E-Reader Assignment
The student will select any 5Primary Articles or Documentsand 5 Secondary Articles or Documents(the readings or documents within the chapters, not the chapters). Click the chapters
and a selection of readings or documents within will appear under each chapter you select from
the actual Online E- Reader itself and complete the assignment by reading, writing, thinking and typing it up.
Each submission is worth 10 points for each primary and secondary writeup making the total assignment 100 points.
Title of the Reading centered and Italicized.
Each of the responses to the 5 the student will select and complete will be the same throughout.
There will be 4 paragraphs done for each of the selected 5 readings.
-The First Paragraph will consist or contain the actual student’s reading and summation of the
selected document or reader. The student should focus on what the document or the selected
reading emphasizes or concentrates on that deals with the actual important summation in its
scope.
-The Second Paragraph will have the student focus and concentrate on the main point of the
selected reading. This is not a repeat of the first paragraph and will be graded entirely upon the
student’s ability to really focus on the main point or level of understanding of deriving and analyzing the readings main point.
-The Third Paragraph will next require the students to really concentrate on the overall impact
from the main point of the selected readings place and significance in history during the period in
which the readings are addressing. Again, the student should not repeat themselves and assume
that it is like the first and second paragraph and recycle their answer. This demands that the
student to concentrate and write up the overall impact the main point has or plays on the topic
from the selected readings.
-The Fourth Paragraph should only deal with the overall importance from the main point from the
selected readings that the student has chosen. I will expect and require that the students to stay
away from repeating themselves from the previous 3 paragraphs, but instead focus on the
importance the main topic or point is stressing as it relates to history that the reading is covering
or addressing.
E-Readers are due sporadically throughout the semester. Please check the
calendar on when each assignment is due.
The tenth and final one is due on May 1,2020
at 11:00 pm on the website Turnitin.com No Late Work
Accepted
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Treaty between Spain and
Portugal Concluded at Tordesillas
(June 7, 1494)
AS THE AGE OF EXPLORATION RAMPED UP IN LATE 15TH CENTURY EUROPE, SPANISH AND POR-
TUGUESE SHIPS sailed the high seas in search of trade, loot, and opportunities for potential colonization.
The beauty of the New World, and incredible opportunities that it provided were well known, and the
avaricious monarchs of Spain, Ferdinand and Isabella, were determined to claim everything there for
themselves. In furtherance of this goal, they approached Pope Alexander VI, himself a Spaniard, and
requested a Papal Bull declaring the New World to belong to Spain. Portugal, however, who had a
much greater navy than Spain did, was unwilling to be left out of the action and insisted on receiving
what they considered to be their fair share of “undiscovered” and “unexplored” lands. (These lands
were, of course, neither undiscovered, nor unexplored. This mattered not a bit to the Pope, as the people
who inhabited these mysterious regions were not Christians.) The Pope complied and divided the world
between Spain and Portugal, from north to south, at a point about 300 miles west of the Cape Verde
Islands. Neither side, however, was allowed to take lands that were ruled by a Christian monarch.
Portugal, who received everything east of the line, wasn’t happy with what it got, and felt that Spain,
who had been given carte blanche to exploit everything west of the line, had gotten the better deal.
After several years of complaining on Portugal’s part, both sides finally met on June 7, 1494, at
Tordesillas, in Spain, to sort things out. There they signed the Treaty of Tordesillas, which moved
the boundary line almost 1200 miles farther west, gave Portugal access to Brazil, Africa and the East,
and Spain most of the New World.
Don Ferdinand and Dona Isabella, by the grace of God king and queen of Castile, Leon, Ara-
gon, Sicily, Granada, Toledo, Valencia, Galiciaj Majorca Seville, Sardinia, Cordova, Corsica,
Murcia, Jaen, Algarve, Algeciras, Gibraltar, and the Canary Islands, count and countess of
Barcelona, lord and lady of Biscay and Molina, duke and duchess of Athens and Neopatras,
Source: Davenport, Frances Gardiner, European Treaties Bearing on the History of the United States to 1648.
Washington, DC: The Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1917.
2
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Treaty between Spain and Portugal Concluded at Tordesillas (June 7, 1494)
3
count and countess of Roussillon and Cerdagne, marquis and marchioness of Oristano and
Gociano, together with the Prince Don John, our very dear and very beloved first-born son,
heir of our aforesaid kingdoms and lordships. Whereas by Don Enrique Enriques, our chief
steward, Don Gutierre de Cardenas, chief commissary of Leon, our chief auditor, and Doc-
tor Rodrigo Maldonado, all members of our council, it was treated, adjusted, and agreed for
us and in our name and by virtue of our power with the most serene Dom John, by the grace
of God, king of Portugal and of the Algarves on this side and beyond the sea in Africa, lord of
Guinea, our very dear and very beloved brother, and with Ruy de Sousa, lord of Sagres and
Berenguel, Dom Joao de Sousa, his son, chief inspector of weights and measures of the said
Most Serene King our brother, and Ayres de Almada, magistrate of the civil cases in his court
and member of his desembargo, all members of the council of the aforesaid Most Serene
King our brother, [and acting] in his name and by virtue of his power, his ambassadors, who
came to us in regard to the controversy over what part belongs to us and what part to the said
Most Serene King our brother, of that which up to this seventh day of the present month of
June, the date of this instrument, is discovered in the ocean sea, in which said agreement our
aforesaid representatives promised among other things that within a certain term specified in
it we should sanction, confirm, swear to, ratify, and approve the above-mentioned agreement
in person: we, wishing to fulfill and fulfilling all that which was thus adjusted, agreed upon,
and authorized in our name in regard to the above-mentioned, ordered the said
instrument
of the aforesaid agreement and treaty to be brought before us that we might see and examine
it, the tenor of which, word for word, is as follows:
In the name of God Almighty, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, three truly separate and
distinct persons and only one divine essence. Be it manifest and known to all who shall see
this public instrument, that at the village of Tordesillas, on the seventh day of the month
of June, in the year of the nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ 1494, in the presence of us, the
secretaries, clerks, and notaries public subscribed below, there being present the honorable
Don Enrique Enriques, chief steward of the very exalted and very mighty princes, the lord
and lady Don Ferdinand and Dona Isabella, by the grace of God king and queen of Castile,
Leon, Aragon, Sicily, Granada, etc., Don Gutierre de Cardenas, chief auditor of the said
lords, the king and queen, and Doctor Rodrigo Maldonado, all members of the council of the
said lords, the king and queen of Castile, Leon, Aragon, Sicily, Granada, etc., their qualified
representatives of the one part, and the honorable Ruy de Sousa, lord of Sagres and Beren-
guel, Dom Juan de Sousa, his son, chief inspector of weights and measures of the very exalted
and very excellent lord Dom John, by the grace of God king of Portugal and of the Algarves
on this side and beyond the sea in Africa, lord of Guinea, and Ayres de Almada, magistrate
of civil cases in his court and member of his desembargo, all of the council of the said lord
King of Portugal, and his qualified ambassadors and representatives, as was proved by both
the said parties by means of the letters of authorization and procurations from the said lords
their constituents, the tenor of which, word for word, is as follows:
[Here follow the full powers granted by Ferdinand and Isabella to Don Enrique Enriques,
Don Gutierre de Cardenas, and Dr. Rodrigo Maldonado on June 5, 1494; and the full powers
granted by John II. to Ruy de Sousa, Joao de Sousa, and Ayres Almada on March 8, 1494.]
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Chapter One: The Arrival of the Europeans—Spain and France
“Thereupon it was declared by the above-mentioned representatives of the aforesaid
King and Queen of Castile, Leon, Aragon, Sicily, Granada, etc., and of the aforesaid King of
Portugal and the Algarves, etc.:
[I.] That, whereas a certain controversy exists between the said lords, their constituents,
as to what lands, of all those discovered in the ocean sea up to the present day, the date of this
treaty, pertain to each one of the said parts respectively; therefore, for the sake of peace and
concord, and for the preservation of the relationship and love of the said King of Portugal for
the said King and Queen of Castile, Aragon, etc., it being the pleasure of their Highnesses,
they, their said representatives, acting in their name and by virtue of their powers herein
described, covenanted and agreed that a boundary or straight line be determined and drawn
north and south, from pole to pole, on the said ocean sea, from the Arctic to the Antarctic
pole. This boundary or line shall be drawn straight, as aforesaid, at a distance of three hun-
dred and seventy leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands, being calculated by degrees, or by
any other manner as may be considered the best and readiest, provided the distance shall be
no greater than abovesaid. And all lands, both islands and mainlands, found and discovered
already, or to be found and discovered hereafter, by the said King of Portugal and by his
vessels on this side of the said line and bound determined as above, toward the east, in either
north or south latitude, on the eastern side of the said bound provided the said bound is not
crossed, shall belong to, and remain in the possession of, and pertain forever to the said King
of Portugal and his successors. And all other lands, both islands and mainlands, found or to
be found hereafter, discovered or to be discovered hereafter, which have been discovered or
shall be discovered by the said King and Queen of Castile, Aragon, etc., and by their ves-
sels, on the western side of the said bound, determined as above, after having passed the said
bound toward the west, in either its north or south latitude, shall belong to, and remain in
the possession of, and pertain forever to, the said King and Queen of Castile, Leon, etc., and
to their successors.
