La relacion cabeza de vaca summary
Background
- Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca was a Spanish conquistador who survived a very disastrous expedition to America and became the first European to cross North America.
- He came from a family of conquistadors, and had been a soldier before going to America.
- Treasurer and second in command in the colonization of territories north and east of the Gulf of Mexico.
- By the time he sailed, Spaniards had conquered the Aztecs of Mexico and the Inca of Peru.
- Pánfilo de Narváez led this expedition, which had 5 ships, but two were lost in a hurricane.
- Two barges (rafts) washed up on Galveston Island, along with around 80 men, but only Cabeza de Vaca and 3 other men survived with the Karankawa Native Americans.
- After six years, he escaped and went back to Spain, where he was appointed governor of a South American colony but fired for his humane treatment of Natives.
- He was exiled to Africa for corruption, but eventually pardoned, ending his days as a judge in Spain.
- The excerpt La Relacion, Cabeza de Vaca - The Bryan Museum VATAL