Caveza De Vaca And His Experiences In Native America
“The Relation” by Caveza De Vaca, is a letter in which he writes about the things he encountered and experienced throughout his journey in Native America, aimed at the Spanish crown. His main objective in the letter is to get other conquistadores along with the Spaniard crown to look upon Native Americans as humans instead of savage-animalistic creatures.
Caveza De Vaca is of Spaniard descend, thus, having Spanish customs and beliefs imprinted on him. Going into his quest he carries his customs with him but after observing the behavior of Natives he becomes intrigued and later he realizes that some of the things that certain tribes do are understandable because they adapt the way they live. De Vaca has a long ancestry that served the Spanish crown. His name derives from his mothers’ side, whom also served the Spanish crown and fought the Moors. Caveza De Vaca had an immense amount of quests throughout his life such as wars, being a treasurer on second in command, and numerous sailings.
In the expedition to Native America, Caveza De Vaca had many obstacles such as the terrible loss of 200 men dying during a hurricane, having his own men abandon him, and lastly, he was ship wrecked on Galveston Island where he was one of three survivors, out of 80. After being a survivor, De Vaca became a slave to Natives. He was kept prisoner for two years along the coast of Texas and that’s where he began to observe and analyze the ways of Native Americans. After two years he managed to be released after he showed off his skills as a merchant and healer, although he continued living with Indians for a total of six years. He later returned to Spain in 1545 where he wrote his report (“The Relation”) for the king of Spain.
To start off, De Vaca analyzes numerous Native American tribes throughout his journey. Once he would see their ways, beliefs, and customs, he would then put that information in diaries. In those diaries he would describe in vivid detail, most of the things one needed to know about a tribe. For example, he wrote about the Maliacones and their relationships with their wives, about how they do not rest at night with them. De Vaca describes the Maliacones in every possible way, from their eating habits which included them eating their meat raw to the fact that they left their own men behind if they showed signs of illness during a foreign trip. Furthermore, it was during his encounter with the Maliacones that De Vaca finds himself accepting that some of the Native American ways were just based on their forms of living. During one of the trips with the Maliacones, De Vaca states, “When it happened that any of these people we had left behind gave us a piece of meat, we ate it raw. Had we put it to roast, the first Native that came along would have filched it. Not only did we think it better not to risk this, we were in such a condition that roasted meat would have given us pain. We could digest it more easily raw”, here we can see how De Vaca is adapting to the ways of the Natives. After experiencing their way of living he seems to start to understand that things are done certain ways for a particular reason. In addition, while bonding with many Native groups, De Vaca seems to start having emotional relationships with some of the Natives. A particular group who De Vaca forms a good relationship with is the “Arbadaos”. De Vaca seems to have formed such a good relationship with this particular tribe that when he decides to depart, they supplicate him to stay.
Lastly, in one of the writings of De Vaca, he writes about his meeting with members of the Christian faith and those mean beg De Vaca to help them aliment themselves. De Vaca had a relationship with Natives who later helped the Christians by feeding them. Even after De Vaca helped the men of Christian faith, one particular man was enraged at the fact that De Vaca had a bond with the Native Americans, that man was Diego De Alcaraz. He tried to destroy the tie De Vaca had with the Natives by trying to dirty the profound image De Vaca had. De Vaca later realized Diego De Alcaraz enslaved Natives and boarded them on trains. Cabeza De Vaca attempted to let the Natives know about what Alcaraz is doing but they refused to believe him, following that, was his arrest by the men of Christian faith. His arrest was the primary reason De Vaca had a bad bad image in the eyes of the Spaniards.
Overall, De Vaca encountered many things and grew to understand the ways of certain tribes such as the Arbadaos and the Maliacones. De Vaca might have stayed in between for not being able to choose sides between the Native Americans and the Spanish, but he set his mind to try to persuade the Spaniard crown that Natives were not animals but humans and equal to the Spaniards. In his overall experience De Vaca learned about customs of humans and grew into them after living around them for years, at the end he stood up for Native Americans since he identified himself as half Native and half Spaniard.
