Relevance of Cabeza De Vaca’s Narative to Modern Day Society Adventures In The Unknown Interior of America, a narrative by Cabeza De Vaca, contains many pieces of information that are applicable to present day society and the culture that has been created. The values of today’s moral code and the moral code of those who lived in the fifteen-hundreds, whether or not they knew Spain as their mother country or America to be the only country, have similar qualities. Not only has moral code contained similar values but it also contains comparable accommodation to different cultures living among one another. As the values of the Indians, the natives that Cabeza De Vaca encountered on his eight year journey, that were roaming the south are compared to the moral values of the Spanish and then to the …show more content…
As the narrative would describe them, the women of the indian tribes were to carry out labor intensive tasks and did many things around the camps which include cooking, cleaning, but also carrying heavy loads of water ,and if the tribe was nomadic the women were to carry all the belongings including the tent while the males of the tribe stood by and were only put in charge of hunts and battles with others when necessary. This shows that women were very capable and independent just as they are today. Women today are breaking free of the stereotypes of being dependent on men and are excelling at business, science ,and math related fields of work. Single mothers also show their strength by supporting their children without a husband in their lives even though they often lean on their family to gather strength and courage to move on in hardships. Families are often the backbone of todays culture yet divorce is a hand at play when things do not go as planned with the husband and wife and the children of the relationship stay extremely important whether they stay
Cabeza de Vaca survived by using intelligent strategies that kept him alive just barely. Cabeza used his great communication skills for survival. He was also an amazing healer. Another reason is he had amazing talent with navigation. Overall, Cabeza was a strategist, and he was very smart.
In "The Narrative of Cabeza de Vaca", Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca’s fight for survival, while being deprived of the basic necessities of life, proves there is a change in him from the beginning of the narrative to the end. This transformation, though, affected multiple aspects of de Vaca, including his motives, character, and perspective of civilization. Cabeza de Vaca’s experience is crucial to the history of America, as well as Spain, because it was one of the first accounts that revealed a certain equilibrium between the mighty and superior Spaniard and the Indian, once the Spaniard was stripped of his noble stature. The idea of nakedness is consistent throughout the narrative and conveys the tribulations he experienced and a sort of balance between him and the Indians. The original intentions of conquering and populating the area between Florida and a northern part of Mexico quickly shifted Cabeza de Vaca’s focus to the need to survive. His encounter with different Indian tribes and ability to get along with them (no matter what the means), and then prosper as a medicine man, shows that through his beliefs in Christian faith, and in himself, he turned the failure into an unexpected success.
Throughout time, stories have been passed down from generation to generation in order to make sense of our world and to share that understanding with others. “Los tres hermanos (The Three Brothers)” and “El indito de las cien vacas (The Indian and the Hundred Cows)” are two Tales of the Hispanic Southwest that I feel the reader could truly relate to in terms of the important moral lessons that were meant to be taught, inferred and understood. The lesson in “Los tres hermanos (The Three Brothers)” involves understanding that the characters involved failed to reflect on the needs of the thirsty, hungry and poor, the lonely, as well as the elderly and are ultimately fairly served by means of moral ruin, death, and worst of all, eternal damnation, while “El indito de las cien vacas (The Indian and the Hundred Cows)” in due course, involves the notion that God helps those who help themselves.
Significantly, Welch deconstructs the myth that Plains Indian women were just slaves and beasts of burden and presents them as fully rounded women, women who were crucial to the survival of the tribal community. In fact, it is the women who perform the day-to-day duties and rituals that enable cultural survival for the tribes of...
Modern day interpretations of pioneer women are mostly inaccurate and romanticized as easy, and luxurious in a new land however, that is far from the truth. Overall, pioneer women had many jobs that were underappreciated, they weren’t valued as men but without them many people in the West wouldn’t have survived and had to leave so much to go on a trip that took weeks and was no vacation, because women pioneers would have to cook and clean and take care of her children and husband, while on a wagon with having to adapt to the changing weather and climates, they did jobs that were considered as “men’s jobs” and worked as hard as men to survive in the west during the Manifest Destiny. Therefore, women pioneers were overlooked as an insignificant part of the Westward Expansion.
Both Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca and John Smith hold different attitudes regarding their accounts of Indian life. The difference in attitudes may have resulted from the difference in treatments that each man received while in captivity.
The essay starts with the “Columbian Encounter between the cultures of two old worlds “ (98). These two old worlds were America and Europe. This discovery states that Native Americans contributed to the development and evolution of America’s history and culture. It gives the fact that indians only acted against europeans to defend their food, territory, and themselves.
Cabeza de Vaca, like many other Spaniards, wanted to seek fortune in the new world, but things did not go as planned, and he eventually lost everything. Although he came to conquer in the name of Spain, he ended up living amongst the Native Americans in need for survival and became very close to them. Although originally the Spaniards were very narrow minded and believed the Indians were uncivilized and barbaric, Cabeza de Vaca shortly found out that they were not uncivilized, but quite the opposite. He saw that they were just as human as the Spaniards were and were no less than they were. His perception of humanity altered as a result of living with “the others.”
