes witha yard of coarse cloth to put round [him] instead of breeches,’’ Manheimdescribed himself as ‘‘naked and defenseless.’’ Mathew Bunn escaped fromcaptivity and made his way to Detroit seeking protection and walking thestreets looking for a job so he could ‘‘procure some clothing, being almostnaked.’’ Rather than expressing concern about being taken back to the Indi-ans or focusing on making his way home, the early pages of his narrativereturn time and again to his ‘‘being destitute of clothing,’’ ‘‘almost destituteof clothing, having barely sufficient to cover my body,’’ and ‘‘almost naked forwant of clothes.’’12

There is no clear indication that men and women experienced captivitydifferently. Even if their reactions varied, their narratives use the word nakedto characterize their experience. Indeed, there appears to be no gendereddifference in the way captives use the term. Both saw nakedness as humiliat-ing, but men at least were accustomed to occasionally working shirtless,whereas women’s only public nakedness occurred at times of punishment.The fact that men and women were not writing about this differently revealsthe extent to which gender identity and cultural identity were connected inthe colonies, both as performed through dress and when stripped. In herdiscussion of clothing as a ‘‘visual trope for gender,’’ Mary Beth Norton sum-marizes the connection as ‘‘people who wore skirts nurtured children; peoplewho wore pants did not. People who wore aprons could take no role in gov-erning the colony . . . people who wore headdresses performed certain sortsof jobs in the household; people who wore hats did other types of jobs in thefields.’’ For colonists, then, clothing was important because it marked theirbodies as civilized (in contrast to ‘‘naked’’ savages) and revealed their sex andstatus (Virginia’s gentlemen appeared ‘‘naked’’ without their swords). As dis-turbing as it was for captives to be redressed in Indian clothes, such clothing

12. ‘‘Horrid Murder by the Indians’’ (reprinted from the New-Jersey and Pennsyl-vania Almanac), Garland, vol. 27, 1; Robert Eastburn, A Faithful Narrative (1758),Garland, vol. 8, 6–7, 10; Charles Saunders, The Horrid Cruelty of the Indians (1763),Garland, vol. 10, 6; Frederic Manheim, Affecting History of the Dreadful Distresses ofFrederic Manheim’s Family (1793), Garland, vol. 21, 36, 39; Bunn, A Journal, 3, 6, 8,14.


at least marked them in a way they were familiar with: as an Indian withdistinct clothing based on sex and ornaments that were markers for status.For many captives this was a new identity that they did not choose to em-brace; however, dressed as Indians, they could fight the transformation, fo-cusing on the one component that was different from what they wereaccustomed to—Indian rather than English. Nakedness was far more disturb-ing. It provided captives with no recognizable identity and none of the visualcues they were familiar with. Once clothed as Indians, captives did not stripthemselves rather than be dressed as Indians. On the contrary, they beggedtheir captors for clothing when they felt naked. Clearly, nudity, and thereforedeath from an identity standpoint (social death), was far worse than beingdressed as an Indian.13

English clothing also marked colonists as Christian, and many captivesfound not only that they had been stripped of their clothing, but also thatcaptivity had left them spiritually naked. This would have been particularlydisturbing for Puritan captives who associated nakedness with sin, sinceAdam and Eve’s awareness of their nudity had come after sinning. It is thuseasy to see why captives would have preferred wearing Indian dress to beingvulnerably and sinfully nude. Puritan captives, whose belief in Providentialismdominated their lives, already interpreted captivity as a punishment from Godand a test of their faith, as did other Christian captives. The Puritan ministerCotton Mather collected stories of Indian captivity and recorded what henoted was a general response to it: ‘‘When some of our Eastern People havebeen Pining away under the Fatigues of their Captivity among the Indians,who had Stript them of all they had, Then they cryed out, Now, Now theLord is punishing of us, for our Leaving His Ordinances, and removing to a placeof no Gospel for larger Accommodations in the World, and Exposing our Children

13. For example, Senator William Plumer criticized Thomas Jefferson: ‘‘He wasdrest, or rather, undrest, with an old brown coat, red waistcoat, old corduroy smallclothes, much soiled—woolen hose—and slippers without heels.’’ In 1761 Mrs. Rob-ert Carter ordered ‘‘a sack [a gown with pleats at the back shoulders] if worn, but ifnot fashionable a fashionable undress [as an alternative to the sack, this was probablya gown with fitted shoulders] to cost 15£ sterlg from ye mantua maker.’’ For theseand more examples, see Linda Baumgarten, What Clothes Reveal: The Language ofClothing in Colonial and Federal America (Williamsburg: Colonial WilliamsburgFoundation and Yale University Press, 2002), 102, 95; Norton, Founding Mothers andFathers, 190–91; ‘‘Gentlemen appear in all places naked (i.e. without their swords)’’ isquoted in David Hackett Fischer, Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America (NewYork: Oxford University Press, 1989), 358.


to be bred up like the very Indians, into whose Hands we are fallen!’’14 Puritanreaders of Mather’s Decennium Luctuosum would have agreed with this gen-eral observation; in the ten years Mather chose to chronicle (1688–98), NewEngland’s colonists had been stripped of ‘‘all they had’’ and divine punish-ment seemed the most likely reason. God returned them to a literal andmetaphorical nakedness, reminding them of Adam and Eve’s nakedness andthe sin that had caused it. One captive, Hannah Swarton, lamented that shehad been ‘‘stripped’’ of everything she once had and ‘‘was now Bereaved ofHusband, Children, Friends, Neighbours, House, Estate, Bread, Cloaths, orLodging suitable.’’ Yet she was at peace with this loss; she believed her pun-ishment was ‘‘less than her Iniquities deserved’’ because she and her familyhad moved from Beverly, Massachusetts, to Casco Bay, where there was nominister or church ‘‘exposing our Children, to be bred Ignorantly like Indians,and our selves to forget what we had been formerly instructed in; and so weturned our Backs upon God’s Ordinances to get this Worlds Goods.’’15

Puritan captives frequently cited the book of Job during their time withthe Indians. Captured at Deerfield with his family in 1704, a Puritan minis-ter, John Williams, remembered that Job 1:21 ‘‘was brought to [his] mind’’ atthe death of his wife during the early part of their captivity, ‘‘and from it, thatan afflicting God was to be glorified.’’ Williams quoted the verse in his narra-tive, ‘‘Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I returnthither; the Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away, blessed be the name ofthe Lord.’’ His choice of this verse is significant in that he recognized hisnakedness on many levels: he had been stripped of his ‘‘best clothing’’; hehad been emotionally stripped by his wife’s death; his children (including hisdaughter Eunice, whose name was well known in Massachusetts at the time,as her father tried without success to redeem her from her Indian captors)had been stripped of their mother; he had been stripped of his companion,his family, and his congregation; and like Job’s, his faith was going to betested. Once he was in New France, the Jesuits tried to strip him of hisreligion and convert him to Catholicism. When Williams complained thathe was poorly dressed, both he and the priests in Canada linked his clothingto his faith. One of the priests told him it was his ‘‘obstinancy against [theCatholic] religion that discourage[d] [them] from providing better clothes.’’