[2.] Item, the said representatives promise and affirm by virtue of the powers aforesaid,
that from this date no ships shall be despatched-namely as follows: the said King and Queen
of Castile, Leon, Aragon, etc., for this part of the bound, and its eastern side, on this side
the said bound, which pertains to the said King of Portugal and the Algarves, etc.; nor the
said King of Portugal to the other part of the said bound which pertains to the said King and
Queen of Castile, Aragon, etc.—for the purpose of discovering and seeking any mainlands
or islands, or for the purpose of trade, barter, or conquest of any kind. But should it come to
pass that the said ships of the said King and Queen of Castile, Leon, Aragon, etc., on sailing
thus on this side of the said bound, should discover any mainlands or islands in the region
pertaining, as abovesaid, to the said King of Portugal, such mainlands or islands shall pertain
to and belong forever to the said King of Portugal and his heirs, and their Highnesses shall
order them to be surrendered to him immediately. And if the said ships of the said King of
Portugal discover any islands and mainlands in the regions of the said King and Queen of
Castile, Leon, Aragon, etc., all such lands shall belong to and remain forever in the posses-
sion of the said King and Queen of Castile, Leon, Aragon, etc., and their heirs, and the said
King of Portugal shall cause such lands to be surrendered immediately.
[3.] Item, in order that the said line or bound of the said division may be made straight
and as nearly as possible the said distance of three hundred and seventy leagues west of the
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Treaty between Spain and Portugal Concluded at Tordesillas (June 7, 1494)
5
Cape Verde Islands, as hereinbefore stated, the said representatives of both the said parties
agree and assent that within the ten months immediately following the date of this treaty
their said constituent lords shall despatch two or four caravels, namely, one or two by each
one of them, a greater or less number, as they may mutually consider necessary. These ves-
sels shall meet at the Grand Canary Island during this time, and each one of the said parties
shall send certain persons in them, to wit, pilots, astrologers, sailors, and any others they
may deem desirable. But there must be as many on one side as on the other, and certain of
the said pilots, astrologers, sailors, and others of those sent by the said King and Queen of
Castile, Aragon, etc., and who are experienced, shall embark in the ships of the said King
of Portugal and the Algarves; in like manner certain of the said persons sent by the said
King of Portugal shall embark in the ship or ships of the said King and Queen of Castile,
Aragon, etc.; a like number in each case, so that they may jointly study and examine to better
advantage the sea, courses, winds, and the degrees of the sun or of north latitude, and lay
out the leagues aforesaid, in order that, in determining the line and boundary, all sent and
empowered by both the said parties in the said vessels, shall jointly concur. These said ves-
sels shall continue their course together to the said Cape Verde Islands, from whence they
shall lay a direct course to the west, to the distance of the said three hundred and seventy
degrees, measured as the said persons shall agree, and measured without prejudice to the
said parties. When this point is reached, such point will constitute the place and mark for
measuring degrees of the sun or of north latitude either by daily runs measured in leagues,
or in any other manner that shall mutually be deemed better. This said line shall be drawn
north and south as aforesaid, from the said Arctic pole to the said Antarctic pole. And when
this line has been determined as abovesaid, those sent by each of the aforesaid parties, to
whom each one of the said parties must delegate his own authority and power, to deter-
mine the said mark and bound, shall draw up a writing concerning it and affix thereto their
signatures. And when determined by the mutual consent of all of them, this line shall be
considered as a perpetual mark and bound, in such wise that the said parties, or either of
them, or their future successors, shall be unable to deny it, or erase or remove it, at any time
or in any manner whatsoever. And should, perchance, the said line and bound from pole to
pole, as aforesaid, intersect any island or mainland, at the first point of such intersection of
such island or mainland by the said line, some kind of mark or tower shall be erected, and a
succession of similar marks shall be erected in a straight line from such mark or tower, in a
line identical with the above-mentioned bound. These marks shall separate those portions
of such land belonging to each one of the said parties; and the subjects of the said parties
shall not dare, on either side, to enter the territory of the other, by crossing the said mark or
bound in such island or mainland.
[4.] Item, inasmuch as the said ships of the said King and Queen of Castile, Leon,
Aragon, etc., sailing as before declared, from their kingdoms and seigniories to their said
possessions on the other side of the said line, must cross the seas on this side of the line,
pertaining to the said King of Portugal, it is therefore concerted and agreed that the said
ships of the said King and Queen of Castile, Leon, Aragon, etc., shall, at any time and
without any hindrance, sail in either direction, freely, securely, and peacefully, over the said
seas of the said King of Portugal, and within the said line. And whenever their Highnesses
and their successors wish to do so, and deem it expedient, their said ships may take their
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Chapter One: The Arrival of the Europeans—Spain and France
courses and routes direct from their kingdoms to any region within their line and bound
to which they desire to despatch expeditions of discovery, conquest, and trade. They shall
take their courses direct to the desired region and for any purpose desired therein, and shall
not leave their course, unless compelled to do so by contrary weather. They shall do this
provided that, before crossing the said line, they shall not seize or take possession of any-
thing discovered in his said region by the said King of Portugal; and should their said ships
find anything before crossing the said line, as aforesaid, it shall belong to the said King of
Portugal, and their Highnesses shall order it surrendered immediately. And since it is pos-
sible that the ships and subjects of the said King and Queen of Castile, Leon, etc., or those
acting in their name, may discover before the twentieth day of this present month of June,
following the date of this treaty, some islands and mainlands within the said line, drawn
straight from pole to pole, that is to say, inside the said three hundred and seventy leagues
west
of the Cape Verde Islands, as aforesaid, it is hereby agreed and determined, in order to
remove all doubt, that all such islands and mainlands found and discovered in any manner
whatsoever up to the said twentieth day of this said month of June, although found by ships
and subjects of the said King and Queen of Castile, Aragon, etc., shall pertain to and remain
forever in the possession of the said King of Portugal and the Algarves, and of his succes-
sors and kingdoms, provided that they lie within the first two hundred and fifty leagues of
the said three hundred and seventy leagues reckoned west of the Cape Verde Islands to the
above-mentioned line-in whatsoever part, even to the said poles, of the said two hundred
and fifty leagues they may be found, determining a boundary or straight line from pole to
pole, where the said two hundred and fifty leagues end. Likewise all the islands and main-
lands found and discovered up to the said twentieth day of this present month of June by
the ships and subjects of the said King and Queen of Castile, Aragon, etc., or in any other
manner, within the other one hundred and twenty leagues that still remain of the said three
hundred and seventy leagues where the said bound that is to be drawn from pole to pole,
as aforesaid, must be determined, and in whatever part of the said one hundred and twenty
leagues, even to the said poles,—they that are found up to the said day shall pertain to and
remain forever in the possession of the said King and Queen of Castile, Aragon, etc., and of
their successors and kingdoms; just as whatever is or shall be found on the other side of the
said three hundred and seventy leagues pertaining to their Highnesses, as aforesaid, is and
must be theirs, although the said one hundred and twenty leagues are within the said bound
of the said three hundred and seventy leagues pertaining to the said King of Portugal, the
Algarves, etc., as aforesaid.
And if, up to the said twentieth day of this said month of June, no lands are discovered
by the said ships of their Highnesses within the said one hundred and twenty leagues, and
are discovered after the expiration of that time, then they shall pertain to the said King of
Portugal as is set forth in the above.
The said Don Enrique Enriques, chief steward, Don Gutierre de Cardenas, chief au-
ditor, and Doctor Rodrigo Maldonado, representatives of the said very exalted and very
mighty princes, the lord and lady, the king and queen of Castile, Leon, Aragon, Sicily,
Granada, etc., by virtue of their said power, which is incorporated above, and the said Ruy
de Sousa, Dom Joao de Sousa, his son, and Arias de Almadana, representatives and ambas-
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Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca’s
Shipwreck off the Texas Coast
(1528–1536)
John Duval
CABEZA DE VACA WAS THE TREASURER FOR PÁNFILO DE NARVÁEZ’S EXPEDITION, which landed near
Tampa Bay in April 1528. Narváez led most of the men, including Cabeza de Vaca, to explore the
land along the coast and instructed the men in the ships to parallel their progress and eventually pick
them up. The ships lost track of those on foot and decided to abandon the search. After Indian attacks,
illness, and accidents killed many of his men, Narváez decided that the rest should build rafts to float
to Mexico. Tossed around the gulf on their flimsy rafts with no provisions, Narváez and most of the
others died. The group that included Cabeza de Vaca was thrown up on an island off the coast of Texas.
In the following excerpt, beginning in 1528, Cabeza de Vaca has just sent his four best swimmers
from
the island to try to swim to Mexico.
A few days after the four Christians swam away, a season of such bad cold and storms came on
that the Indians could not pull up roots and could get no fish from their weirs.’ The houses
gave such poor shelter that people started dying. Five Christians who were at a farm on the
coast were so desperate that they ate one another until only one remained, who being left
at last all by himself had no one left to eat. Their names were Sierra, Diego López, Corral,
Palacios, and Gonçalo Ruiz. Because of this, the Indians were so upset and scandalized that
at first, if they had caught sight of him, they would have surely killed him, and we realized we
were all in big trouble.
In very little time, of the eighty men in the two parties that had reached the island, only
fifteen were left alive.
After all those deaths, a stomach sickness struck the Indians and half of them died. And
they believed we were the ones killing them! With this conviction, they got together and
agreed to kill those of us who were left, and were about to do it, too, when an Indian who was
10
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Chapter One: The Arrival of the Europeans—Spain and France
For three months of the year that’s all they eat, and the water they drink is very bad.
They are low on wood and well supplied with mosquitoes. Their houses are made of rope
mats over oyster shells. And they sleep on skins, if they happen to have them, laid out on top
of the shells.
