Cabeza de Vaca response

Cabeza de Vaca was captured after being arrested by the Indians to Spain. In this story he tells us what life was like living with the Indians and how they were different from his kind of living. The audience of this short story is the people who want to learn about de Vaca, mostly students and teachers. People fifteen and over would be able to understand what this story is talking. The Indians are described as these people who pierce themselves and treat their children and women with the upmost respect in some cases. They are respectful of the family of whom a soul has died and fast for three months anjd eat only what is provided by the neighbors, which is not very much. De Vaca describes the work their as bloody, skin cutting, and suffering. As ethos, de Vaca credits his Saviour being his source to continue his journey by saying, " Jesus Christ as my Redeemer shed his blood for me, how much worse it must have been to have thorns on his head!" He explained that the Indians' houses were made out of mats and the floors were made from oyster shells. The natives with some money slept on the shells in animal skins.

Daughters who married were responsible for taking everything her husband kills in hunting or catching to her father-in-laws house without eating any of it. The husbands do not sleep with their wives until after they are discovered pregnant and two years after the baby's birth. The children are breast fed until they are twelve, which to the Natives is old enough to find your own support. This reason being if the Indians were to not eat for three to four days, children not being able to stand the milk will become weaklings and be left to die if they were to ever take a long trip. The only ones that would be able to stay would be a son or brother by being carried across the back of another. The husbands have permission to leave their wives when they come to a disagreement, unless they have children together where he must stay.

Men who have problems with each other box it out until they both are exhausted and ahve to move away with their family until they are calm and collected. When they return, the fighters have to squash the situation as if it never existed.

De Vaca was joyous when they encountered the Christians because he met along the way people who cared about life, lived on a beautiful island, and were actual Christians to the "non" Christians with whom the Indians battled for a moment. After the altercation, the Christians took de Vaca, Castillo, and Dorantes away from communication with the Natives into the forest and to their town where the men helped rebuild their city.