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23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The best 500 year old account you'll ever read, May 8, 2001
Cabeza de Vaca and some of his fellow Spaniards went through some incredible hardships as some of the first Europeans in the New World. They first set out on an ill-advised voyage from Cuba to Florida, where they lost their ships. They built primitive boats which they intended to sail around the coast to Mexico. They went past Mobile Bay, then cut across the Gulf to Texas, where they were captured by the local tribe. Of the 300 Spaniards who left out on the voyage, only 4 survived to tell the tale. De Vaca spent years as a slave to the Indians. He was half-starved (as were his hosts), regularly beaten, and naked. He eventualy linked up with some of his surviving comrades, including a Moorish slave, and they began an epic journey across what is now the Southwest United States and Northern Mexico. He gained a reputation as a medicine man, and soon had an entourage of thousands that travelled with him from village to village. When he finally reached Spanish settlements on the Pacific, the only thing his fellow 'civilized' men were interested in were his followers, which they saw as easy prey for slaves. De Vaca tried in vain to stop the slavers. This was a man who never lost his faith in God or his faith in man. It is simly an incredible journey, and one that does not get enough attention. Though this account is nearly half a millenium old, the translation is easy to read and not at all boring.
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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good translation of DeVaca's original Relacion., June 13, 1998
By A Customer
This work relates the adventures of a Spaniard who travelled on the first foray into Florida, under the command of a greedy Governor Navarez who was eager to find rich cities to conquer, as Cortez had recently done against the Aztecs. Navarez, however, was no Cortez, and one mistake after another put the entire expedition in jeopardy. De Vaca's account relates what became of this expedition into Florida and the American West. It is no exaggeration to claim that this is one of the most significant books ever to be written, however this particular translation was not without its own flaws. I could imagine a better, easier to read translation than this (this one was first published in 1961). Additions made in brackets were sometimes confusing and broke in without often adding any information that aided in the reading. He does include portions that compare this account with another referred to as the Joint Report which were all right. Descriptions of place would better have been shown on a map (but the book has no maps or illustrations at all). At the close I would have liked to see a concluding bio of De Vaca but instead got an unneccesary Epilogue on the literary significance of the work, after the work has already spoken for itself. The first time I read about this was in Journey Into Darkness by John Upton Terrell, who used this Relacion to tell the story, but failed by often looking back on the event from our own day, as opposed to transporting you back as a translation of the original Relacion should do. In this case the rating is based only on this edition while the story itself is one of the most important works in the world.
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18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Stunning true story, March 18, 1999
After reading Cabeza de Vaca's account, it is hard to believe his tale hasn't been made into an epic movie. Of course, the story's treatment of Indians as real, complex people would not have worked in the era of the cowboy-and-Indian movies. Ironically, now that attitudes toward Native Americans would allow a sensitive treatment, such a vast story would be prohibitively expensive to shoot and take several hours to tell properly. But the payoff would be immense. When the lights came up, the viewers would wonder how they ever could have settled for the mythical movie "Dances with Wolves". Note: Cabeza de Vaca's story is paraphrased in a book called "Journey into Darkness". It helps greatly in understanding the true nature of his journey, telling, for example, what Indian tribes he may have been encountering and where exactly he was at a given time. Incidently, Cabeza de Vaca greatly underestimated the distance he had traveled.
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