So there we were until the end of April, when we started going along the coast eating
blackberries for a month, during which time the Indians never cease to have parties and re-
ligious celebrations.
The Indians on the island wanted to make doctors out of us, without examinations and
without asking to see diplomas, because they cure diseases by blowing on the sick person,
and with their breath and then their hands they cast out the disease. They ordered us to do
that, too, and thus make ourselves useful for something. We laughed and said what a joke,
we didn’t know how to heal people!
So they stopped giving us food for as long as we wouldn’t do what they were telling us to
do. Seeing how stubborn we were, one Indian told me I didn’t know what I was talking about
when I said his knowledge wasn’t any use, because stones and things growing in the fields did
have virtue and by laying warm stones on somebody’s stomach he himself healed and eased
the pain; and we after all were men, too, and men with greater virtue and power than he had.
Finally we were reduced to such need that we had to do what they demanded, instead of
worrying about whether we would be punished for doing it.
Here is how they do their healing: as soon as they realize they are sick, they call for a
doctor, and after they are cured, not only do they give him everything they own, but their
kinfolk also look for things to give the doctor. What the doctor does is to make some inci-
sions where the pain is and suck all around the incision. They cauterize with fire, which they
claim to be very effective, and I tried it myself, and it worked for me. After this they blow on
the place where it hurts, and they think that takes the pain away.
The way we healed was to make the sign of the cross over the sick people and blow
on them, say an Our Father and a Hail Mary, and pray as best we could that God our Lord
would give them health and breathe into them the will to treat us well.
It pleased God our Lord in his mercy to grant that all those we were praying for and
making the sign of the cross over told the others that they were healed and whole. Šo in that
respect the treatment they gave us was good, and they did without food so as to give food to
us. And they gave us skins, too, and other little things.
[Some Karankawas canoe Cabeza de Vaca to the mainland, where he makes his living for sev-
eral years healing and trading. When he finally starts westward in search of Mexico, he reunites with
three companions who had been enslaved by coastal Indians, by now the only survivors of the castaways
on Bad Luck Island: Alonso del Castillo and Andrés Dorantes-mentioned in the selection above-and
Esteban, a man who was brought on the original expedition as a slave and whom Cabeza de Vaca
refers to as “The Negro.” Together, they walk across Texas and much of New Mexico. Each group of
Indians introduces them to the next group, treating them as respected healers. In 1536, they finally
near Mexico and see signs of other Spaniards.]
After coming upon clear traces and signs of Christians and realizing how close we
were to them, I gave thanks to God our Lord for his willingness to rescue us from such
sad and wretched captivity. Every reader can judge the pleasure we felt by considering how
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long we had been in that country and the trials and dangers we had passed through. That
night I asked one of my companions to go in search of the Christians, who were now pass-
ing through the very territory that we had recently made safe and which was a three-days’
journey away. My companions were unwilling, and said they were too tired and too worn
out from work, even though they were each stronger and younger than I and better fitted to
go. Since that was what they wanted, the next morning I took with me the Negro and eleven
Indians, and we found the Christians’ tracks and followed them past three campsites where
they had spent the night. The next day I went ten leagues and the morning after that I came
upon four Christians on horseback, who were astonished to see me so strangely dressed and
in the company of Indians. They stood looking at me for a long time, so stunned that they
neither spoke to me nor examined me nor asked me anything. I told them to take me to
their captain.
So we traveled another half league to where the captain was, Diego de Alcaraz. After I
spoke with him, he said he was lost out there, because it had been several days since he had
been able to take any Indians, and there was nowhere to go, because they were beginning to
run out of supplies and get hungry. I told him that Dorantes and Castillo were ten leagues
behind us, with many people who had brought us. So he sent three horses along with fifty
of the Indians he had brought with him. The Negro went with them to guide them, and I
stayed there and asked them to witness what year and month it was that I arrived there and
how I came there, which they did. From this river to San Miguel, which is legally part of the
province they call San Galicia, is thirty leagues.
After five days Andrés Dorantes and Alonso del Castillo arrived with the people
who had gone to get them, and they brought with them six hundred more people that the
Christians had forced to flee to the mountains or hide all over the country. Those who
had come along with me had rousted them out of their hiding places and handed them
over to the Christians, whereas they had sent away the people they had brought with
them up until then. When they came to me, Alcaraz asked us to summon the people of
the villages along the river, who were now hiding all over the mountains and order them
to bring food-even though orders weren’t necessary, since they were always bringing us
everything they could. So we sent messengers to summon them, and six hundred people
came, bringing all the corn they could get, in jars sealed with clay that they had hidden
and buried. They brought everything they had to us, but we didn’t want to take anything
but food, and we gave the rest to the Christians to share. After that, we had many bitter
arguments with the Christians, because they wanted to make slaves out of the Indians we
had brought.
We left them in anger, leaving behind turquoise bows and hides and arrows, as well as
the five emeralds,” which we forgot and so we lost them, and we gave the Christians many
cow hides and other things that we had with us.
We had a good deal of trouble trying to persuade the Indians to go back to their houses
and take care of themselves and plant their corn. All they wanted to do was go with us until,
as was the custom, they left us with other Indians, because they were afraid that if they turned
back without doing that, they would die, but as long as they stayed with us they wouldn’t be
afraid of the Christians or their lances.
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Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca’s Shipwreck off the Texas Coast (1528–1536)
• 11
loyal to me argued that we were not what was killing them, because if we had been all that
powerful, we would have made sure that not so many of our own people died as they could
plainly see had died; we had not been able to find a cure for ourselves, and now only a few of
us were left, not doing anybody any harm; so the best thing for them to do was leave us alone.
Our Lord granted that the others took this advice and their plan came to nothing.
We named this island Malhado, Bad Luck Island. The people we found there are tall
and sturdy. The only weapons they have are bows and arrows, which they are very skillful
with. The men have one of their nipples pierced through and through—and some of them
have both nipples pierced—by a needle which they make for that purpose. Then they pull a
bamboo shoot half a palm long and as thick as two fingers through the hole. They also pierce
their lower lips and insert a cane shoot half as thick as a finger.
They live on the island from October to the end of February. In November and De-
cember they live off the roots I mentioned, which they pull up out of the water. They have
weirs, but when the fishing gives out, they just eat the roots. At the end of February they
move to other places because then the roots are putting out new plants and aren’t good.
These are the people who of all the world love their children most and treat them best.
When it happens that a child dies, the parents weep, and the kinfolk weep, and then the
whole village. The weeping goes on for an entire year. … The Indians weep for all their
dead in this manner, except for old people, who don’t count for them, because, they say, old
people have had their day, serve no purpose, have quit taking care of children, and just oc-
cupy ground.
Their custom is to bury the dead, except for doctors, whom they cremate. As the fire
burns, they all dance and have a big party. Then they grind the bones into powder. After a
year they perform rites for the dead and all slash themselves and give the kinfolk water to
drink with the bone powder mixed into it.
Each man has a specific wife. The doctors are the most privileged and can have two or
three, who get along together in good friendship and harmony.
When a man marries off his daughter, from the day the groom marries her, whatever
he catches—whether hunting or fishing, all of it—his bride carries to her father’s house and
doesn’t dare keep any of it or eat one bite of it herself. And they get what they eat from the
father-in-law’s house. During all this time neither father-in-law nor mother-in-law enters into
the groom’s home, nor may he go into his parents-in-law’s or his brother- or sister-in-law’s
homes. If by any chance they come upon each other anywhere, they go out of their way to
avoid each other by a bowshot’s distance, keeping their heads down all the while and their
eyes on the ground, because they consider it bad luck to see each other or speak to each
other. The women are free to communicate and talk with the parents-in-law and relatives.
This custom holds on the island as well as the mainland as far as fifty leagues inland.
There is another custom, which is when a child or sibling dies, for three months the
people in the house don’t hunt for food, but would rather starve. So the kinfolk and neighbors
provide what they need to eat. Since so many were dying during the time we were there, most
households were suffering terribly from hunger because they still held to this custom and cer-
emony. And no matter how hard the ones that did go out worked, the weather was too rough
for them to get more than a little. That’s why the Indians who kept me left the island and went
in their canoes to inlets along the mainland where there are plenty of oysters.
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Pedro de Castañeda de Nájera on
the Search for the Seven Cities of
Cíbola (1540)
John Duval
PEDRO DE CASTAÑEDA MOVED from northern Spain to Culiacán, on the west coast of Mexico, where,
in the 1530s, he heard rumors of seven great cities to the north, in what is now Arizona and New
Mexico. Some who heard the rumors inferred that these cities must be the mythic seven cities of gold,
believed to have been founded by seven Portuguese bishops who supposedly had crossed the Atlantic to
escape the Muslim invasion of Iberia. Castañeda begins his account with the rumors and the first at-
tempts to find the cities, then tells of his journey north with Francisco Vásquez de Coronado in 1540.
Castañeda gives a first-hand account of what happened to the main army. When smaller parties split
off, he collected reports from participants when they returned and added them to his account.
In the year fifteen hundred thirty, when Nuño de Guzmán was president of New Spain, there
was an Indian subject to him who was born in the valley (or valleys) of Oxitipar, whom Span-
iards called Tejo. This Indian said that his father, who had since died, had been a merchant
when Tejo was a child and had traveled inland with his wares of luxuriant bird feathers and
brought back great quantities of gold and silver, which were plentiful in that land; and he
said that he himself had gone with his father once or twice and seen many great towns large
enough to compare with Mexico City and the surrounding regions, and seen seven very great
towns where there were silver-plated streets. From his own country, he said, it took forty
days to travel there, through unpopulated wilderness where all that grew was a little grass,
not over three inches high, and that they went as far as the distance between the two oceans,
always traveling to the north.
