Alvar Nunez Cabeza De Vaca Analysis

A Perspective View of the Native People in the New World Seen by the Eyes of Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca and John Smith
When the first explorers arrived in America from Europe, they encountered many different indigenous peoples of the land. Every pioneer had their own experiences with the native people, varying from educational and boring to threatening and appalling. Many of the meetings became more and more intense as interactions between the explorers and natives became recurrent. These unfriendly encounters became a burden on the relationships of the settlers and often led to some type of hostility. The intense confrontations usually led to the imprisonment of some explorers by the native tribes. Many explorers wrote about their experiences …show more content…
Their weapons are bows and arrows, which they use with dexterity” (Cabeza de Vaca 45). He depicts how these Natives showed love for their offspring more than anything in the world and the treatment they showed towards them. When daughters are married, they must take everything that her husband has caught from fishing or hunting to her father’s house immediately and then it is distributed to her husband through her father’s female carrier. As for sons, if one may pass away, the entire village mourns with the family. The dead are eventually buried after the funeral rights have …show more content…
Cabeza de Vaca seems to be a much stronger and righteous man than John Smith. His story tells of the evil and darkness that surrounded the explorers in their conquest of the New World, by taking the side of the Native tribes and the injustices that they endured by the European explorers. As for Smith, he brought about the massacre of many Native people and he solely fought on the side of the Europeans. His writings seemed to be over-exaggerated than many others and more