Cabeza De Vaca A Land So Strange Summary

“The Epic Journey of Cabeza de Vaca: A land So Strange” written by Andres Resendez takes place in the sixteenth century with Spanish conquistadors searching for treasures in northern Mexico, and the state of Florida that only a handful have traveled into, leaving this unknown territory to be speculated about. Spanish conquistadors involved in the journey to explore Florida consisted of Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, Andrés Dorantes, Alonso del Castillo, and Estebanico Dorantes. The goal of journeying to Florida was mainly to bring treasure that was said to have been found in the Native Americans lands in Rio de las Palmas, México. However, due to the lack of pilots experienced with the Rio de las Palmas area the expedition was the result of the

Diego was said to be a well known jokester, “plump master of Cuba who was said to be first-in-line to conquer Mexico,” as said in the book along with being money hungry, he went on two consecutive expeditions in two years leaving no supplies or money to go to another to follow a lead on the famous dream of El Dorado. Desperately, Velazquez convinced a wealthy man by the name of, Hernan Cortes, to fund and lead the expedition with responsibilities of bringing a substantial amount of treasures to him to give to the King of Spain in return of fame and fortune. Hernan Cortes was a very “vivacious, likable, and literate; he could even pepper his speech with Latin.” However, Cortes ambitious behaviour got the best of him when he departed from Velazquez before he could arrive on the boat before departing onto their journey, for Cortes wanted to take all the credit and treasures for himself and took the boat and crew, leaving with no contact for over two months. Velazquez wants to give Cortes the benefit of the doubt decided to wait to hear word from him, however, gave up when there were rumours of Cortes and his men meeting some Native Americans whom gave them large amounts of wealthy possessions and gave them shelter and became allies; soon Cortes sent samples of the treasures to the King to receive more funds and crew members to help the mining of the silver and gold that was plentiful in those