[Guzmán forms an expedition and goes northwest from Mexico City but only makes it as far
as Castañeda’s town of Culiacán, still far south of the Rio Grande. By 1538, Tejo has died, Guzmán
has been removed from his position, and Antonio de Mendoza is viceroy of New Spain. He appoints
30
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Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca’s
Shipwreck off the Texas Coast
(1528–1536)
John Duval
CABEZA DE VACA WAS THE TREASURER FOR PÁNFILO DE NARVÁEZ’S EXPEDITION, which landed near
Tampa Bay in April 1528. Narváez led most of the men, including Cabeza de Vaca, to explore the
land along the coast and instructed the men in the ships to parallel their progress and eventually pick
them up. The ships lost track of those on foot and decided to abandon the search. After Indian attacks,
illness, and accidents killed many of his men, Narváez decided that the rest should build rafts to float
to Mexico. Tossed around the gulf on their flimsy rafts with no provisions, Narváez and most of the
others died. The group that included Cabeza de Vaca was thrown up on an island off the coast of Texas.
In the following excerpt, beginning in 1528, Cabeza de Vaca has just sent his four best swimmers
from
the island to try to swim to Mexico.
A few days after the four Christians swam away, a season of such bad cold and storms came on
that the Indians could not pull up roots and could get no fish from their weirs.’ The houses
gave such poor shelter that people started dying. Five Christians who were at a farm on the
coast were so desperate that they ate one another until only one remained, who being left
at last all by himself had no one left to eat. Their names were Sierra, Diego López, Corral,
Palacios, and Gonçalo Ruiz. Because of this, the Indians were so upset and scandalized that
at first, if they had caught sight of him, they would have surely killed him, and we realized we
were all in big trouble.
In very little time, of the eighty men in the two parties that had reached the island, only
fifteen were left alive.
After all those deaths, a stomach sickness struck the Indians and half of them died. And
they believed we were the ones killing them! With this conviction, they got together and
agreed to kill those of us who were left, and were about to do it, too, when an Indian who was
10
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Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca’s Shipwreck off the Texas Coast (1528–1536)
• 11
loyal to me argued that we were not what was killing them, because if we had been all that
powerful, we would have made sure that not so many of our own people died as they could
plainly see had died; we had not been able to find a cure for ourselves, and now only a few of
us were left, not doing anybody any harm; so the best thing for them to do was leave us alone.
Our Lord granted that the others took this advice and their plan came to nothing.
We named this island Malhado, Bad Luck Island. The people we found there are tall
and sturdy. The only weapons they have are bows and arrows, which they are very skillful
with. The men have one of their nipples pierced through and through—and some of them
have both nipples pierced—by a needle which they make for that purpose. Then they pull a
bamboo shoot half a palm long and as thick as two fingers through the hole. They also pierce
their lower lips and insert a cane shoot half as thick as a finger.
They live on the island from October to the end of February. In November and De-
cember they live off the roots I mentioned, which they pull up out of the water. They have
weirs, but when the fishing gives out, they just eat the roots. At the end of February they
move to other places because then the roots are putting out new plants and aren’t good.
These are the people who of all the world love their children most and treat them best.
When it happens that a child dies, the parents weep, and the kinfolk weep, and then the
whole village. The weeping goes on for an entire year. … The Indians weep for all their
dead in this manner, except for old people, who don’t count for them, because, they say, old
people have had their day, serve no purpose, have quit taking care of children, and just oc-
cupy ground.
Their custom is to bury the dead, except for doctors, whom they cremate. As the fire
burns, they all dance and have a big party. Then they grind the bones into powder. After a
year they perform rites for the dead and all slash themselves and give the kinfolk water to
drink with the bone powder mixed into it.
Each man has a specific wife. The doctors are the most privileged and can have two or
three, who get along together in good friendship and harmony.
When a man marries off his daughter, from the day the groom marries her, whatever
he catches—whether hunting or fishing, all of it—his bride carries to her father’s house and
doesn’t dare keep any of it or eat one bite of it herself. And they get what they eat from the
father-in-law’s house. During all this time neither father-in-law nor mother-in-law enters into
the groom’s home, nor may he go into his parents-in-law’s or his brother- or sister-in-law’s
homes. If by any chance they come upon each other anywhere, they go out of their way to
avoid each other by a bowshot’s distance, keeping their heads down all the while and their
eyes on the ground, because they consider it bad luck to see each other or speak to each
other. The women are free to communicate and talk with the parents-in-law and relatives.
This custom holds on the island as well as the mainland as far as fifty leagues inland.
There is another custom, which is when a child or sibling dies, for three months the
people in the house don’t hunt for food, but would rather starve. So the kinfolk and neighbors
provide what they need to eat. Since so many were dying during the time we were there, most
households were suffering terribly from hunger because they still held to this custom and cer-
emony. And no matter how hard the ones that did go out worked, the weather was too rough
for them to get more than a little. That’s why the Indians who kept me left the island and went
in their canoes to inlets along the mainland where there are plenty of oysters.
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Chapter One: The Arrival of the Europeans—Spain and France
For three months of the year that’s all they eat, and the water they drink is very bad.
They are low on wood and well supplied with mosquitoes. Their houses are made of rope
mats over oyster shells. And they sleep on skins, if they happen to have them, laid out on top
of the shells.
So there we were until the end of April, when we started going along the coast eating
blackberries for a month, during which time the Indians never cease to have parties and re-
ligious celebrations.
The Indians on the island wanted to make doctors out of us, without examinations and
without asking to see diplomas, because they cure diseases by blowing on the sick person,
and with their breath and then their hands they cast out the disease. They ordered us to do
that, too, and thus make ourselves useful for something. We laughed and said what a joke,
we didn’t know how to heal people!
So they stopped giving us food for as long as we wouldn’t do what they were telling us to
do. Seeing how stubborn we were, one Indian told me I didn’t know what I was talking about
when I said his knowledge wasn’t any use, because stones and things growing in the fields did
have virtue and by laying warm stones on somebody’s stomach he himself healed and eased
the pain; and we after all were men, too, and men with greater virtue and power than he had.
Finally we were reduced to such need that we had to do what they demanded, instead of
worrying about whether we would be punished for doing it.
Here is how they do their healing: as soon as they realize they are sick, they call for a
doctor, and after they are cured, not only do they give him everything they own, but their
kinfolk also look for things to give the doctor. What the doctor does is to make some inci-
sions where the pain is and suck all around the incision. They cauterize with fire, which they
claim to be very effective, and I tried it myself, and it worked for me. After this they blow on
the place where it hurts, and they think that takes the pain away.
The way we healed was to make the sign of the cross over the sick people and blow
on them, say an Our Father and a Hail Mary, and pray as best we could that God our Lord
would give them health and breathe into them the will to treat us well.
It pleased God our Lord in his mercy to grant that all those we were praying for and
making the sign of the cross over told the others that they were healed and whole. Šo in that
respect the treatment they gave us was good, and they did without food so as to give food to
us. And they gave us skins, too, and other little things.
[Some Karankawas canoe Cabeza de Vaca to the mainland, where he makes his living for sev-
eral years healing and trading. When he finally starts westward in search of Mexico, he reunites with
three companions who had been enslaved by coastal Indians, by now the only survivors of the castaways
on Bad Luck Island: Alonso del Castillo and Andrés Dorantes-mentioned in the selection above-and
Esteban, a man who was brought on the original expedition as a slave and whom Cabeza de Vaca
refers to as “The Negro.” Together, they walk across Texas and much of New Mexico. Each group of
Indians introduces them to the next group, treating them as respected healers. In 1536, they finally
near Mexico and see signs of other Spaniards.]
After coming upon clear traces and signs of Christians and realizing how close we
were to them, I gave thanks to God our Lord for his willingness to rescue us from such
sad and wretched captivity. Every reader can judge the pleasure we felt by considering how
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Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca’s Shipwreck off the Texas Coast (1528–1536)
• 13
long we had been in that country and the trials and dangers we had passed through. That
night I asked one of my companions to go in search of the Christians, who were now pass-
ing through the very territory that we had recently made safe and which was a three-days’
journey away. My companions were unwilling, and said they were too tired and too worn
out from work, even though they were each stronger and younger than I and better fitted to
go. Since that was what they wanted, the next morning I took with me the Negro and eleven
Indians, and we found the Christians’ tracks and followed them past three campsites where
they had spent the night. The next day I went ten leagues and the morning after that I came
upon four Christians on horseback, who were astonished to see me so strangely dressed and
in the company of Indians. They stood looking at me for a long time, so stunned that they
neither spoke to me nor examined me nor asked me anything. I told them to take me to
their captain.
So we traveled another half league to where the captain was, Diego de Alcaraz. After I
spoke with him, he said he was lost out there, because it had been several days since he had
been able to take any Indians, and there was nowhere to go, because they were beginning to
run out of supplies and get hungry. I told him that Dorantes and Castillo were ten leagues
behind us, with many people who had brought us. So he sent three horses along with fifty
of the Indians he had brought with him. The Negro went with them to guide them, and I
stayed there and asked them to witness what year and month it was that I arrived there and
how I came there, which they did. From this river to San Miguel, which is legally part of the
province they call San Galicia, is thirty leagues.
