On June 27, 1527, the Narváez expedition set sailed from Spain with the objective to colonize Florida. A series of disasters led them to arrive there with limited supplies. A combination of starvation, disease, and conflict with various Native Americans tribes further led to extreme casualties for the expedition as it trekked along the Gulf Coast from Florida, before shipwrecking in South Texas. Over the course of the next 8 years, the survivors, led by Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, were enslaved by various native tribes in Southwestern North America. By 1536, he and three others were all that remained of the 300-men strong expedition upon their encounter with Spanish slavers in New Spain. They would return to Spain in 1537. That same year, Cabeza de Vaca wrote down his experiences in America as The Chronicles of the Narvaez Expedition. Throughout the book, Cabeza de Vaca repeatedly …show more content…
Despite this, the expedition survivors’ situation hardly improved. As Cabeza de Vaca makes note, the Native Americans, survived on a subsistence hunter-gatherer lifestyle, and thus, hardly had food for themselves, and at times “their hunger was so great that they ate spiders and ant eggs, worms, lizards, and salamanders, and serpents, and vipers whose bite is fatal.” (TCNE, Ch. 18, pgs. 50). Traveling with the natives for some time, Cabeza de Vaca notes that he and the survivors also went “three or four days without food” (TCNE, Ch. 18, pg. 51). This too would become a recurring event, with Cabeza de Vaca and the other being constantly on the move searching for food and going days without eating. Eventually, Cabeza de Vaca and three other survivors, Andrés Dorantes de Carranza, Alonso del Castillo Maldonado, and Estevanico fled their current captors (TCNE, Ch. 20, pgs.
In 1528 a survivor, named Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, of the failed Spanish expedition
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.
A man who had to devour anything he could see. A man who had to drink water from a horse container to survive. A man who had to make his own hole for warmth. That man was Cabeza de Vaca. During Cabeza de Vaca's expedition, he shipwrecked near present day Galveston Island, Texas. This caused a life threatening situation. Cabeza de Vaca survived his eight year journey for three reasons: his wilderness skills, his success as a healer, and his respect for the Native Americans.
In 1539 Hernando de Soto and five hundred adventurers began on a journey of exploration that would take 4 years and would travel through 10 states in the southeast United States. His goal was to discover a source of wealth, preferably gold, and around his mines establish a settlement. During his travels through La Florida he encountered numerous groups of native peoples, making friends of some and enemies of others. His expedition was not the first in La Florida; however, it was the most extensive. In its aftermath, thousands of Indians would die by disease that the Spaniards brought from the Old World. De Soto would initially be remembered as a great explorer but, would be later viewed as a destroyer of native culture. However, in truth de Soto was neither a hero or a villain but rather an adventurer.
Cabeza de Vaca stories is a conversion narrative, which the conversion is the between Cabeza de Vaca 's thoughts of the Native Americans. In the beginning of Castaways, Cabeza de Vaca did not interact with the natives as much as he does later in his story. In chapter three of his book, Castaways, he says that the Indians and his group, Spaniards did not get along. Once his group reached Florida he states:
First to start out, we should get some facts straight. A conquistador is basically a Spanish conqueror. Their main goals were to search for gold and other riches from the Caribbean and draw them back to the mainland. The absolute most important conquistador in all of history is Hernan Cortes.
Raleigh had given up hope for settlement, but in 1591 he had his hopes high again. He sent another expedition to America but it had failed. In 1595 he decided to go for himself. He ended up on Guiana instead of Virginia. 15 years later he tried once again and failed. He tried again in 1603. This time he sent Bartholomen Gilbert. He and his crew were killed by Indians.
He eventually made it back to Paraguay and tried to set policies aligned with his new perception of humanity that benefited the Indians, but they chained him up and sent him to Spain. Had Cabeza de Vaca not been an advocate for the Indians, he would have remained in Paraguay. The consequences of the shift in his thinking of humanity, that the Indians should be treated as well as the Spaniards, were false charges of mistreating the Indians and being unable to return to the Americas. He stayed in Spain until his death in
In 1502 they sailed to the Hispanola, the main Spanish base in America. Vasco had a very rough time making a living on the island. For a time he even raised pigs there.