14. Cotton Mather, Decennium Luctuosum (1699), Garland, vol. 3, 206; emphasisadded; italics in original.

15. Mather, Humiliations Follow’d with Deliverances (1679), Garland, vol. 1,55–56; italics in original.


‘‘It was better going in a ragged coat,’’ Williams replied, ‘‘than with a raggedconscience.’’16

William Scudder’s adoptive family also tried to use clothing to encouragehim to convert to Catholicism. ‘‘The first Sabbath I went to mass my cousindressed me in a long scarlet coat, velvet jacket, and a large cocked hat, alltrimmed with broad tinsey lace, with scarlet leggons, mockisons trimmedvery gay with ribbons and the like, and a silver headed sword a ruffled shirtand I must say that I felt quite important through the day.’’ Scudder quicklylearned that those clothes were only for church, for the next morning his‘‘fine clothes were changed and in place, [he] received a middling coat, sword,boots, stock-buckle and in lieu thereof, [he] received a pair of old mockisonsand leggons which [he] kept during [his] stay with them.’’17

Jonathan Dickinson and his family found that spiritual nakedness and lit-eral nakedness were sometimes connected. They were shipwrecked in 1696in Florida, where they were captured and spent several days in various statesof dress as Indians stripped them and the group found new ways to coverthemselves. At first the Indians ‘‘went to pulling of[f] our clothes, leavingeach of us only a pair of breeches, or an old coat, except my wife and child,Robert Barros and our master from whom they took but little.’’ The followingday, ‘‘afresh they went greedily to stripping my wife and child, Robert Burrowand our master who had escaped it till now[;] thus were we left almostnaked.’’ Unwilling to accept their lack of clothing, the group ‘‘cut our tents inpieces and got most of our clothing out of it which the Indians perceivingtook the remains from us. We men had most of us Breeches and pieces ofcanvas and all our company interceded for my wife that all was not takenfrom her.’’ Two days later two Indians approached the group to take theirmakeshift clothes: ‘‘(which would not cover our Bodies) but We not beingwilling to yield, they would snatch a piece from one and a bit from another,and run away with that and then come again and do the like.’’ Eventually therest of their clothes were taken, but they still had with them their ‘‘great Bible’’and a ‘‘large book of Robert Barclays.’’ Once again, having been ‘‘stripped as

16. John Williams, The Redeemed Captive Returning to Zion, 6th ed. (1795; AnnArbor: University Microfilms, 1966), 15. Rowlandson had also included the verse inher account, The Sovereignty and Goodness of God, 82; Williams, Redeemed, 88. Formore on the experiences of Williams and particularly his daughter Eunice, see JohnDemos, The Unredeemed Captive: A Family Story from Early America (New York:Knopf, 1995). Thomas Brown was also told that if he would go to Mass he would begiven the best clothes in the house; see Brown, A Plain Narrative in Garland, vol. 8,19.

17. Scudder, Journal, 43, 54–55, 57, 58.


naked as we were born’’ the group tried to ‘‘hide [their] nakedness’’ with helpfrom the Indians, who had taken ‘‘the books and tearing out the leaves wouldgive each of us a leaf to cover us which we took from them. At which timethey would deride us and instantly another of them would snatch away whatthe other gave us.’’18

For Dickinson and his family, the pages of the Bible had covered theirnakedness, but its destruction and removal by the Indians left them nakedboth of body and of soul. In this case the Indians were conscious of the factthat the colonists’ nakedness was disturbing to them and tormented thempsychologically by repeatedly giving them covering and then taking it away.They added to the torment by giving them the pages of their books, particu-larly the Bible, which they had to watch be torn apart, as covering that theywere ultimately not allowed to keep. This is reminiscent of the kind of psy-chological torment the historian Jill Lepore recounts during King Philip’sWar, when Wampanoag Indians targeted emblems of European ‘‘civility’’ asproof those emblems had offered no protection from ‘‘savage’’ destruction.Both literal and metaphorical nakedness figured commonly in descriptions ofthe war’s violence. Indians frequently removed clothes from the dead, evenstripping English dress off Christian Indians. This psychological tactic wasparticularly effective because Puritans not only associated nudity with sin andshame but also saw their clothes as differentiating them from Indians: cloth-ing was the badge of their ‘‘superior’’ culture. English corpses were strippedby the Indians ‘‘of all but [their] skin’’; moreover, if a captive was tortured,even his or her flesh might be removed (‘‘skinning them all over alive’’) andthen worn by the torturer.19

Though it was better to survive captivity as an Englishman or English-woman dressed as an Indian, there was nonetheless danger in adopting Indiandress: the potential for degeneration. This degeneration was possible for tworeasons: the mutability of identity and the transformative power of clothes asan agent as well as a badge. British colonists brought with them to NorthAmerica an early modern understanding of the world. They occupied a com-plicated world in which both fluid notions of identity and fixed categoriescoexisted, often manipulating them when necessary. In England, Queen Eliz-abeth carefully crafted an identity that played with this fluidity, which allowedher to be both physically female and politically male. ‘‘I have the body of aweak and feeble woman,’’ she told troops before their 1588 attack on theSpanish Armada, ‘‘but I have the heart of a king, and a king of England too.’’

18. Dickinson, God’s Protecting Providence, 8, 11, 23, 25; italics in original.19. Saltonstall, Present State, 30.


In part this fluidity was possible because of Galen’s idea of a one-sex body,which assumed that male and female reproductive organs are the same, thedifference being that women’s organs are within the body and men’s are out-side it. Early modern writers, moving toward a two-sex model, argued insteadthat women’s bodies were distinct from men’s. Yet despite this shift, earlymodern Europeans and colonists continued to believe that sex was not a fixedstate, for in Galen’s model, behavior outside gendered norms could result inwomen’s organs coming out of their bodies, transforming them into men,and men’s organs shrinking up into their bodies, transforming them intowomen.20

The Virginia planter William Byrd was sufficiently interested in this po-tential for mutability that he recorded incidents in which women and menhad apparently changed their sexual identity. He wrote that ‘‘the nun of Or-leans . . . escaping out of a nunnery, took post ‘en cavalier’ and in ten miles’hard riding had the good fortune to have all the tokens of a man breakout upon her.’’ He claimed that the story was well known enough to causeFrenchwomen to also ‘‘ride astraddle’’ in the ‘‘hopes the same thing mightperadventure befall them.’’ In his commonplace book Byrd noted that thisreversal of gender was also possible for men. He cited the instance of St.Martin, ‘‘who observed such strict rules of abstinence, and exercised suchausterities upon himself, that when the women came to lay him out after hewas dead, they could hardly find any penis at all, at most not larger than amoderate clitoris.’’ According to Byrd’s understanding of the one-sex body,overactive women could provoke their genitalia through physical pressure tobecome external, whereas men could cause their genitalia to recede becauseof abstinence. Even though early modern anatomists were moving away fromGalen’s model, they, and others like Byrd, continued to believe that suchtransformations were possible. The result was a view of gender as both fixedand fluid.21

20. Quoted in Paul Johnson, Elizabeth I: A Biography (New York: Holt, Rinehartand Winston, 1974), 320. There is some controversy over whether Elizabeth reallymade this speech at Tilbury (see Susan Frye, ‘‘The Myth of Elizabeth I at Tilbury,’’Sixteenth Century Journal 23 [1992]: 95–114), but the fact that it was rememberedthis way shows that she was successful in creating and presenting this dual identity.For more on Galen’s one-sex body, see Thomas Laqueur, Making Sex: Body andGender from the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990).