After five days Andrés Dorantes and Alonso del Castillo arrived with the people
who had gone to get them, and they brought with them six hundred more people that the
Christians had forced to flee to the mountains or hide all over the country. Those who
had come along with me had rousted them out of their hiding places and handed them
over to the Christians, whereas they had sent away the people they had brought with
them up until then. When they came to me, Alcaraz asked us to summon the people of
the villages along the river, who were now hiding all over the mountains and order them
to bring food-even though orders weren’t necessary, since they were always bringing us
everything they could. So we sent messengers to summon them, and six hundred people
came, bringing all the corn they could get, in jars sealed with clay that they had hidden
and buried. They brought everything they had to us, but we didn’t want to take anything
but food, and we gave the rest to the Christians to share. After that, we had many bitter
arguments with the Christians, because they wanted to make slaves out of the Indians we
had brought.
We left them in anger, leaving behind turquoise bows and hides and arrows, as well as
the five emeralds,” which we forgot and so we lost them, and we gave the Christians many
cow hides and other things that we had with us.
We had a good deal of trouble trying to persuade the Indians to go back to their houses
and take care of themselves and plant their corn. All they wanted to do was go with us until,
as was the custom, they left us with other Indians, because they were afraid that if they turned
back without doing that, they would die, but as long as they stayed with us they wouldn’t be
afraid of the Christians or their lances.
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Chapter One: The Arrival of the Europeans—Spain and France
This worried the Christians, who had their interpreter say we were their people and had
gotten lost a long time ago and were bad luck and not worth much, and that they themselves
were the lords of that land, and people had to obey them and serve them.
But all these claims made little or no impression on the Indians, who talked them over
among themselves and said the Christians were lying, because we came from where the sun
rose, and they, from where it set; we healed the sick, but they killed the healthy; we came
naked and barefoot, but they came in clothes and on horses and with lances; and we weren’t
greedy-rather everything the Indians gave us we turned around and gave away, leaving
nothing for ourselves, whereas these others had nothing on their minds but to steal every-
thing they found and never gave anything to anybody.
That’s how they described us and praised our deeds in contrast with those others’ deeds.
And that’s what they said to the Christians’ interpreter, too, and they said the same to every-
body else through a language that we could understand, known as Primahaitu, which sounds
like Basque and which we found used throughout the more than four hundred leagues that
we traveled, without any other language we could depend on.
When all was said and done, the interpreter never could persuade the Indians that we
were one and the same as the Christians. We had to struggle just to argue them into going
back to their homes. We ordered them to look after themselves, to settle their towns, and
to sow and cultivate their land, which had become overgrown from not having people in it.
I have no doubt that it is the best of the Indian lands—the most fertile and the best for liv-
ing on. They get to plant their crops three times in one year. The land has many fruits and
beautiful rivers and other beautiful bodies of water. There are signs and strong indications of
gold and silver mines. The people are very docile. They serve the Christians (those who are
friends to them) very willingly. They are very adaptable, much more than the Mexicans, and
finally, the land will never fail to be fertile.
As we said goodbye to the Indians, they told us they would do what we ordered and
settle their towns again, if the Christians left them alone. And I assert and affirm that if they
didn’t, the Christians are to blame.
After we sent the Indians away in peace and thanked them for the troubles they had en-
dured with us, the Christians sent us, under guard, to a certain Cebreros, a mayor, and after
him, to two others, who took us across mountains and deserts to sever any communication
between us and the Indians and keep us from seeing or hearing about what they were in fact
doing. Thus it can be seen how men’s thoughts deceive them: we were trying to secure their
freedom, and when we thought they had it, the opposite happened, because the Christians
had it planned to attack the Indians whom we had sent off with assurances of peace. And what
they planned, they did.
[For the further adventures of Esteban, read Castañeda’s account, later in this volume.
Translated by John DuVal from Alva Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, La relación y comentarios
del governador Alvar Núñez Cabeça de Vaca de lo acaescido en las dos jornadas que hizo a las Indias
(Valladolid, 1555), folios 19v-22, 47v-49v.
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Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca’s Shipwreck off the Texas Coast (1528–1536)
• 11
loyal to me argued that we were not what was killing them, because if we had been all that
powerful, we would have made sure that not so many of our own people died as they could
plainly see had died; we had not been able to find a cure for ourselves, and now only a few of
us were left, not doing anybody any harm; so the best thing for them to do was leave us alone.
Our Lord granted that the others took this advice and their plan came to nothing.
We named this island Malhado, Bad Luck Island. The people we found there are tall
and sturdy. The only weapons they have are bows and arrows, which they are very skillful
with. The men have one of their nipples pierced through and through—and some of them
have both nipples pierced—by a needle which they make for that purpose. Then they pull a
bamboo shoot half a palm long and as thick as two fingers through the hole. They also pierce
their lower lips and insert a cane shoot half as thick as a finger.
They live on the island from October to the end of February. In November and De-
cember they live off the roots I mentioned, which they pull up out of the water. They have
weirs, but when the fishing gives out, they just eat the roots. At the end of February they
move to other places because then the roots are putting out new plants and aren’t good.
These are the people who of all the world love their children most and treat them best.
When it happens that a child dies, the parents weep, and the kinfolk weep, and then the
whole village. The weeping goes on for an entire year. … The Indians weep for all their
dead in this manner, except for old people, who don’t count for them, because, they say, old
people have had their day, serve no purpose, have quit taking care of children, and just oc-
cupy ground.
Their custom is to bury the dead, except for doctors, whom they cremate. As the fire
burns, they all dance and have a big party. Then they grind the bones into powder. After a
year they perform rites for the dead and all slash themselves and give the kinfolk water to
drink with the bone powder mixed into it.
Each man has a specific wife. The doctors are the most privileged and can have two or
three, who get along together in good friendship and harmony.
When a man marries off his daughter, from the day the groom marries her, whatever
he catches—whether hunting or fishing, all of it—his bride carries to her father’s house and
doesn’t dare keep any of it or eat one bite of it herself. And they get what they eat from the
father-in-law’s house. During all this time neither father-in-law nor mother-in-law enters into
the groom’s home, nor may he go into his parents-in-law’s or his brother- or sister-in-law’s
homes. If by any chance they come upon each other anywhere, they go out of their way to
avoid each other by a bowshot’s distance, keeping their heads down all the while and their
eyes on the ground, because they consider it bad luck to see each other or speak to each
other. The women are free to communicate and talk with the parents-in-law and relatives.
This custom holds on the island as well as the mainland as far as fifty leagues inland.
There is another custom, which is when a child or sibling dies, for three months the
people in the house don’t hunt for food, but would rather starve. So the kinfolk and neighbors
provide what they need to eat. Since so many were dying during the time we were there, most
households were suffering terribly from hunger because they still held to this custom and cer-
emony. And no matter how hard the ones that did go out worked, the weather was too rough
for them to get more than a little. That’s why the Indians who kept me left the island and went
in their canoes to inlets along the mainland where there are plenty of oysters.
American Perspectives: Readings in American History, Volume 1, Sixth Custom Edition by Kent McGaughy. Published by Pearson Learning Solutions
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Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca’s
Shipwreck off the Texas Coast
(1528–1536)
John Duval
CABEZA DE VACA WAS THE TREASURER FOR PÁNFILO DE NARVÁEZ’S EXPEDITION, which landed near
Tampa Bay in April 1528. Narváez led most of the men, including Cabeza de Vaca, to explore the
land along the coast and instructed the men in the ships to parallel their progress and eventually pick
them up. The ships lost track of those on foot and decided to abandon the search. After Indian attacks,
illness, and accidents killed many of his men, Narváez decided that the rest should build rafts to float
to Mexico. Tossed around the gulf on their flimsy rafts with no provisions, Narváez and most of the
others died. The group that included Cabeza de Vaca was thrown up on an island off the coast of Texas.
In the following excerpt, beginning in 1528, Cabeza de Vaca has just sent his four best swimmers
from
the island to try to swim to Mexico.
A few days after the four Christians swam away, a season of such bad cold and storms came on
that the Indians could not pull up roots and could get no fish from their weirs.’ The houses
gave such poor shelter that people started dying. Five Christians who were at a farm on the
coast were so desperate that they ate one another until only one remained, who being left
at last all by himself had no one left to eat. Their names were Sierra, Diego López, Corral,
Palacios, and Gonçalo Ruiz. Because of this, the Indians were so upset and scandalized that
at first, if they had caught sight of him, they would have surely killed him, and we realized we
were all in big trouble.
In very little time, of the eighty men in the two parties that had reached the island, only
fifteen were left alive.
After all those deaths, a stomach sickness struck the Indians and half of them died. And
they believed we were the ones killing them! With this conviction, they got together and
agreed to kill those of us who were left, and were about to do it, too, when an Indian who was
10
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Chapter One: The Arrival of the Europeans—Spain and France
For three months of the year that’s all they eat, and the water they drink is very bad.
They are low on wood and well supplied with mosquitoes. Their houses are made of rope
mats over oyster shells. And they sleep on skins, if they happen to have them, laid out on top
of the shells.
So there we were until the end of April, when we started going along the coast eating
blackberries for a month, during which time the Indians never cease to have parties and re-
ligious celebrations.
The Indians on the island wanted to make doctors out of us, without examinations and
without asking to see diplomas, because they cure diseases by blowing on the sick person,
and with their breath and then their hands they cast out the disease. They ordered us to do
that, too, and thus make ourselves useful for something. We laughed and said what a joke,
we didn’t know how to heal people!
So they stopped giving us food for as long as we wouldn’t do what they were telling us to
do. Seeing how stubborn we were, one Indian told me I didn’t know what I was talking about
when I said his knowledge wasn’t any use, because stones and things growing in the fields did
have virtue and by laying warm stones on somebody’s stomach he himself healed and eased
the pain; and we after all were men, too, and men with greater virtue and power than he had.
