Cabeza De Vaca Essay

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Cabeza de Vaca was born in 1490 in the Spanish town of Jerez de la Frontera,near the port at San Lúcar de Barrameda, from where Magellan sailed in 1519 to become the first man to circumnavigate the globe. It was from San Lúcar de Barrameda that Cabeza de Vaca was to begin his first adventure in 1527.

In an expedition to conquer the recently discovered land of Florida. On June 17, 1527, Cabeza de Vaca and nearly 500 men set sail. He did not return to Spain until 1537, one of only four men from the entire expedition to survive storms, shipwreck, disease, starvation, attacks from Native Americans, and the blundering decisions of Narváez, and the only member to return to Spain. Upon his return he gave an official report to the Spanish king of …show more content…

Within months, however, the men lost contact with the ships, and, short of provisions, began to die of starvation and tropical diseases. To make matters worse they were continually attacked by coastal Indian tribes. Deciding that their only chance of survival was to sail west toward what they believed was New Spain, the surviving 250 men fashioned five crude rafts and set sail from the Florida coast. Several of the boats sank when they were pushed far out to sea Cabeza de Vaca's raft with several dozen men managed to land on the eastern coast of present-day Texas. Gradually their numbers were reduced to just four men all of whom figure prominently in the written account. The bulk of the book describes how the four were captured and enslaved by Indians in Texas, their attempts to escape, and the turn of events that led from their enslavement to positions of high honor among their captors as the foreigners gained reputations as divine healers. The book then traces the long march across Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, down through Sonora, Mexico, concluding as Cabeza de Vaca and his comrades are greeted as heroes by the Spanish viceroy in

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