21. William Byrd, Histories of the Dividing Line betwixt Virginia and North Caro-lina, ed. William K. Boyd (New York: Dover, 1967), 316; William Byrd, The Com-monplace Book of William Byrd II of Westover, ed. Kevin Berland, Jan Kirsten Gilliam,and Kenneth A. Lockridge (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000),181.


As we have already seen, William Shakespeare also embraced this possibil-ity and often used cross-dressing as a major plot device in his plays, one thatwas complicated by young boys playing women’s parts. A small minority ofPuritan critics spoke out against this practice, although it accorded with time-honored assumptions about the contingency of gender and sex. These criticshad two concerns: that boys would be literally transformed into women fromwearing women’s clothing and that young boys dressed as women could in-spire sodomitical lust. ‘‘The law of God very straightforwardly forbids mento put on women’s garments,’’ wrote the critic Stephen Gosson; ‘‘garmentsare set down for signs distinctive between sex and sex, to take unto us thosegarments that are manifest signs of another sex, is to falsify, forge and adul-terate, contrary to the express rule of the words of God.’’ His fellow criticJohn Rainolds warned against ‘‘beautiful boys transformed into women byputting on their raiment, their feature, looks, and fashions.’’ Such a transfor-mation could also include a man’s temperament, so that ‘‘A woman’s garmentbeing put on a man doth vehemently touch and move him with the remem-brance and imagination of a woman.’’ The historian David Cressy notes thatRainolds may have remembered ‘‘uncontrollable feelings of lechery’’ from act-ing in women’s clothes as a youth. Adam Hill, a preacher, cautioned thatdressing in women’s clothing would stir up lust in men and make men’sbodies ‘‘weak and wanton in imitating the going and apparel of women [and]counterfeit unchaste women with unhonest gestures.’’ Perhaps even more dis-turbing, as the historian Richard Godbeer points out, was that ‘‘an effemi-nated boy [who had become so by cross-dressing as a woman in the theater]might assume a woman’s attraction toward men. A situation in which menplaying male roles had to kiss boys playing female roles might incite sodomit-ical lusts.’’ Though these criticisms took cross-dressing to an extreme thatperhaps only other Puritan critics would have wholeheartedly accepted, theydo reveal the negative side of fluidity. Since sex was not fixed, then individualsneeded to be careful about behaving in ways that could potentially transformthem. This Puritan fear of cross-dressing reveals both the cultural under-standing of sex or gender fluidity and the transformative power of clothing—which was also at the heart of the periwig controversy in colonialMassachusetts. Men who wore periwigs made from women’s hair could betransformed into ‘‘women in men’s apparel’’; the women who had donatedthe hair were likened to goats and sheep, who were in this case superior towomen, since they were shorn against their will. In their criticism of wearingpowdered wigs and theatrical cross-dressing, Puritan commentators gavevoice to a larger concern that would become much more urgent as the English


interacted with both the Irish and Indians; a potential for transformationcould ultimately produce cultural and even physiological degeneration.22

Having vested clothing with such transformative power, Englishmen andcolonists quickly learned it could be used as both a method of civilizing ‘‘sav-ages’’ and more frighteningly as a way to degenerate the already ‘‘civilized.’’Aside from reinforcing their belief in the transformative power of dress, inter-action with the ‘‘wild Irish’’ had prompted sixteenth-century Englishmen toequate clothing with civilization and nakedness with savagery. Indeed, cloth-ing played a key role in English plans to civilize both the Irish and Indians.Yet, in both instances the possibility for degeneration quickly became appar-ent. Government officials became increasingly concerned about Englishmenliving in Ireland who had adopted Irish dress, language, and customs; some‘‘Englishmen reputed as Irishmen’’ had been killed because they looked Irish.

22. Stephen Gosson, Playes Confuted in Five Actions (1582), as quoted in MarjorieGarber, Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing and Cultural Anxiety (New York: Routledge,1992), 29. John Rainolds, Overthrow of Stage Playes (1599) as quoted in Garber, 29.There has been much work done on antitheatrical critics and cross-dressing in earlymodern England. See David Cressy, ‘‘Gender Trouble and Cross-Dressing in EarlyModern England,’’ Journal of British Studies 35 (1996): 438–65; Jean Howard, TheStage and Social Struggle in Early Modern England (London: Routledge, 1994); MarkBreitenburg, Anxious Masculinity in Early Modern England (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1996); Laura Levine, Men in Women’s Clothing: Anti-Theatricalityand Effeminization, 1579–1642 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994); andOrgel, Impersonations. John Rainolds, The Overthrow of Stage-Playes (1599), as quotedin Cressy, ‘‘Gender Trouble,’’ 443; Cressy remark also on this page. Adam Hill, TheCrie of England (1595), as quoted in Cressy, ‘‘Gender Trouble,’’ 443. Richard God-beer, ‘‘Performing Patriarchy: Gendered Roles and Hierarchies in Early Modern En-gland and Seventeenth-Century New England,’’ in Francis J. Bremer and Lynn A.Botelho, eds., The World of John Winthrop: Essays on England and New England 1588–1649 (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 2005), 316. For attacks on wig wear-ing in England, see William Prynne, The Unloveliness of Lovelocks (London, 1628);Thomas Hall, The Loathsomeness of Long Hair (London, 1653); John Mulliner, ATestimony against Periwigs and Periwig-Making (Northampton, 1677); and RichardRichardson, A Declaration against Wigs and Periwigs (London, 1682). For a discussionof attacks on New England wig wearing, see Godbeer, ‘‘Perversions of Anatomy,Anatomies of Perversion’’; Richardson, A Declaration, 4; quote on women comparedto goats and sheep in Noyes, ‘‘An Essay,’’ 254–58. By the eighteenth century theimportance of dress had not diminished in England. Robert Campbell, a chroniclerof London trades, wrote in 1747: ‘‘No Man is ignorant that a Taylor is the Personthat makes our Cloaths; to some he not only makes their Dress, but, in some measure,may be said to make themselves.’’ William Hogarth, the eighteenth-century Englishartist, said in 1753 that it was possible to ‘‘know the very minds of the people by theirdress.’’ Baumgarten, What Clothes Reveal, 52.