Finally we were reduced to such need that we had to do what they demanded, instead of
worrying about whether we would be punished for doing it.
Here is how they do their healing: as soon as they realize they are sick, they call for a
doctor, and after they are cured, not only do they give him everything they own, but their
kinfolk also look for things to give the doctor. What the doctor does is to make some inci-
sions where the pain is and suck all around the incision. They cauterize with fire, which they
claim to be very effective, and I tried it myself, and it worked for me. After this they blow on
the place where it hurts, and they think that takes the pain away.
The way we healed was to make the sign of the cross over the sick people and blow
on them, say an Our Father and a Hail Mary, and pray as best we could that God our Lord
would give them health and breathe into them the will to treat us well.
It pleased God our Lord in his mercy to grant that all those we were praying for and
making the sign of the cross over told the others that they were healed and whole. Šo in that
respect the treatment they gave us was good, and they did without food so as to give food to
us. And they gave us skins, too, and other little things.
[Some Karankawas canoe Cabeza de Vaca to the mainland, where he makes his living for sev-
eral years healing and trading. When he finally starts westward in search of Mexico, he reunites with
three companions who had been enslaved by coastal Indians, by now the only survivors of the castaways
on Bad Luck Island: Alonso del Castillo and Andrés Dorantes-mentioned in the selection above-and
Esteban, a man who was brought on the original expedition as a slave and whom Cabeza de Vaca
refers to as “The Negro.” Together, they walk across Texas and much of New Mexico. Each group of
Indians introduces them to the next group, treating them as respected healers. In 1536, they finally
near Mexico and see signs of other Spaniards.]
After coming upon clear traces and signs of Christians and realizing how close we
were to them, I gave thanks to God our Lord for his willingness to rescue us from such
sad and wretched captivity. Every reader can judge the pleasure we felt by considering how
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Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca’s Shipwreck off the Texas Coast (1528–1536)
• 13
long we had been in that country and the trials and dangers we had passed through. That
night I asked one of my companions to go in search of the Christians, who were now pass-
ing through the very territory that we had recently made safe and which was a three-days’
journey away. My companions were unwilling, and said they were too tired and too worn
out from work, even though they were each stronger and younger than I and better fitted to
go. Since that was what they wanted, the next morning I took with me the Negro and eleven
Indians, and we found the Christians’ tracks and followed them past three campsites where
they had spent the night. The next day I went ten leagues and the morning after that I came
upon four Christians on horseback, who were astonished to see me so strangely dressed and
in the company of Indians. They stood looking at me for a long time, so stunned that they
neither spoke to me nor examined me nor asked me anything. I told them to take me to
their captain.
So we traveled another half league to where the captain was, Diego de Alcaraz. After I
spoke with him, he said he was lost out there, because it had been several days since he had
been able to take any Indians, and there was nowhere to go, because they were beginning to
run out of supplies and get hungry. I told him that Dorantes and Castillo were ten leagues
behind us, with many people who had brought us. So he sent three horses along with fifty
of the Indians he had brought with him. The Negro went with them to guide them, and I
stayed there and asked them to witness what year and month it was that I arrived there and
how I came there, which they did. From this river to San Miguel, which is legally part of the
province they call San Galicia, is thirty leagues.
After five days Andrés Dorantes and Alonso del Castillo arrived with the people
who had gone to get them, and they brought with them six hundred more people that the
Christians had forced to flee to the mountains or hide all over the country. Those who
had come along with me had rousted them out of their hiding places and handed them
over to the Christians, whereas they had sent away the people they had brought with
them up until then. When they came to me, Alcaraz asked us to summon the people of
the villages along the river, who were now hiding all over the mountains and order them
to bring food-even though orders weren’t necessary, since they were always bringing us
everything they could. So we sent messengers to summon them, and six hundred people
came, bringing all the corn they could get, in jars sealed with clay that they had hidden
and buried. They brought everything they had to us, but we didn’t want to take anything
but food, and we gave the rest to the Christians to share. After that, we had many bitter
arguments with the Christians, because they wanted to make slaves out of the Indians we
had brought.
We left them in anger, leaving behind turquoise bows and hides and arrows, as well as
the five emeralds,” which we forgot and so we lost them, and we gave the Christians many
cow hides and other things that we had with us.
We had a good deal of trouble trying to persuade the Indians to go back to their houses
and take care of themselves and plant their corn. All they wanted to do was go with us until,
as was the custom, they left us with other Indians, because they were afraid that if they turned
back without doing that, they would die, but as long as they stayed with us they wouldn’t be
afraid of the Christians or their lances.
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Chapter One: The Arrival of the Europeans—Spain and France
This worried the Christians, who had their interpreter say we were their people and had
gotten lost a long time ago and were bad luck and not worth much, and that they themselves
were the lords of that land, and people had to obey them and serve them.
But all these claims made little or no impression on the Indians, who talked them over
among themselves and said the Christians were lying, because we came from where the sun
rose, and they, from where it set; we healed the sick, but they killed the healthy; we came
naked and barefoot, but they came in clothes and on horses and with lances; and we weren’t
greedy-rather everything the Indians gave us we turned around and gave away, leaving
nothing for ourselves, whereas these others had nothing on their minds but to steal every-
thing they found and never gave anything to anybody.
That’s how they described us and praised our deeds in contrast with those others’ deeds.
And that’s what they said to the Christians’ interpreter, too, and they said the same to every-
body else through a language that we could understand, known as Primahaitu, which sounds
like Basque and which we found used throughout the more than four hundred leagues that
we traveled, without any other language we could depend on.
When all was said and done, the interpreter never could persuade the Indians that we
were one and the same as the Christians. We had to struggle just to argue them into going
back to their homes. We ordered them to look after themselves, to settle their towns, and
to sow and cultivate their land, which had become overgrown from not having people in it.
I have no doubt that it is the best of the Indian lands—the most fertile and the best for liv-
ing on. They get to plant their crops three times in one year. The land has many fruits and
beautiful rivers and other beautiful bodies of water. There are signs and strong indications of
gold and silver mines. The people are very docile. They serve the Christians (those who are
friends to them) very willingly. They are very adaptable, much more than the Mexicans, and
finally, the land will never fail to be fertile.
As we said goodbye to the Indians, they told us they would do what we ordered and
settle their towns again, if the Christians left them alone. And I assert and affirm that if they
didn’t, the Christians are to blame.
After we sent the Indians away in peace and thanked them for the troubles they had en-
dured with us, the Christians sent us, under guard, to a certain Cebreros, a mayor, and after
him, to two others, who took us across mountains and deserts to sever any communication
between us and the Indians and keep us from seeing or hearing about what they were in fact
doing. Thus it can be seen how men’s thoughts deceive them: we were trying to secure their
freedom, and when we thought they had it, the opposite happened, because the Christians
had it planned to attack the Indians whom we had sent off with assurances of peace. And what
they planned, they did.
[For the further adventures of Esteban, read Castañeda’s account, later in this volume.
Translated by John DuVal from Alva Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, La relación y comentarios
del governador Alvar Núñez Cabeça de Vaca de lo acaescido en las dos jornadas que hizo a las Indias
(Valladolid, 1555), folios 19v-22, 47v-49v.
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Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca’s
Shipwreck off the Texas Coast
(1528–1536)
John Duval
CABEZA DE VACA WAS THE TREASURER FOR PÁNFILO DE NARVÁEZ’S EXPEDITION, which landed near
Tampa Bay in April 1528. Narváez led most of the men, including Cabeza de Vaca, to explore the
land along the coast and instructed the men in the ships to parallel their progress and eventually pick
them up. The ships lost track of those on foot and decided to abandon the search. After Indian attacks,
illness, and accidents killed many of his men, Narváez decided that the rest should build rafts to float
to Mexico. Tossed around the gulf on their flimsy rafts with no provisions, Narváez and most of the
others died. The group that included Cabeza de Vaca was thrown up on an island off the coast of Texas.
In the following excerpt, beginning in 1528, Cabeza de Vaca has just sent his four best swimmers
from
the island to try to swim to Mexico.
A few days after the four Christians swam away, a season of such bad cold and storms came on
that the Indians could not pull up roots and could get no fish from their weirs.’ The houses
gave such poor shelter that people started dying. Five Christians who were at a farm on the
coast were so desperate that they ate one another until only one remained, who being left
at last all by himself had no one left to eat. Their names were Sierra, Diego López, Corral,
Palacios, and Gonçalo Ruiz. Because of this, the Indians were so upset and scandalized that
at first, if they had caught sight of him, they would have surely killed him, and we realized we
were all in big trouble.
In very little time, of the eighty men in the two parties that had reached the island, only
fifteen were left alive.
After all those deaths, a stomach sickness struck the Indians and half of them died. And
they believed we were the ones killing them! With this conviction, they got together and
agreed to kill those of us who were left, and were about to do it, too, when an Indian who was
10
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Chapter One: The Arrival of the Europeans—Spain and France
For three months of the year that’s all they eat, and the water they drink is very bad.
They are low on wood and well supplied with mosquitoes. Their houses are made of rope
mats over oyster shells. And they sleep on skins, if they happen to have them, laid out on top
of the shells.
So there we were until the end of April, when we started going along the coast eating
blackberries for a month, during which time the Indians never cease to have parties and re-
ligious celebrations.
The Indians on the island wanted to make doctors out of us, without examinations and
without asking to see diplomas, because they cure diseases by blowing on the sick person,
and with their breath and then their hands they cast out the disease. They ordered us to do
that, too, and thus make ourselves useful for something. We laughed and said what a joke,
we didn’t know how to heal people!
