Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses racism, violence, enslavement, sexual assault, child death, and suicide. Additionally, the source material uses offensive terms for Indigenous Americans throughout, which is replicated in this guide only in direct quotes of the source material.

One morning, in July 1672, in Lancaster, Massachusetts, Mary Rowlandson is collecting eggs at her home when Edmund Parker, a poor farmer, comes running up begging for her assistance with his daughter, Bess, who is about to give birth. The other women in town have refused to help Bess because she got pregnant out of wedlock while in indentured servitude to a deacon in Roxbury. Mary agrees to assist the teenager and hurries to Edmund’s small hut. Mary tries to get Bess to confess the name of the man who impregnated her, but Bess refuses to give his name.

Bess gives birth to a dark-skinned child she names Silvanus. Edmund tells Mary the father is a Black enslaved man also working at the deacon’s home and that Bess is in love with him. Mary returns home.