To prevent this, the Irish Parliament required all Englishmen to wear theirhair in the English style, ‘‘at least in that part of the head which presentsitself most to view.’’ Should these Englishmen refuse, ‘‘it shall be necessary,by arrest of their body and imprisonment,’’ to compel them to comply. Someobservers complained that these Englishmen had degenerated to such an ex-tent that they had become ‘‘more Irish than the Irish themselves.’’23

This fear of degeneration was only magnified when the English arrived inthe New World, particularly as they confronted the possibility of interracialsex with both Indians and, later, African slaves. As Godbeer has pointed out,critics of miscegenation ‘‘argued that such unions brought about literal andfigurative pollution as Englishmen allowed their civilized instincts to be over-whelmed by lust.’’ Just as gender was a flexible category, so was race. ‘‘Insteadof ‘blanching’ their partners,’’ Englishmen and -women ‘‘might themselvesbecome ‘blackened,’ ’’ a fear that proved to be true particularly among peopleliving on the frontier. Visitors to the colonial backcountry often likened low-class whites to Indians because of their manners, dress, and way of life. Wil-liam Byrd wrote in his journal that North Carolinian men were ‘‘just like theIndians, [in that they] impose all the work upon the poor women.’’ CharlesWoodmason, an Anglican minister, noted that South Carolinians rubbed‘‘themselves and their hair with bear oil and ti[ed] it up in a bunch like theIndians.’’ To these backcountry inhabitants, as well as their Indian neighbors,‘‘nakedness [was] not censurable or indecent,’’ and they ‘‘expose[d] themselvesoften quite naked, without ceremony.’’ Woodmason went so far as to com-plain that these colonists behaved ‘‘more irregularly and unchastely than theIndians.’’ A missionary, James MacSparren, agreed, noting that North Caro-lina ‘‘may still pass for a pretty wild and uncultivated country, and exceptingfew of the better sort, its white inhabitants have degenerated into a state ofignorance and barbarism not much superior to the native Indians.’’ It was notjust their adopting Indian dress and manners, but also their proximity to theIndians, that caused backcountry settlers to degenerate. Could English colo-nists living near Indians keep themselves from degenerating? Perhaps themore disturbing question was: could Englishmen and -women retain theircivilized identity while living as captives among the Indians stripped of theirhomes and their clothing, or would dress (or lack thereof ) prove too powerfulan agent in the forests of North America? In the darkness of night, bound,

23. Edmund Curtis and R. B. McDowell, eds., Irish Historical Documents (Lon-don: Methuen, 1943), 32–37; J. W. Watt, ‘‘Approaches to the History of Fourteenth-Century Ireland,’’ in Art Cosgrove, ed., A New History of Ireland: Medieval Ireland,1169–1534 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 310.


alongside their captors and uncertain of their fate, the captives must haveasked themselves the same question.24

Indian captors clearly understood that the English read their own style ofclothing as a marker of civility and used this knowledge to their advantage.Christian Indians used clothing, albeit sometimes unsuccessfully, to distin-guish themselves from their ‘‘heathen’’ counterparts. ‘‘Wild Indians generallygo only in a Shirt whereas [Christian Indians] are always cloathed with some-thing,’’ wrote the Moravian Jacob Renatus. ‘‘A wild Indian is generallypainted and weareth a Feather, or some other Indian ornament, [ChristianIndians] are never painted and wear no feather, but they wear Hats or Caps.The wild Indians get their Heads shaved but these let the Hair grow natu-rally.’’ Christian Indians were not the only ones to appropriate Europeanclothing for their own purpose. In part Indians had learned the importance ofEuropean clothing when they were given gifts of clothing at conferences andtreaty negotiations. Most sachems quickly found the diplomatic advantages ofwearing these gifts at subsequent meetings. Perhaps they realized that wearingEnglish clothing would help put the English at ease and therefore make themmore pliable when the two sides drafted agreements. Yet Indians did notwholly incorporate European clothing in the manner that colonists hoped.Rather, they used the items in an ‘‘Indian fashion’’; they combined Europeangarments and fabrics with traditional apparel, wearing dress shirts over leg-gings and moccasins, not tucked into breeches in the English style. By notadopting the English mode of wearing the clothing, Indians sent the messagethat English dress had not transformed them into Englishmen. They hadappropriated the clothing Englishmen hoped would acculturate them, butthey used it in a way that challenged the potency of English dress.25

24. Richard Godbeer, Sexual Revolution in Early America (Baltimore: Johns Hop-kins University Press, 2002), 6; for more on the English fear of cultural degeneration,see particularly chaps. 4–6. William Byrd, A Journey to the Land of Eden, and OtherPapers by William Byrd, ed. Mark van Doren (New York: Vanguard Press, 1928), 77.For more examples of such comparisons, see Godbeer, Sexual Revolution, 150–52;Charles Woodmason, The Carolina Backcountry on the Eve of Revolution: The Journaland Other Writings of Charles Woodmason, Anglican Itinerant, ed. Richard Hooker(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1953), 61; James MacSparran,America Dissected (Dublin, 1753), 9–10.

25. Jill Lepore, The Name of War: King Philip’s War and the Origins of AmericanIdentity (New York: Knopf, 1998), 80, 92. This link to civility also went the otherway, as Laurel Thatcher Ulrich notes in The Age of Homespun: Objects and Stories inthe Creation of an American Myth (New York: Knopf, 2001). At the end of the PequotWar, ‘‘the Indian defeat was symbolized as a reversion to nakedness.’’ She recountsthe retreat of a Narragansett leader, Canonchet, ‘‘throwing off his clothing as he fled


Indians also used European clothing to taunt colonists, particularly in timesof war. After their victory near Deerfield during King Philip’s War, Indiansdisplayed ‘‘the Garments of the English in sight of the Soldiers’’ who wereon the other side of the river. John Underhill’s account of a raid on Wethers-field noted that Indians showed off captives to Englishmen and at the sametime brandished ‘‘English men’s and women’s shirts and smocks, instead ofsails’’ atop ‘‘poles on their Canoes.’’ When York’s minister, Shubael Dummer,was killed by Indians, his clothing was taken. Parishioners who had beentaken captive were saddened not only at the time of his death, but also thefollowing Sunday, when ‘‘one of the Tawnies [Indians], chose to Exhibithimself unto them, (A Devil as an Angel of Light!) in the Cloaths whereof theyhad Stript the Dead Body of this their Father.’’ Indians also used Europeanclothing as a disguise so that from afar they would look like Englishmen.Mary Rowlandson fell victim to this tactic. She thought that she would besaved when she saw a group of men in English clothes approaching; as theygot closer, her ‘‘heart skipped within [her] thinking [the Indians] had beenEnglish men at the first sight of them, for they were dressed in Englishapparel, with hats, white neckclothes, and sashes about their waists, and rib-bons upon their shoulders.’’26

European clothing was also used by Indians for special occasions, as suchitems represented links to trade networks. Scudder discovered this when hewas given special clothing for church that he was not allowed to wear on adaily basis. Rowlandson described in detail the clothing that her Indian mas-ter and mistress wore to dance in, which included items from Europe. Hermaster ‘‘was dressed in his Holland shirt, with great Laces sewed at the tailof it.’’ He also had ‘‘silver Buttons,’’ ‘‘white Stockins,’’ garters ‘‘hung roundwith Shillings, and . . . Girdles of Wampom upon his head and shoulders.’’

