Mary Rowlandson's The Sovereignty and Goodness of God, first published in 1682, is an English Puritan woman's account of her captivity among Native Americans during Metacom's War (1675-76) in southeastern New England. In this volume, 17 related documents support Rowlandson's text, which is reprinted from the earliest surviving edition of the narrative.
Neal Salisbury (Ph. D., University of California, Los Angeles) is a professor of history at Smith College and specializes in the history of American Indians and colonial New England. He is author of Manitou and Providence: Indians, Europeans, and the Making of New England, 1500-1643 (1982) and The Indians of New England: A Critical Bibliography (1982) and is coauthor of The Enduring Vision: A History of the American People (1990). His most recent article, "The Indians' Old World: Native Americans and the Coming of Europeans," appeared in the July 1996 issue of the William and Mary Quarterly.