La Relacion Chapter Summary

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Recommended: Early european exploration

The New World: Similarities and Differences
When the first groups of people began migrating to America, they all had different ideas of the way their lives would be different in the New World. Each group came to America pursuing different things: religious freedom, new resources, a different life. Yet regardless of what they came for, they were all yearning for the same thing: a fresh start.
In La Relacion, the narrator and his crew were coming from Spain and landed in what we know today as Tampa Bay, Florida. The main purpose of the explorers was to find gold, take it back to their home country, and receive fame and wealth in return for their discovery. The main leader of the expedition was a Spanish explorer named Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca. He is the narrator of this story, providing the first European account of the interior of the New World. Cabeza de Vaca is primarily concerned with how the king sees him when they return to Spain; he does not want to be seen as a failure. Therefore, when writing his account, he tends to only speak of his own heroic actions. In Of Plymouth Plantation, William …show more content…

For example, in the first paragraph he spoke of how he took the tiller because all of his men were either passed out or too weak to do so. Also, he made it seem like he had eaten nothing but raw corn since they left on their voyage, leaving the other food for his crew. Although he supposedly let them have all the food, he was somehow still stronger than the rest of his men! This was, of course, because he needed the king to see him as the hero of the story. Bradford, on the other hand, did not make his sailors seem helpless. He gave credit where credit was due. He tended to give God the glory for their provisions as well. Also, his crew seemed to overall have a pleasant attitude in comparison to de Vaca’s account. However, that could be due to Vaca’s extreme

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