Connecticut troops’’ (60). Saltonstall, Present State, 30; ‘‘Characteristics of PeaceableIndians,’’ Moravian Records, 1763, as quoted in Jane Merritt, At the Crossroads: Indiansand Empires on a Mid-Atlantic Frontier, 1700–1763 (Chapel Hill: University of NorthCarolina Press, 2003), 280. For more on English clothing as treaty gifts, see TimothyShannon, ‘‘Dressing for Success on the Mohawk Frontier: Hendrick, William John-son, and the Indian Fashion,’’ in Peter Mancall and James Merrell, eds., AmericanEncounters: Natives and Newcomers from European Contact to Indian Removal, 1500–1850 (New York: Routledge, 2000).

26. William Hubbard, Narrative of the Troubles with the Indians in New-England(1677; rept., Ann Arbor: University Microfilms, 1941) 1:117–18; John Underhill,News from America (1638; rept., Amsterdam: Da Capo Press, 1971), 17; Mather,Decennium Luctuosum, 85, italics in original; Rowlandson, Sovereignty and Goodness ofGod, 348.


Figure 2. This 1740 print of Tiyonaga, later named King Hendrick by the En-glish, shows him wearing lavish European clothing, including a shirt, hat, andgold-trimmed coat. Courtesy of the John Carter Brown Library at Brown Uni-versity; imprint 32623.


Her mistress wore a ‘‘Kersey Coat, and covered with Girdles of Wampomfrom the loins upward: her armes from her elbows to her hands were coveredwith Bracelets; there were handfuls of Neck-laces about her neck, and severallsorts of Jewels in her ears. She had fine red Stockins, and white Sho[e]s, herhair was powdered and face painted Red, that was alwayes before Black. Andall the Dancers were after the same manner.’’27 Such items were obviouslybeing dispersed to other Indians as well, since all the dancers were dressedsimilarly. What surprised Rowlandson was that her mistress, Wettimore, tookequal care in dressing herself every day and for special occasions. Wettimorerequired ‘‘as much time as any of the Gentry of the land: powdering her hair,and painting her face, going with Neck-laces, with Jewels in her ears, andBracelets upon her hands.’’28

Taking English captives offered Indians an opportunity to acquire Euro-pean clothing as part of the booty: they stripped their captives and seizedclothing they found in the household. Indians ‘‘stripped and plundered all theprisoners’’ taken from Fort William Henry during the French and IndianWar, along with the scalps and clothing of about one hundred women. WhenJames Owen was captured, he was bound and ‘‘stripped to the skin’’ and hisclothes ‘‘divided among them.’’ Along the Kentucky frontier it was wellknown that Indians would take things of value that they could carry, ‘‘so thatthe first settlers were obliged to be perpetually on their guard, live in wellfortified houses, and keep themselves well armed, besides an army of Volun-teers.’’ Despite these precautions, when Frances Scott’s house in Virginia wasattacked in 1785, it contained ‘‘four good rifles well loaded, and a good dealof cloathing, and furniture; part of which belonged to people that had left iton their way to Kentucky. The Indians loaded themselves with plunder, being13 in number, then speedily made off.’’ Indians ransacked William Fleming’sPennsylvania home for ‘‘every Thing they thought worth taking, and afterthey had made up a Sack of Meal for [him], and a Bundle of Clothes for[his] Wife to carry,’’ they set the house on fire. While a group of Indiansmoved on to raid another home, Captain Jacob, the Indian in charge, whomFleming described as ‘‘pretty well dressed,’’ gave Fleming’s wife one of herhusband’s shirts and an old petticoat. The captain ‘‘ordered her to strip andput on the Shirt and Petticoat, which she complied with, and while she wasdoing it, he turn’d his Back on her.’’ He then gathered her discarded clothesand added them to his plunder. On one occasion a colonist found that thisIndian desire for English clothing could sometimes work in a colonist’s favor.

27. Rowlandson, Sovereignty and Goodness of God, 103.28. Ibid., 97.


When attacked, he decided to fight rather than be taken and ended up wres-tling with his would-be captor. The Indian tried to get to his knife, but‘‘a woman’s apron, which the Indian had plundered out of a house in theneighborhood, and tied on him, above his knife, was now in his way, and sohindered him getting at it quickly that the colonist’’ was able to gain theupper hand.29

Having discovered that Indians frequently took clothing as booty, somecolonists tried to find ways to keep this from happening. In 1778 the Britishwarned the women at Fort Wheeler that they could not keep the Indiansfrom pilfering clothing. Colonel Butler told them to put on whatever clothesthey wanted to keep because the Indians would take any clothes they sawlying around. The women accordingly ‘‘selected whatever they considered ofthe most value and dressed themselves without much regard to the numberof garments they wore.’’ Perhaps these women, despite the ‘‘warm days ofsummer,’’ felt secure in the cocoon of clothing they had created: better tostart captivity overdressed in layers of clothing that would mark them as En-glish and as women than in a state of nakedness. Yet after the Indians hadfinished plundering whatever they could find, they began to look more closelyat the captives and discovered that they had on more clothing than was neces-sary. ‘‘So they went to work and stripped off all their fine clothing, leavingnothing upon the women, but a couple of under garments, while they torefrom the men every thing but their shirts and pantaloons.’’30�Being stripped by one’s captors often meant that one had been chosen foradoption. In these instances being reduced to nakedness was frequently fol-lowed by body painting, washing, redressing in Indian clothes, having one’shair cut or pulled out in the Indian fashion, and being adorned with piercingsand jewelry. Frederic Manheim watched as one of his fellow captives, Mr.Adams, was sometimes stripped ‘‘naked and paint[ed]’’ all over ‘‘with varioussorts of colors.’’ ‘‘At other times they would pluck the white hairs from his

29. David Humphreys, An Essay on the Life of the Honorable Major-General IsraelPutnam (1788), Garland, vol. 19, 42–43; Moses Van Campen recounted that theIndians later returned to whites’ homes after the whites had been taken captive topick up provisions and clothing in A Narrative of the Capture of Certain Americans, 17;[Anonymous], The Life and Travels of James Tudor Owen (1801), Garland, vol. 25,23; Frances Scott, A Remarkable Narrative of the Captivity and Escape of Mrs. FrancesScott (1799), Garland, vol. 16, prologue, 7; William Fleming, A Narrative of Sufferingsand Deliverance (1756), Garland, vol. 8, 6, 12, 15; Manheim, Affecting History, 12–13.

