After looking reading the whole Relación and the Norton, Wiley and Heath editions I struggled to narrow down only five excerpts of what would be featured in my abridged version. I looked for what the Norton, Heath and Wiley had in common to guide my choice. Then decided that if I was going to keep it to just five I should center theme around the theme of pure exploration and the essence of exploration. When explorative narratives are being taught (or read) there is an expectation, especially with the old world/new world “discoveries” things in general that we want to know:
- Why did this person go there?
- Where did they go first?
- What did old America/the new world look like in 15xx? The maps of the new world are amazing to me because of their accuracy and lack there of. I also think that the description of the land, landmarks and bodies of water are interesting. I like to know what explorers saw.
- What notable people did you meet and what were they like? I feel like this is the most common question that piques curiosity for exploration narratives of what were the people the explorers met like, how did they live and what did the teach the explorers and vice versa? This may be my personal bias but when I found that we were reading this particular exploration narrative that is what came to my mind; what were the indigenous populations interactions with individual explorers like?
- Where does this journey end?
- What was gained with this trip?
My selections were shaped around these questions and I did my best to pick chapters that answered these questions.
Letter to the King of Spain: I made the decision to make the first page of Cabeza de Vaca’s narrative the first excerpt of my own mini-collection. This is on page 45-47 in the book. This is an important place to start to me because this is where Cabeza de Vaca started. His letter to the king gives the reader an idea of his purpose, his backstory, where he has come from and why. If the reader is familiar with exploration history this letter’s importance will be immediately recognized (addressed to a monarch of the explorers home country who is the financer of the trip, religious references featured heavily, the plans and goals of the trip are included). If the reader is not as familiar, this letter’s importance will be established as it’s the first part of an abbreviated larger work and explains the goals of the expedition.
Chapters 3/4: How we arrived in Florida/How we entered inland (p. 53-59) Now on mainland modern day Florida, Cabeza de Vaca and his men have arrived and encounter a village of Indians who they have no confrontation with. They travel inland with their four Indian captives who show them maize not yet ripened for harvest at the demand of their captors and take Cabeza de Vaca and his men back to their village. In the village they find items of finery from New Spain left over from a shipwreck. Cabeza de Vaca goes into detail on the ports set up in Florida by Spain and the horrible storms that come through that area.
This would be a longer part of the selected chapters as I have bent the rules and combined two consecutive chapters as one piece but I did this so the readers would see the pattern of travel Cabeza de Vaca took and so the reader would get a feel for how the narrative is written chronologically. We start at the coast getting off the boat and further and further inland we travel with Cabeza de Vaca. It’s a good look into how (in a very detailed way) this exploration went firsthand.
Chapter 12: How the Indians bought us food (p. 85-88) Cabeza de Vaca and company are bought food by the Indians and we are given a look at his misconceptions about Indians. “An hour after our arrival, they began to dance and hold great rejoicing, which lasted all night, although for us there was no joy, festivity nor sleep, awaiting the hour they should make us victims. In the morning they again gave us fish and roots, showing us such hospitality that we were reassured, and lost somewhat the fear of sacrifice (p. 88).” Rumors during the age of exploration (and throughout the Hispanic world) were that Indians were cannibals who practiced human sacrifice and some of those rumors still exist in modern times about the indigenous peoples of the past. Cabeza de Vaca’s experience in this encounter with the Indians can be a learning opportunity for the readers to challenge their own ideas about what their preconceptions are and an account of what actually happened when explorers met indigenous peoples.
Chapter 26: Of the nations and tongues/27: We moved away and were well received (p.129-135) Chapter 26 is Cabeza’s description of all the different cultures of Indigenous peoples as well as their languages. Chapter 27 is Cabeza de Vaca and company moving from tribe to tribe and the Indians he and his band were living with initially and who they lived with next. Still keeping question 4 in mind
I would like to include these chapters also because they show more of the Indians in a dynamic way, their language and culture and treatment of visitors/guests.
Chapter 37: Of what occurred when I wished to return (p.169) We have now gotten to the end of the years long trip and Cabeza de Vaca wraps it up with his journey back returning at the port of Lisbon (Spain) in August. Unlike the beginning where I chose to use the actual first page of the narrative for the end I would choose this entry because this is where the conclusiveness of both his trip and narrative really was. Though the book features one entry after this (I thought it was unnecessary, but it was apart of the full narrative) I don’t think it would add to the abridged experience for a reader.
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