So they stopped giving us food for as long as we wouldn’t do what they were telling us to
do. Seeing how stubborn we were, one Indian told me I didn’t know what I was talking about
when I said his knowledge wasn’t any use, because stones and things growing in the fields did
have virtue and by laying warm stones on somebody’s stomach he himself healed and eased
the pain; and we after all were men, too, and men with greater virtue and power than he had.
Finally we were reduced to such need that we had to do what they demanded, instead of
worrying about whether we would be punished for doing it.
Here is how they do their healing: as soon as they realize they are sick, they call for a
doctor, and after they are cured, not only do they give him everything they own, but their
kinfolk also look for things to give the doctor. What the doctor does is to make some inci-
sions where the pain is and suck all around the incision. They cauterize with fire, which they
claim to be very effective, and I tried it myself, and it worked for me. After this they blow on
the place where it hurts, and they think that takes the pain away.
The way we healed was to make the sign of the cross over the sick people and blow
on them, say an Our Father and a Hail Mary, and pray as best we could that God our Lord
would give them health and breathe into them the will to treat us well.
It pleased God our Lord in his mercy to grant that all those we were praying for and
making the sign of the cross over told the others that they were healed and whole. Šo in that
respect the treatment they gave us was good, and they did without food so as to give food to
us. And they gave us skins, too, and other little things.
[Some Karankawas canoe Cabeza de Vaca to the mainland, where he makes his living for sev-
eral years healing and trading. When he finally starts westward in search of Mexico, he reunites with
three companions who had been enslaved by coastal Indians, by now the only survivors of the castaways
on Bad Luck Island: Alonso del Castillo and Andrés Dorantes-mentioned in the selection above-and
Esteban, a man who was brought on the original expedition as a slave and whom Cabeza de Vaca
refers to as “The Negro.” Together, they walk across Texas and much of New Mexico. Each group of
Indians introduces them to the next group, treating them as respected healers. In 1536, they finally
near Mexico and see signs of other Spaniards.]
After coming upon clear traces and signs of Christians and realizing how close we
were to them, I gave thanks to God our Lord for his willingness to rescue us from such
sad and wretched captivity. Every reader can judge the pleasure we felt by considering how
American Perspectives: Readings in American History, Volume 1, Sixth Custom Edition by Kent McGaughy. Published by Pearson Learning Solutions.
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Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca’s Shipwreck off the Texas Coast (1528–1536)
• 13
long we had been in that country and the trials and dangers we had passed through. That
night I asked one of my companions to go in search of the Christians, who were now pass-
ing through the very territory that we had recently made safe and which was a three-days’
journey away. My companions were unwilling, and said they were too tired and too worn
out from work, even though they were each stronger and younger than I and better fitted to
go. Since that was what they wanted, the next morning I took with me the Negro and eleven
Indians, and we found the Christians’ tracks and followed them past three campsites where
they had spent the night. The next day I went ten leagues and the morning after that I came
upon four Christians on horseback, who were astonished to see me so strangely dressed and
in the company of Indians. They stood looking at me for a long time, so stunned that they
neither spoke to me nor examined me nor asked me anything. I told them to take me to
their captain.
So we traveled another half league to where the captain was, Diego de Alcaraz. After I
spoke with him, he said he was lost out there, because it had been several days since he had
been able to take any Indians, and there was nowhere to go, because they were beginning to
run out of supplies and get hungry. I told him that Dorantes and Castillo were ten leagues
behind us, with many people who had brought us. So he sent three horses along with fifty
of the Indians he had brought with him. The Negro went with them to guide them, and I
stayed there and asked them to witness what year and month it was that I arrived there and
how I came there, which they did. From this river to San Miguel, which is legally part of the
province they call San Galicia, is thirty leagues.
After five days Andrés Dorantes and Alonso del Castillo arrived with the people
who had gone to get them, and they brought with them six hundred more people that the
Christians had forced to flee to the mountains or hide all over the country. Those who
had come along with me had rousted them out of their hiding places and handed them
over to the Christians, whereas they had sent away the people they had brought with
them up until then. When they came to me, Alcaraz asked us to summon the people of
the villages along the river, who were now hiding all over the mountains and order them
to bring food-even though orders weren’t necessary, since they were always bringing us
everything they could. So we sent messengers to summon them, and six hundred people
came, bringing all the corn they could get, in jars sealed with clay that they had hidden
and buried. They brought everything they had to us, but we didn’t want to take anything
but food, and we gave the rest to the Christians to share. After that, we had many bitter
arguments with the Christians, because they wanted to make slaves out of the Indians we
had brought.
We left them in anger, leaving behind turquoise bows and hides and arrows, as well as
the five emeralds,” which we forgot and so we lost them, and we gave the Christians many
cow hides and other things that we had with us.
We had a good deal of trouble trying to persuade the Indians to go back to their houses
and take care of themselves and plant their corn. All they wanted to do was go with us until,
as was the custom, they left us with other Indians, because they were afraid that if they turned
back without doing that, they would die, but as long as they stayed with us they wouldn’t be
afraid of the Christians or their lances.
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Chapter One: The Arrival of the Europeans—Spain and France
This worried the Christians, who had their interpreter say we were their people and had
gotten lost a long time ago and were bad luck and not worth much, and that they themselves
were the lords of that land, and people had to obey them and serve them.
But all these claims made little or no impression on the Indians, who talked them over
among themselves and said the Christians were lying, because we came from where the sun
rose, and they, from where it set; we healed the sick, but they killed the healthy; we came
naked and barefoot, but they came in clothes and on horses and with lances; and we weren’t
greedy-rather everything the Indians gave us we turned around and gave away, leaving
nothing for ourselves, whereas these others had nothing on their minds but to steal every-
thing they found and never gave anything to anybody.
That’s how they described us and praised our deeds in contrast with those others’ deeds.
And that’s what they said to the Christians’ interpreter, too, and they said the same to every-
body else through a language that we could understand, known as Primahaitu, which sounds
like Basque and which we found used throughout the more than four hundred leagues that
we traveled, without any other language we could depend on.
When all was said and done, the interpreter never could persuade the Indians that we
were one and the same as the Christians. We had to struggle just to argue them into going
back to their homes. We ordered them to look after themselves, to settle their towns, and
to sow and cultivate their land, which had become overgrown from not having people in it.
I have no doubt that it is the best of the Indian lands—the most fertile and the best for liv-
ing on. They get to plant their crops three times in one year. The land has many fruits and
beautiful rivers and other beautiful bodies of water. There are signs and strong indications of
gold and silver mines. The people are very docile. They serve the Christians (those who are
friends to them) very willingly. They are very adaptable, much more than the Mexicans, and
finally, the land will never fail to be fertile.
As we said goodbye to the Indians, they told us they would do what we ordered and
settle their towns again, if the Christians left them alone. And I assert and affirm that if they
didn’t, the Christians are to blame.
After we sent the Indians away in peace and thanked them for the troubles they had en-
dured with us, the Christians sent us, under guard, to a certain Cebreros, a mayor, and after
him, to two others, who took us across mountains and deserts to sever any communication
between us and the Indians and keep us from seeing or hearing about what they were in fact
doing. Thus it can be seen how men’s thoughts deceive them: we were trying to secure their
freedom, and when we thought they had it, the opposite happened, because the Christians
had it planned to attack the Indians whom we had sent off with assurances of peace. And what
they planned, they did.
[For the further adventures of Esteban, read Castañeda’s account, later in this volume.
Translated by John DuVal from Alva Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, La relación y comentarios
del governador Alvar Núñez Cabeça de Vaca de lo acaescido en las dos jornadas que hizo a las Indias
(Valladolid, 1555), folios 19v-22, 47v-49v.
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Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca’s Shipwreck off the Texas Coast (1528–1536)
• 11
loyal to me argued that we were not what was killing them, because if we had been all that
powerful, we would have made sure that not so many of our own people died as they could
plainly see had died; we had not been able to find a cure for ourselves, and now only a few of
us were left, not doing anybody any harm; so the best thing for them to do was leave us alone.
Our Lord granted that the others took this advice and their plan came to nothing.
We named this island Malhado, Bad Luck Island. The people we found there are tall
and sturdy. The only weapons they have are bows and arrows, which they are very skillful
with. The men have one of their nipples pierced through and through—and some of them
have both nipples pierced—by a needle which they make for that purpose. Then they pull a
bamboo shoot half a palm long and as thick as two fingers through the hole. They also pierce
their lower lips and insert a cane shoot half as thick as a finger.
They live on the island from October to the end of February. In November and De-
cember they live off the roots I mentioned, which they pull up out of the water. They have
weirs, but when the fishing gives out, they just eat the roots. At the end of February they
move to other places because then the roots are putting out new plants and aren’t good.
These are the people who of all the world love their children most and treat them best.
When it happens that a child dies, the parents weep, and the kinfolk weep, and then the
whole village. The weeping goes on for an entire year. … The Indians weep for all their
dead in this manner, except for old people, who don’t count for them, because, they say, old
people have had their day, serve no purpose, have quit taking care of children, and just oc-
cupy ground.
Their custom is to bury the dead, except for doctors, whom they cremate. As the fire
burns, they all dance and have a big party. Then they grind the bones into powder. After a
year they perform rites for the dead and all slash themselves and give the kinfolk water to
drink with the bone powder mixed into it.
Each man has a specific wife. The doctors are the most privileged and can have two or
three, who get along together in good friendship and harmony.