30. [Van Campen], A Narrative of the Capture of Certain Americans, 108–9.


head.’’ Henry Grace, taken in 1750, ran the gauntlet and at the ‘‘chief man’swiggwam they took away [his] hat and began stripping [him] of everything[he] had in the world.’’ After dancing around him, the Indians gave him a‘‘Bridge Clout to cover [his] nakedness’’ as well as ‘‘a pair of Indian stockingsmade of cloth, and a pair of mogussons instead of shoes for [his] feet.’’ JamesOwen’s adoptive mother first ‘‘anointed him with bear’s grease,’’ then gavehim a ‘‘war-belt from which was suspended the spotted skin of a panther.’’She also ‘‘powdered [his] hair with vermilion’’ and gave him a pair of mocca-sins, at which point he ‘‘was completely equipt.’’ Later there was a moreformal adoption ceremony for him: he was plunged in water and tattooed on‘‘each breast’’ with ‘‘a pointed stick dipt in gunpowder and water,’’ given a‘‘beaver robe,’’ and a ‘‘belt of wampum put round [his] neck.’’31

James Smith also discovered that adoption often involved more than just achange of clothing when he was taken captive in 1755. First, a number ofIndians surrounded him and began to pull out his hair, using ashes to get abetter grip until ‘‘all the hair [had been ripped] clean out of [his] head, excep-ting a small spot’’ on the crown, which they trimmed with scissors, ‘‘exceptingthree locks which they dressed up in their own mode.’’ They then pierced hisnose and ears and told him to ‘‘strip off [his] clothes and put on a breech-clout, which [he] did,’’ and painted his head, face, and body. Three womentook him to the river and washed him, which he resisted, thinking they weregoing to drown him. Smith was then given ‘‘a new ruffled shirt,’’ ‘‘a pair ofleggins done off with ribbons and beads, likewise a pair of mockasons, andgarters dressed with beads, Porcupine-quills, and redhair,’’ and his face wasagain painted. In October 1793 Lent Munson was one of eleven soldierscaptured by the Ottawa from Fort Washington. They immediately ‘‘stript[him] of all his clothes, except shoes, socks, and overalls.’’ In exchange theygave him ‘‘an old Indian coat.’’ On the second day he was given ‘‘an old shirt,’’on the third he was painted ‘‘in token of life and pardon,’’ and on the elevenththey ‘‘cut his hair, and put a jewel in his nose.’’ ‘‘They attempted also to cuthis ears, which he resisted with such spirit and perseverance that they finallydid not insist on his compliance.’’ Perhaps Munson was unwilling to allowthem to alter his appearance in a way that would permanently mark him asIndian. After all, paint could be washed, hair could grow back, and the jewel

31. Manheim, Affecting History, 32. Mary Kinnan’s captor dressed her ‘‘in one ofhis own suits of clothes and tied an handkerchief over my eyes in order as much aspossible to conceal my features,’’ True Narrative of the Sufferings of Mary Kinnan,Garland, vol. 21, 14; Henry Grace, History of the Life and Sufferings of Henry Grace(1764), Garland, vol. 10, 12–15; Life and Travels of James Tudor Owen, 27–28.


in his nose could be removed, but a disfigurement of his ears would be morepermanent. He was willing to be dressed as an Indian so he could retain someform of identity, but not to allow himself to be marked in a way that wouldmake his transformation back to an Englishman completely impossible.32

Captives frequently complained about how cold they were in Indian dress,in effect still feeling naked. Munson remained in Indian dress for eightmonths, ‘‘almost without clothing, exposed to the inclemencies of the winterseason,’’ before he made his escape. Hannah Swarton, taken at Casco Fort inMay 1690, lamented that she had been ‘‘pinched with cold for want of Cloa-thing being put by them into an Indian Dress, with a sleight Blanket, noStockings, and but one pair of Indian-Shoes, and of their Leather Stockingsfor the Winter.’’ Robert Eastburn likewise complained about the cold on hismarch to Canada when he was taken captive during the French and IndianWar: he had been stripped of everything except his flannel vest and a ropearound his neck. Near Conasadauga the prisoners were painted, includingEastburn, who was also given a ‘‘Belt of Wampum round my Neck, insteadof the rope which I had worn 400 miles.’’ After running the gauntlet, duringwhich they were pelted with dirt, mud, and rocks as well as plunged into coldwater, Eastburn was adopted by a family who lived about two hundred milesup the Oswegatchie River. Once adopted, he ‘‘showed the Old Squaw myShirt (having worn it from the time I was first taken Prisoner, which wasabout seven Weeks) all in Rags, Dirt, and Lice; she said it was not good andbrought me a new one, with ruffled sleeves (saying that is good) which Ithankfully accepted.’’ Eastburn also attended treaty negotiations while withhis Indian family and was given a share of the ‘‘Coats, Blankets, Shirts, Skins(to make Indian Shoes) Cloth (to make Stockings) Powder, Lead, Shot, andto each a Bag of Paint’’ by the French.33

Not all captives were sorry to lose their old clothes. William Scudder, whohad happily relinquished his clothes because of the hot weather, was alsogiven Indian clothing as part of his adoption. En route to Canada from FortStanwix, New York, his captor gave him ‘‘a calico waistcoat’’ and a ‘‘thin pairof mockisons made of deer’s leather.’’ That night the Indians painted all theprisoners and themselves, except Scudder. About a week later an ‘‘Indiancame and ordered by signs to take off [his] coat and jacket, which [he] atonce complied with; [the Indian] then brought [him] a long coat, waistcoat

32. James Smith, An Account, 9–11; Alexander Viets Griswold, A Short Sketch ofthe Life of Mr. Lent Munson (1797), Garland, vol. 24, 2–4.