They were mostly in charge of raising children and keeping the house clean and properly functioning. They were mostly financially dependent on their husbands because it was it was considered odd for them to earn money themselves. When factories and new machines begin to revolutionize the American economy, women's roles were changed entirely. The Marketing Revolution creates opportunities for women to earn their own wages and buy things, like clothes and food, which they may not have been able to buy previously themselves without the permission of their husbands to use their money. Women were trying to change the views of gender roles that was implied in society. Most of these women had left their families and worked to achieve a future for themselves while only a small portion of them decided to stay with family back
However, Brown claims on how gender roles and identities shaped the perceptions and interactions of both English settlers and the Native American civilizations. Both Indian and English societies have critical social orders between males and females. In addition, their culture difference reflexes to the English and Indian males and females’ culpabilities as well. However, the Indian people put too much responsibility to their women. Women were in charge as agriculturalists, producers and customers of vital household goods and implements. They were also in control for providing much of the material culture of daily needs such as clothing, domestic gears and furnishings like baskets, bedding and household building. Native American females were expected to do a range of tasks. On the other hand, the Indian men only cleared new planting ground and constantly left the villages to fish and hunt. Clearly, Native Indian women had more tasks than the men did. Therefore, Indian males’ social and work roles became distinctive from females’ at the moment of the huskanaw (a rite of passage by which Virginia Indian boys became men) and reminded so until the men were too old to hunt or go to war. English commentator named George Percy underlines, “The men take their pleasure in hunting and their wares, which they are in continually”. “On the other hand the women were heavily burdened with”, says other commentator, John Smith. Gender is directly referential in an important sense, describing how sexual division was understood in the social order. Consequently, Native American people prescribed the gender social practice that women should be loaded with range of liabilities than the
When Spaniards colonized California, they invaded the native Indians with foreign worldviews, weapons, and diseases. The distinct regional culture that resulted from this union in turn found itself invaded by Anglo-Americans with their peculiar social, legal, and economic ideals. Claiming that differences among these cultures could not be reconciled, Douglas Monroy traces the historical interaction among them in Thrown Among Strangers: The Making of Mexican Culture in Frontier California. Beginning with the missions and ending in the late 1800s, he employs relations of production and labor demands as a framework to explain the domination of some groups and the decay of others and concludes with the notion that ?California would have been, and would be today, a different place indeed if people had done more of their own work.?(276) While this supposition may be true, its economic determinism undermines other important factors on which he eloquently elaborates, such as religion and law. Ironically, in his description of native Californian culture, Monroy becomes victim of the same creation of the ?other? for which he chastises Spanish and Anglo cultures. His unconvincing arguments about Indian life and his reductive adherence to labor analysis ultimately detract from his work; however, he successfully provokes the reader to explore the complexities and contradictions of a particular historical era.
The Shawnees were a patrilineal tribe meaning they are traced through the males of the family. Although men were a main part of the culture, each village had an informal group of women who governed certain tribal rituals and set dates for many activities. Women were also allowed to save captives and prisoners. This practice was foreign to the time period because women do not usually have a voice. Children are inferior and are required to learn the ways to be able to be an active part in the tribe when they become adults. After many years the Shawnees were more dependent on the outside, yet they still followed a lifestyle based on hunting and gathering.
... hardships he must face. Differing from other Spanish explorers Cabeza does not use violence as a means of spreading his word and eventually gains utter respect from the Indians he interacts with and even the respect of Indians that he has never met. Toward the end of the sixteenth century, Spanish explorers spread a wave of bloodshed and disease through the New World killing almost all of the natives indigenous to the land. Cabeza de Vaca stands apart from his counterparts in the fact that he used peace and kindness to win the hearts of the natives and successfully converted the Indians he met into Christians.
...s others whether it is one of their own or someone completely different. This variance shows that instead of being vastly different as de Vaca often describes, the two groups were in reality equals. The best insight is de Vaca’s own words on the matter. At various times he describes the Indians as “savages”. However, at the end of his journey, he states that “Clearly, to bring all these people to Christianity and subjection to Your Imperial Majesty, they must be won by kindness, the only certain way” (123). Cabeza de Vaca’s transformation from a condescending invader to a man declaring the need for kindness towards natives proves that his ideas towards Indians had transformed from superiority towards equality. If Cabeza de Vaca’s advice to governmental power on expansion had been heeded it is possible that the horrors of future imperialism would have been averted.
In the novel Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, women of the Ibo tribe are terribly mistreated, and viewed as weak and receive little or no respect outside of their role as a mother. Tradition dictates their role in life. These women are courageous and obedient. These women are nurturers above all and they are everything but weak.