ADDITIONAL MODEL · WEEK 6 · CHAPTER 2
How did Rowlandson’s report of kindness complicate the English image of Native people?
This model helps you compare a representation with people’s actions before you explain how Caliban and Prospero represent colonial relationships in Week 6.
The model paragraph
Mary Rowlandson’s report of kindness complicated a frightening image of Native people by recording behavior that the image could not explain. Rowlandson, an English colonist captured during King Philip’s War, repeated hostile descriptions in her testimony. Yet her account also contained a challenge to the same stereotype. Takaki writes, “Indians had treated her and her six-year-old daughter with kindness and generosity, she reported” (YPT 37). This says that Rowlandson remembered care for herself and her child during captivity. It shows that her captors’ actions did not fit a picture of people who were always cruel. Her account was therefore contradictory: its inherited descriptions and its reported experiences did not always agree. However, that tension could create an opening for readers. Takaki explains, “By recognizing the humanity of the Indians, Rowlandson’s story offered a chance for the English to understand, or even share the feelings of, the people whose land they were taking” (YPT 38). This says that the story could help English readers recognize feelings they shared with Native people. It shows why a particular act of care can challenge descriptions that dehumanize an entire group. This recognition, a possible bridge between enemies, did not end the conquest. It nevertheless illustrates Key Idea 3: Ideas are weapons. A story can give readers evidence for challenging the image used to justify domination. When we compare a label with the actions it leaves out, we can see both the label’s power and its limits.
1 POINT TO NAME IT · 1 POINT TO EXPLAIN IT
How this model earns its key idea points
Gist
A story or belief can help people get others to accept unfair treatment—or work together to change it.
Check your understanding
Academic definition
Ideas influence struggles over power by legitimizing domination, defining belonging, or mobilizing resistance. To explain the connection, identify the idea, who uses it, and the action it helps justify or organize.
Check your understanding
Elaboration
- Name the idea
- Key Idea 3: Ideas are weapons
- Point to the evidence
- Rowlandson reports kindness toward herself and her daughter (YPT 37). Her story offers an opening for recognizing Native humanity (YPT 38).
- Explain how it works
- A story can repeat a hostile image while also supplying evidence against it. The report of care gives readers a reason to question a description that supports domination.
- Make the connection explicit
- Identify the representation, then show which recorded actions complicate it. Explain the opportunity for a changed judgment without claiming that the opportunity actually stopped conquest.
Check your understanding: explain how this model’s evidence shows its key idea without looking at the explanation above.
Compare your explanation
A story can repeat a hostile image while also supplying evidence against it. The report of care gives readers a reason to question a description that supports domination.
How the argument builds
Follow what each move adds to the answer. Then map your own paragraph in your notebook.
- Answer the practice question
Reported kindness does not fit an image of unvarying cruelty.
- First evidence
Rowlandson describes care for herself and her daughter.
- Explain the contradiction
Specific actions challenge the hostile descriptions her story also repeats.
- Second evidence
Takaki explains how the account could help English readers recognize Native humanity.
- Connect the key idea
Stories supply ideas that can challenge the justification for domination.
- Develop the consequence
Comparing a label with contrary evidence reveals its limits.
How this practice model meets the 10-point rubric
| Requirement | What the model does | Points |
|---|---|---|
| Four practice words | All four practice words appear in complete sentences. These stand in for the four assigned Words of the Day for this exercise. | 2/2 |
| Two appositives | Two noun phrases between commas rename the nouns immediately before them. | 2/2 |
| Two quotations, explained and analyzed | Two exact YPT quotations have page citations; each is followed by what it says and what it shows. | 2/2 |
| Key idea named and explained | The paragraph names one course idea and explains the specific process connecting its evidence to that idea. | 2/2 |
| Development | The argument moves from an answer through two pieces of evidence to an explained consequence; each move develops the practice question. | 2/2 |
The four practice words stand in for assigned Words of the Day in this example. Development is the quality row: follow how each sentence moves this argument forward.
Read the full rubric →Build your own sentences · Chapter 2
Choose the relationship your argument needs. These are sentence models to study; your paragraph should use your own reasoning and your assigned four words of the day.
Appositives · rename a noun precisely
A noun phrase between commas renames the noun before it. It adds useful information, not another sentence. You need two.
Check: remove the phrase between the commas. The main sentence should still work.
Queen Elizabeth I, the English monarch who encouraged the colonization of Ireland, sent soldiers into a Catholic country her advisers viewed as a potential threat.
YPT 27–28Sir Humphrey Gilbert, an English soldier involved in the conquest of Ireland, used displays of severed heads to intimidate people approaching his battlefield tent.
YPT 27–29The Powhatan, Native farmers living in the homeland surrounding Jamestown, first helped starving English settlers before demands for food, labor, and land intensified conflict.
YPT 31–33The Pequot, one of New England’s Native farming peoples, suffered mass killing as English settlement and competition for land developed into destructive war.
YPT 35–36Mary Rowlandson, an English woman held captive by the Narragansett, described kindness that complicated the dehumanizing stereotypes she also repeated in her account.
YPT 37–38Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, promised Native peoples security while proposing financial arrangements that would make retaining their land more difficult.
YPT 40–41
The nine connectors · choose a relationship
But
Adds a contrast.
English promoters promised education and Christianity for Native peoples, but colonial demands for land and labor helped turn those promises into campaigns of destruction.
YPT 30–34So
Shows a result.
Tobacco profits encouraged Virginia colonists to expand their farms, so they sought Powhatan fields that Native communities had already cleared and cultivated.
YPT 31 YPT 33Because
Gives a reason.
England’s conquest of Ireland became a model for colonization because it combined unequal laws, land seizure, and a hierarchy that ranked the English above conquered peoples.
YPT 27–30If
Names a condition.
If we compare English actions in Ireland and North America, we can trace how familiar claims of superiority helped justify control over different peoples.
YPT 27–30Unless
Means if not.
We cannot explain the shift toward colonial destruction unless we connect claims about Native inferiority with the settlers’ growing demands for farms, food, and labor.
YPT 30–33 YPT 35–36When
Means if with expectation.
When the English compared Native Americans to the Irish, they transferred an existing judgment of inferiority onto peoples whose societies they barely understood.
YPT 29–30Despite
Takes a noun phrase.
Despite clear evidence of Native farming in New England, English settlers claimed that Native people did not work the land and therefore did not deserve it.
YPT 35–36Although
Takes a subject and a verb.
Although Mary Rowlandson repeated hostile stereotypes of Native people, her descriptions of their kindness also supplied evidence that could challenge English justifications for conquest.
YPT 37–38However
Starts a new sentence.
Jefferson promised to respect Native land rights. However, his plan to expand credit purchases would create debts intended to pressure Native people into surrendering land.
YPT 40–41After despite, use a noun phrase. After although, use a subject and a verb. In your rubric’s pattern, put a period before however and a comma after it. The contrast must make sense in context.