33. Griswold, A Short Sketch, 2–4; Swarton, Narrative, 53, italics in original; Eas-tburn, Captivity, 43, 49, 52.


and leggings and dressed [Scudder] in the manner of themselves and thentook [him] to the flag-staff,’’ where the chief made a long speech signifyinghis adoption into the family in the place of the chief ’s deceased uncle. MaryJemison was glad when her adoptive family exchanged her old clothes, ‘‘nowtorn in pieces, so that I was almost naked,’’ with a ‘‘suit of Indian clothing,all new, and very clean and nice’’ after washing her and throwing her ‘‘ragsinto the river.’’34

Often captives found that embracing their new clothing had its benefits.Charles Rouso was given to the Indians at age fourteen by the British. A fewdays after he arrived, an Indian took him by the hand and told him he ‘‘mustbe dressed like them, and bid [him] pull off [his] breeches, which [he] reluc-tantly did [the Indian] then put on [him] a clout, and belt, Indian fashion,and threw [his] breeches into the fire.’’ The Indian ‘‘then completely dressed[him] in an Indian uniform, consisting of a blanket, feathers . . . stone pipeand tobacco pouch,’’ and painted his face. Two months later, still in Indiandress, Rouso found that he had become ‘‘more Indian-like and tolerably con-tent with [his] lot.’’ Indeed, he had so completely assimilated that he soonasked for ‘‘better clothes and more broaches; they then brought [him] thebest blanket that could be found adding a large number of broaches of bestworkmanship’’ and tattooed his leg and face, plucked his hair, painted hishead, put a gold ring in his nose, and ‘‘silver drops’’ in his ears. Titus King, ayoung soldier taken captive during the French and Indian War, later recalledthat in his new Indian dress he ‘‘began to think [he] was an Indian.’’ Kingmarked his change in clothing as the moment that he felt this transformationtaking place. Clearly, Indian clothing was powerful enough to transform thewearer both externally and internally into an Indian. Rather than resist theirnew Indian identities, these men found that it was not a difficult assimilation,instead asking to be visually marked in a more complete way as Indians.35

Some captives discovered that stripping could lead not only to death as anEnglishman and rebirth as an Indian, but also to physical death. ThomasBrown discovered the former when he was among a group of soldiers takencaptive near Albany in 1756. Despite his having put up a fight when attacked,his captors took him ‘‘by the neck and kissed’’ him as well as doctored hiswounds. He begged for shoes, which he was given, along with a piece of

34. Scudder, Journal, 54; James Everett Seaver, Life of Mary Jemison: Deh-he-wa-mis (Buffalo: William P. Letchworth, 1880), chap. 3.

35. Rouso, Memoirs, 13, 22, 38, 55–56; Titus King, Narrative of Titus King ofNorthampton, Mass., a Prisoner of the Indians in Canada, 1755–1758 (Hartford: Con-necticut Historical Society, 1938), 10.


bread. Several days later three Indian women ‘‘stripp’d off all [his] Clothes,and gave [him] a Blanket.’’ The next morning they ‘‘cut off [his] Hair andpainted [him] and with Needles and Indian-ink, prick’d on the back of [his]Hand the form of one of the Scaling-Ladders, which the French made tocarry to Fort William-Henry.’’ A fellow soldier met a different fate when theIndians tried to cut his hair; Brown noted that the soldier ‘‘foolishly resistedthem.’’ That night the Indians ‘‘made a Fire, stripp’d and ty’d him to a Stake,and the Squaws cut Pieces of Pine, like Scures, and thrust them into his Fleshand set them on fire.’’ The torture continued until the man threw himselfinto the fire. Mather’s Decennium Luctuosum contains several accounts of thestripping of captives as an accompaniment to death. Mary Plaisted’s childwas carried to a ‘‘River where stripping it of the few Rags it had, [her captor]took it by the Heels, and against a Tree dash’d out its Brains, and then flangit into the River.’’ Mehetabel Goodwin’s baby was ‘‘violently’’ snatched ‘‘outof its Mothers Arms, and before her Face knockt out its Brains, and stript itof the Few Rags it had hitherto Enjoy’d, and ordered her the Task, to gowash the Bloody Cloaths.’’ John Diamond was ‘‘Stripped ’’ and ‘‘Scalped ’’ alive,and ‘‘after a Castration, they Finished that Article in the Punishment of Trai-tors upon him; They Slit him with Knives, between his Fingers and his Toes;They made cruel Gashes in the most Fleshy parts of his Body, and stuck theGashes with Fire-brands, which were afterwards found Sticking in thewounds.’’ Frederic Manheim watched while a fellow captive, George Aikins,was ‘‘scalped and tomahawked’’; his captors then ‘‘stripped him naked,stabbed him with their knives in every sensitive part of the body and left himweltering in blood, though not quite dead a wretched victim to Indian rageand hellish barbarity.’’36

Captives marked for death were often painted as well as stripped. JamesSmith watched when a ‘‘dozen prisoners stripped naked with their hands tiedbehind their backs and their faces and part of their bodies blackened’’ werebrought into Fort Duquesne at Braddock’s defeat and burned on the bank ofthe Allegheny River. Some captives sensed that the paint did not bode well,as one anonymous writer recounted: ‘‘One of my two companions they seizedand having stripped him naked blackened him with coal and water. This wasthe sign of being burnt the man seemed to surmise it and shed tears.’’ Thecaptive asked the writer, who had been a captive once before, ‘‘the meaningof being blackened but [the writer] was forbid[den] by the enemy in their

36. Thomas Brown, A Plain Narrative (1760), Garland, vol. 8, 14–15, 10 (italicsin original); Mather, Decennium Luctuosum, 53, 56, 97; italics in original; Manheim,Affecting History, 45–46.


own language to tell him what was intended. In English . . . they assuredhim he was not to be hurt.’’37

At the end of a captive’s ordeal, a return to English clothing was an impor-tant step in beginning the transformation back to civility. The same Smithwho had watched the prisoners burn at Fort Duquesne realized how powerfulclothing could be when he returned to English clothing. ‘‘When I dressedmyself in good clothes, and mounted on horseback,’’ he wrote, ‘‘no man everasked me for a pass; therefore I concluded that a horse-thief, or even a robber,might pass without interruption, provided he was only well dressed, whereasthe shabby villain would be immediately detected.’’ When Colonel PeterSchuyler discovered that the war hero Major Israel Putnam had arrived inMontreal after his captivity, he ‘‘could scarcely restrain his speech within lim-its’’ when he saw Putnam. The major was ‘‘in a comfortless condition—without coat, waistcoat or hose—the remnant of his clothing miserably dirtyand ragged—his beard long and squalid—his legs torn by thorns and briars.’’Schuyler took action and Putnam was ‘‘immediately treated according to hisrank, cloathed in a decent manner, and supplied with money.’’ Moses vanCampen and his fellow captives ‘‘soon exchanged their swarthy complexions,for their own healthy color’’—with the ‘‘aid of a little soap and water’’—and‘‘laying aside the Indian dress, appeared in their own uniform.’’ Charles Rouso‘‘took off [his] uncouth dress (Indian fashion)’’ and was given new clothes inconformance with ‘‘the dress of the people with whom [he] now resided.’’John Williams, who had refused to trade clothes for conversion to Catholi-cism, finally received them when he was ‘‘redeemed out of the hands of theIndians’’ by the governor of New France, the Marquis de Vaudreuil. Thegovernor gave Williams ‘‘good clothing, took [Williams] to his table, gave[him] the use of a very good chamber, and was in all respects relating to [his]outward man, courteous and charitable to admiration.’’ Robert Eastburn hadbeen so long in Indian dress that when he ‘‘put on fresh clothes, [he] wasseized with a cold fit, which was followed by a high fever.’’38