It seems that the winter of 1609 was so bad that the many of the colonists died of starvation. They were made to eat their own excrement and flesh. They ate Indians and animals from the colony, including horses, dogs and rats, or anything they could find. But this was hard to believe, as the island was full of food. Maybe the cause of death was drought. Scientists have discovered that the worst drought in many years was between 1604 and 1609. They can tell this because of the tree samples that have been taken. No water meant that crops wouldn't grow, and animals would die, as well as humans. The problem with this theory is that down river, there was excess food. The men could have been too weak to gather food. Why?
The Columbian Exchange had a dramatic and negative effect on native cultures of the Americas, because it almost completely destroyed both the population and culture of native Americans. As an example, Agustín Muñoz Sanz (2012) argued, “in less than a century, several tens of millions of indigenous inhabitants disappeared from their own map. For example, 90% of the Caribbean and Arawak population died in the next twenty years following the arrival of Christopher Columbus.” The Caribbean islands were just the first to receive the conquerors and the subsequent act of desolation. As the conquerors spread through the continent, it would almost immediately follow a similar situation of death and destruction. The combination of disease and the action
...of factors, ranging from Spanish designs for the Armada, to the inhospitable weather of the North Sea, to English tactical skill in negating Spanish superiority in numbers. The subsequent fate of those who were captured by the English or the local population varied. Some were killed outright, while others were stripped of anything of value and then killed. A small minority, Captain Cuellar among them, were able to make their way to sympathetic territory with the help of the local population and eventually made their way back to Spain, but the vast majority who became shipwrecked never saw Spain again.
Though it was one of the best cash crops during the Columbian Exchange, sugar production was a labor-intensive process that required good timing and good weather. But what was needed the most was good and cheap labor and to provide the initial labor force, the Native Americans were used (Dunn, R.). However the working conditions were terrible for these people. Enslaved people would work six days a week for ten to twelve hours a day - from 6 a.m. to 12 noon with an hour break, and then 1 p.m. until dark. During harvest time, the labor was even tougher with the mills running twenty-four hours a day with slaves working long, grueling shifts. Slaves would be provided with food by plantation owners but it was often in small quantities which resulted in poor nutrition for slaves (Dunn, R.). However by 1600, more than half of Native Americans population in the Caribbean and Atlantic Coast became ill and eventually die; this was mainly due to disease but also due to harsh and gruesome labor
On June 17, 1527, Cabeza de Vaca set sail on the order to conquer and govern the lands from the Rio Grande to the cape of Florida. However, during his journey he encountered much devastation such as the wrecking of his ship which resulted in his separation from the majority of his Christian companions. Praying to God after every ordeal, Cabeza routinely sought after his Christian religion to guide him through his unexpected journey. While traveling through the interior of America, he also encountered many native tribes which inhabited the land. While most of the Spanish conquistadors in the sixteenth century spread their religion through warlike ways and rearranged societies for the sole purpose of their own economic gain, Cabeza thought that kindness was the only way to win the hearts of the natives and without clothes or any material possessions, he upheld his promise and beliefs. After being enslaved by the natives Cabeza moved from tribe to tribe with the hope of finding his fellow Christians while praising and thanking God that his life was spared. Moving from tribe to tribe as a medicine man Cabeza still lived by his Christian teachings and implemented them into the way that he communicated with the natives, ultimately converting many tribes into Christianity. The religion of Christianity directly influenced the way in which Cabeza de Vaca interacted and felt toward the natives, thus throughout the duration of his time traveling across the interior of America, Cabeza was able to continually practice his religious beliefs while also being able to convert many Indians to his religion at the same time.
Cabeza de Vaca’s Adventures in the Unknown Interior of America shows that while Christians thought themselves superior to natives, both sides were diverse and could commit good, bad, or neutral behavior towards each other. Therefore, the Indians and the Christians were much more similar than different. This is apparent in de Vaca’s accounts of Indian to Indian behavior, Christian to Christian behavior, and Indian to Christian behavior (and vice-versa).