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Native american culture during colonization
Spanish colonization questions
Early american settlers
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More handpicked essays just for you.
Native american culture during colonization
Spanish colonization questions
Early american settlers
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
He is writing a letter to the King and explaining their hardships across unknown geographic areas and how some survived the expedition and others did not. Nunez Cabeza De Vaca and his people came across Indians throughout their trip whom they did not get along with because of
The Conquistador of the New World Cabeza de vaca had a purpose for taking sail in 1527. Cabeza de vaca wanted to establish settlements along the gulf coast. Cabeza de vaca's ship went off course so they had to build rafts and leave the ship after they left the ships a strong wind blew them out into the open sea. Some people say he landed in modern day galveston. Which he was healed captive as a slave for a tribe called charrucos, he was healed as a healer.
In this paper, the epic journey and expedition of Cabeza de Vaca would be discussed that why is his tale significant to understand the Spanish invasion of the Americas, what communication difficulties did he faced and what were the main aspects of his journey and our learning’s about native societies. 1. Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca (c.1490-c.1560) was born in Jeréz de la Frontera, Spain, to a respectable family; his initial profession was in the military. It was from San Lúcar de Barrameda that Cabeza de Vaca was to start his first venture in 1527 and, he was delegated second in charge of an expedition headed up by Panfilo de Narváez, who needed to assert the domain from Florida to Mexico for Spain. . Cabeza de Vaca's family had a long history of renowned support of Spanish eminence.
Bartolome De Las Casas in the excerpt, A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies, criticizes the tortures inflicted on the indigenous peoples of the West Indies. De Las Casas supports his claim by arguing that the native peoples of the New World are equally holy as Europeans; Native Americans are kind people waiting to be converted. The author’s purpose is to advocate for the indigenous peoples in order to convince the people of Spain that the Native Americans are kind, not savages, contradicatory to what Sepulveda wrote. The author writes in a knowledgable and a matter-of-fact tone for the educated Catholic people of Spain, whose only knowledge of the Native Americans are from Sepulveda’s book filled with fallacies.
The story is described in the primary individual by Estevanico, a Moroccan slave who has been taken by his Spanish expert, Andrés de Dorantes, on an endeavor to the New World. The campaign lands in Florida in the region of what is currently Tampa Bay. Under the administration of Pánfilo de Narváez, the men deserted their boats and travel inland to search for gold. As they voyage northward, they confront resistance by indigenous tribes, experience the ill effects of ailment and starvation, and dispute with each other. Inside a year there are just four survivors: Cabeza de Vaca, the treasurer of the undertaking; Alonso del Castillo, a youthful aristocrat, Andrés de Dorantes, one of the skippers; and his Moroccan slave, Mustafa, whom the other
Cabeza de Vaca attitude towards the new world was that of suffering and starvation. During his travels, he ate very little, mostly deer-tallow and at one point powdered straw. They did not eat during the day and ate very little at night. Cabeza de Vaca and his men grew very tired and hungry, but could not let the Native Americans see this suffering because they were upholding their authority over them. Cabeza de Vaca’s description of the terrain in some parts differed greatly from that of Columbus in that Columbus stated that the terrain he saw was rich lush lands with warm air and year round green
Throughout history, there have been many literary studies that focused on the culture and traditions of Native Americans. Native writers have worked painstakingly on tribal histories, and their works have made us realize that we have not learned the full story of the Native American tribes. Deborah Miranda has written a collective tribal memoir, “Bad Indians”, drawing on ancestral memory that revealed aspects of an indigenous worldview and contributed to update our understanding of the mission system, settler colonialism and histories of American Indians about how they underwent cruel violence and exploitation. Her memoir successfully addressed past grievances of colonialism and also recognized and honored indigenous knowledge and identity.
However, the Natives had not done anything wrong to make the Spaniards act to cruel towards them. Las Casas wrote in great detail what the Spaniards did. He wrote of the destruction and slaughter that the Spanish brought to the Natives. Las Casas wrote about indians being thrown into pits of stakes. He wrote of children being torn away from their mothers and killed.
Petalesharo’s writing reflected the treatment of Native Americans during the 1800s. Being a Native American himself, Petalesharo was able to give perspective on a point in history typically viewed from a white man’s opinion. The excerpt “Petalesharo” explains how the Native American was able “to prevent young women captured by other tribes from being sacrificed”, making Petalesharo well liked by the Americans (588). Petalesharo gave the “Speech of the Pawnee Chief” infront of Americans to convey the differences between Native Americans and Americans through emotion, logic, and credibility, which showed how the two groups will never be the same, but still can coexist in the world together.
Straight off he claims, “From the fact that the Indians are barbarians it does not necessarily follow that they are incapable of government and have to be ruled by others, except that they have to be taught about the catholic faith and to be admitted to the holy sacraments. They are not ignorant, inhuman, or bestial.” (pg.3 paragraph 1) De La Casa acknowledged that, while their practices were less evolved than the Spanish, it did not mean they were any less human or developed than the Spanish, and only need a guiding hand to the Catholic faith. He described how the Spanish treated the natives like dogs, forcing them to mine for precious minerals, and compared the Conquistadors to Romans. He wrote an argument defending the natives, explaining they were not any less intelligent then the Spanish and “…they are so skilled in every mechanical art…”
Moreover, in 1537, another Spanish explorer known as Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, wrote a book titled La Relación, where he explained the obstacles him and his crew had to face during the Narvaez expedition in 1527 to the Spanish King, Charles I. In connection to all the men who sailed “from Cuba to Tampa Bay in present-day Florida” only “Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca and three other men survived the expedition, but only after enduring a nine-year, six-hundred-mile trek across Texas and Mexico and enslavement by Indians…….” In my opinion, this letter gives the reader a much clearer understanding of the things that Cabeza de Vaca saw during his journey because he writes his letters using words like “my”, “I”, and “me” which makes it clear to us
The treatment of the native inhabitants varied among the three explorers. The worst treatment of the natives was seen in great detail through the perspective of De Las Casas. During his expedition in the Indies, he and his comrades killed millions of the natives to take everything and anything they wanted. He stated, “And thus they have deprived the Indians of their lives and souls, for the millions I mentioned have died without the Faith and without the benefit of the sacraments. This is a well-known and proven fact which even the tyrant Governors, themselves killers, know and admit.
In 1492 Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue. We all know this catchy tune right? But what we don’t know, is what Columbus thought when he arrived in the North America or what he though of the Native Americans he met. In fact, we don’t know much about all the explorers after Columbus and what they thought. Each explore had their own view of the Native Americans, and three great examples are Columbus, Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda and Bartolomé de Las Casas
These differences were also smaller details under the larger ideas of barbarianism, new cultures, and the even bigger idea of inhumanity. The Spanish saw the Native Americans as slaves because they showed to be hard laborers and gave into the Spanish power. The Native Americans had a natural knack for manual tasks, so much that most Spaniards compared them to insects because both insects and Native Americans could do certain tasks that normal humans, such as high class Spaniards, could not. The Spaniards would never do such work as they believed that work was meant for slaves. When the Spanish took over the Aztec capital city, Sepúlveda remarks of how the Native Americans were “oppressed and fearful at the beginning.”
Christopher Columbus and Hernan Cortes were both famous Spanish adventurers during the Age of Exploration. When the explorers came upon land, they encountered two different cultures. In 1492, Columbus encountered the Taino people, and in 1520, Cortes encountered the Aztecs. The two cultures that the men encountered were different in more ways than they were similar in regards to how the natives treated the men, what weapons they had and their war-like behavior, their technologically advancements, their housing and architectural structures, and even their religion.