When a man marries off his daughter, from the day the groom marries her, whatever
he catches—whether hunting or fishing, all of it—his bride carries to her father’s house and
doesn’t dare keep any of it or eat one bite of it herself. And they get what they eat from the
father-in-law’s house. During all this time neither father-in-law nor mother-in-law enters into
the groom’s home, nor may he go into his parents-in-law’s or his brother- or sister-in-law’s
homes. If by any chance they come upon each other anywhere, they go out of their way to
avoid each other by a bowshot’s distance, keeping their heads down all the while and their
eyes on the ground, because they consider it bad luck to see each other or speak to each
other. The women are free to communicate and talk with the parents-in-law and relatives.
This custom holds on the island as well as the mainland as far as fifty leagues inland.
There is another custom, which is when a child or sibling dies, for three months the
people in the house don’t hunt for food, but would rather starve. So the kinfolk and neighbors
provide what they need to eat. Since so many were dying during the time we were there, most
households were suffering terribly from hunger because they still held to this custom and cer-
emony. And no matter how hard the ones that did go out worked, the weather was too rough
for them to get more than a little. That’s why the Indians who kept me left the island and went
in their canoes to inlets along the mainland where there are plenty of oysters.
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Virginia Codes Regulating
Servitude and Slavery (1642–1705)
William Waller Hening
SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY VIRGINIA USED BOTH white and black unfree laborers, and their circum-
stances were more similar than you might think. Some English people bought passage on a ship to
Virginia in exchange for
signing an indenture, committing them to work without pay for a certain
number of years. Many English children were kidnapped and forced to work in Virginia. Slave trad-
ers brought African laborers against their will and sold them as unfree laborers. In Virginia, these
white and black men and women worked under fairly similar conditions. Many black servants gained
freedom, and some even acquired land and bought their own servants. But over time, English Virgin-
ians came to see permanent race-based slavery as the best way to farm tobacco. Below are acts that the
Virginia General Assembly passed to regulate servitude, in chronological order.
1642 Whereas many great abuses and much detriment have been found to arise both against
the law of God and likewise to the service of many masters of families in the colony occa-
sioned through secret marriages of servants, their masters and mistresses being not any ways
made privy thereto, as also by committing of fornication, for preventing the like abuses here-
after: Be it enacted and confirmed by this Grand Assembly that what manservant soever
hath since January 1640 or hereafter shall secretly marry with any maid or woman servant
without the consent of her master or mistress if she [the mistress] be a widow, he or they so
offending shall in the first place serve out his or their time or times with his or their masters
or mistresses, and after shall serve his or their master or mistress one complete year more
for such offence committed, and the maid or woman servant so marrying without consent
as aforesaid shall for such her offence double the time of service with her master and mis-
tress, and a freeman so offending shall give satisfaction to the master or mistress by dou-
bling the value of the service and pay a fine of five hundred pounds of tobacco to the parish
where such offence shall be committed, and it is also further enacted and confirmed by the
authority of this Grand Assembly that if any manservant shall commit the act of fornication
with any maid or woman servant, he shall for his offence, besides the punishment by the
law appointed in like cases, give satisfaction for the loss of her service, by one whole year’s
104
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Chapter Two: The African Experience in Colonial America
1662 Whereas some doubts have arisen whether children got by any Englishman upon
a negro woman should be slave or free: Be it therefore enacted … that all children born in
this country shall be held bond or free only according to the condition of the mother. …
1667 Whereas some doubts have arisen whether children that are slaves by birth, and
by the charity and piety of their owners made partakers of the blessed sacrament of baptism,
should by virtue of their baptism be made free: It is enacted… that the conferring of baptism
doth not alter the condition of the person as to his bondage or freedom; that divers masters,
freed from this doubt, may more carefully endeavor the propagation of christianity by per-
mitting (slaves) to be admitted to the sacrament.
1669 Whereas the only law in force for the punishment of refractory servants resist-
ing their master, mistress or overseer cannot be inflicted upon negroes, nor the obstinacy of
many of them by other than violent means suppressed; Be it enacted [that] if any slave resist
his master or others by his master’s order correcting him) and by the extremity of the cor-
rection should chance to die, that his death shall not be accounted felony, but the master (or
that other person appointed by the master to punish him) be acquit from molestation, since it
cannot be presumed that prepensed malice (which alone makes murder felony) should induce
any man to destroy his own estate.
1680 Whereas the frequent meeting of considerable numbers of negro slaves under
pretence of feasts and burials is judged of dangerous consequence; for prevention whereof for
the future: Be it enacted… that from and after the publication of this law, it shall not be law-
ful for any negro or other slave to carry or arm himself with any club, staff, gun, sword or any
other weapon of defense or offence, nor to go or depart from off his master’s ground without
a certificate from his master, mistress or overseer, and such permission not to be granted but
upon particular and necessary occasions; and every negro or slave so offending not having a
certificate as aforesaid shall be sent to the next constable, who is hereby enjoined and required
to give the negro twenty lashes on his bare back well laid on, and … if any negro or other
slave shall presume to lift up his hand in opposition against any christian, shall for every such
offence, upon due proof made thereof by the oath of the party before a magistrate, have and
receive thirty lashes on his bare back well laid on. And it is hereby further enacted … that if
any negro or other slave shall absent himself from his master’s service and lie hid and lurking
in obscure places, committing injuries to the inhabitants, and shall resist any person or persons
that shall by any lawful authority be employed to apprehend and take the negro, that then in
case of such resistance, it shall be lawful for such person or persons to kill the negro or slave.
1691 For the prevention of that abominable mixture and spurious issue which hereafter
may increase in this dominion, as well be negroes, mulattoes, and Indians intermarrying with
English, or other white women, as by their unlawful accompanying with one another: Be it
enacted… that for the time to come, whatsoever English or other white man or woman being
free shall intermarry with a negro, mulatto, or Indian man or woman bond or free shall within
three months after such marriage be banished and removed from this dominion forever. …
And be it further enacted … that if any English woman being free shall have a bastard child by
any negro or mulatto, she pay the sum of fifteen pounds sterling, within one month after such
bastard child shall be born, to the Church wardens of the parish where she shall be delivered
of such a child, and in default of such payment she shall be taken into the possession of the
American Perspectives: Readings in American History, Volume 1, Sixth Custom Edition by Kent McGaughy. Published by Pearson Learning Solutions.
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service, when he shall be free from his master according to his indentures, and if it so fall out
that a freeman offend as formerly he shall be compelled to make satisfaction to the master or
mistress of the woman servant by his service for one complete year, or otherwise give forth-
with such valuable consideration as the commissioners in their discretion shall think fit.
Whereas complaints are at every quarter court exhibited against divers persons who
entertain and enter into covenants with runaway servants and freemen who have formerly
hired themselves to others to the great prejudice if not the utter undoing of divers poor men,
thereby also encouraging servants to run from their masters and obscure themselves in some
remote plantations, upon consideration had for the future preventing of the like injurious
and unjust dealings: Be it enacted and confirmed that what person or persons soever shall
entertain any person as hireling, or sharer or upon any other conditions for one whole year
without certificate from the commander or any one commissioner of the place, that he or
she is free from any engagement of service, the person so hiring without such certificate
as aforesaid, shall for every night that he or she entertain any servant either as hireling or
otherwise, forfeit to the master or mistress of the servant twenty pounds of tobacco….
Whereas there are divers loitering runaways in the colony who very often absent them-
selves from their masters’ service, and sometimes in two or three months cannot be found,
whereby their masters are at great charge in finding them, and many times even to the loss of
their year’s labor before they be had: Be it therefore enacted and confirmed that all runaways
that shall absent themselves from their masters’ service shall be liable to make satisfaction by ser-
vice at the end of their times by indenture double the time of service so neglected, and in some
cases more if the commissioners for the place appointed shall find it requisite and convenient.
And if such runaways shall be found to transgress the second time or oftener (if it shall be duly
proved against them) that then they shall be branded in the cheek with the letter R and pass
under the statute of incorrigible rogues, provided notwithstanding that where any servants shall
have just cause of complaint against their masters or mistresses by harsh or unchristianlike usage
or otherwise for want of diet, or convenient necessaries that then it shall be lawful for any such
servant or servants to repair to the next commissioner to make his or their complaint.
1661 Whereas there are divers loitering runaways in this country who very often absent
themselves from their masters’ service and sometimes in a long time cannot be found, the
loss of the time and the charge in the seeking them often exceeding the value of their labor:
Be it therefore enacted that all runaways that shall absent themselves from their masters’ ser-
vice, shall be liable to make satisfaction by service after the times by custom or indenture is
expired, viz. double their times of service so neglected, and if the time of their running away
was in the crop or the charge of recovering them extraordinary the court shall limit a longer
time of service proportional to the damage the master shall make appear he hath sustained. ..
. and in case any English servant shall run away in company of any negroes who are incapable
of making satisfaction by addition of time, it is enacted that the English so running away in
the company with them shall at the time of service to their own masters expired, serve the
masters of the negroes for their absence so long as they should have done by this act if they
had not been slaves, every christian in company serving his proportion; and if the negroes be
lost or die in such time of their being run away, the christian servants in company with them
shall by proportion among them, either pay four thousand five hundred pounds of tobacco
and cask or four years’ service for every negro so lost or dead.
American Perspectives: Readings in American History, Volume 1, Sixth Custom Edition by Kent McGaughy. Published by Pearson Learning Solutions.
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Church wardens and disposed of for five years, and the fine of fifteen pounds, or whatever the
woman shall be disposed of for, shall be paid, one third part to their majesties…