Susannah Johnson’s naked children also found new clothing at the end oftheir captivity. The French commander at Crown Point gave hospitality toall the English captives brought before him. Her ‘‘children were all decentlyclothed and [her] infant in particular,’’ who had been born in captivity and

37. James Smith, An Account, 9; Narratives of a Late Expedition against the Indians(1763), Garland, vol. 12, 21.

38. James Smith, An Account, 66–67; Humphreys, An Essay, 72–73.; [Van Cam-pen], A Narrative of the Capture of Certain Americans, 237; Rouso, Memoirs, 81; Wil-liams, Redeemed, 33; Eastburn, A Faithful Narrative, 68.


whom Johnson had named Captive. The first day, while she was ‘‘taking anap, they dressed it so fantastically, a la France, that [she] refused to own it,when brought to [her] bedside, not guessing that [she] was the mother ofsuch a strange thing.’’ Clearly, for Susannah there was a difference betweenFrench and English clothing for infants. She was glad to have the babydressed as a ‘‘civilized’’ child but disturbed that the child was identified asFrench rather than English by her clothing. Despite their return to ‘‘civiliza-tion,’’ the memories of her captivity, her ‘‘wearied husband, naked children,and helpless infant formed a scene that conveyed severer pangs to [her] heartthan all the sufferings [she] endured [her]self.’’ Her readers were undoubtedlynot surprised to find that Johnson’s grown daughter Captive still kept ‘‘thedress she appeared in when brought to [Susannah’s] bed side by the Frenchnurse at the Ticonderoga hospital’’ (perhaps a more acceptable reminder ofher place of birth than the uncivilized Indian clothes—better Indian clothesthan naked, but better French clothes than Indian), or that Captive frequentlyshowed it to her own children, who refreshed her mother’s ‘‘memory withpast scenes.’’ They would have understood the dress as a symbol of her re-demption from the hands of savages and safe return to civility.39�Perhaps the comment that best captures the nature of colonists’ use of theword naked was that of Jemina Howe. Captured along with her children in a1755 Abenaki raid on Hinsdale, New Hampshire, Howe wrote that she‘‘often imagined that [she] plainly saw the naked carcasses of [her] deceasedchildren hanging upon the limbs of trees.’’ In her mind her children werestripped of clothing, stripped of her maternal protection, stripped of the safetyof their home (now hanging in trees), and stripped of life. Indeed, captivesused the words naked and stripped to describe not only their bodies but alsoland, houses, and goods that had been taken from them by Indians. Uponreturning to Springfield after ‘‘many houses [had been] burnt,’’ one resident,John Pynchon, wrote, ‘‘I may sensibly say with holy Job: naked came I andnaked shall I return.’’ Though he had survived the massacre of Springfield,he found himself naked in the wilderness, having lost the comfortable dress-ing of home and hearth. Others, too, found themselves in a similar state;the Connecticut Court ordered ravaged towns to rebuild so as to cover the‘‘nakedness of each and every place.’’ Towns were left ‘‘naked,’’ stripped ofchurches and houses, just as colonists’ bodies had been stripped of clothingand skin. Luke Swetland recounted a similar sense of nakedness when the

39. Johnson, Narrative, 40, 55, 144.


Indians burned buildings, killed and drove off livestock, and plundered ‘‘everything they could find.’’ Despite these losses, Swetland and his family ‘‘con-cluded [they] would try to live there and not leave the country and so pickedup the small matter the Indians had left [them], and went to keeping housealthough very near naked, yet naked as [they] were [they] took courage andwent to work at harvesting and haying.’’40

These narratives open a window into the minds of colonists in the seven-teenth and eighteenth centuries as they struggled to come to terms with theirenvironment and the Indians who inhabited it. If colonists could keep frombecoming naked, degenerated Indians, the New World offered opportunitiesunavailable in the Old World. Yet as these narratives reveal, there was no wayto ensure that colonists and their families would not be driven naked fromtheir homes and stripped of all they owned. Perhaps more frightening wasthe prospect of trying to survive the ordeal itself. Did captives have thestrength to survive the forests, naked of structures, and wild savages thatthreatened to destroy them? Mary Rowlandson had thought she would ratherchoose ‘‘to be killed by [Indians] than be taken alive, but when it came to thetr[i]al [her] mind changed.’’ Ultimately, despite their initial doubts, Rowland-son and Susannah Johnson (with her infant daughter) proved survival waspossible. Captive Johnson had not become an Indian or a French woman, ashad so many other captives, but had returned with her mother to becomecaptive no more. At the heart of every captivity narrative is survival. How didthe captives survive to return to their families? The ways each captive man-aged to adapt and make accommodations to stay alive is what makes eachnarrative unique. Colonists knew that many captives ended up being killed.Avoiding death was important both to the captives and their families; how-ever, surviving as an English and ‘‘civilized’’ person was equally important,even if that meant having to adopt Indian dress for a time. Families wantedtheir loved ones returned as Englishmen and -women, not as Indian men andwomen. John Williams knew firsthand, having never redeemed his daughterEunice, that Captive had been lucky; sometimes captives were left perma-

40. Jemina Howe, A Genuine and Correct Account of the Captivity, Sufferings, andDeliverance of Mrs. Jemina Howe (1792), Garland, vol. 19, 11. See also James Key,‘‘This Monster Stript Him Stark Naked,’’ Garland, vol. 3, 51; Narrative of a LateExpedition against the Indians, 11–12; Saltonstall, Present State, 77–99; John Pynchonto John Leverett, October 8, 1675, in John Pynchon, The Pynchon Papers, ed. CarlBridenbaugh, 2 vols. (Boston: Colonial Society of Massachusetts, 1982–85),1:157–60; J. Hammond Trumbull, ed., The Public Records of the Colony of Connecticut(Hartford: F. A. Brown, 1850–90), 2:268; Luke Swetland, A Very Remarkable Narra-tive (1785), Garland, vol. 17, 2.


nently naked—stripped of their culture. Such unredeemed captives not onlydressed but lived and thought like Indians—except for death, the worstnightmare for those who wished to survive fully clothed in their Englishness.Yet Eunice’s transformation into an Indian woman still allowed her to visither family, alive but degenerated by English standards. It was an identity theReverend Williams eventually came to terms with: not the English daughterhe had wanted, not the naked child who had been captured, but the clothedIndian woman she had become.41

41. Rowlandson, Sovereignty and Goodness of God, 70.

Stripped Clothing and Identity in Colonial Captivity Narratives

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