“My only remaining duty is to transmit what I saw and heard in the nine years I wandered lost and miserable over many remote lands. I hope in some measure to convey to Your Majesty not merely a report of positions and distance, flora and fauna, but of the customs of the numerous barbarous people I talked with and dwelt among, as well as any other matters I could hear of or observe” (Norton 41)
Cabeza de Vaca was one of the survivors of the expedition to Florida by Narvaez. Cabeza de Vaca spends eight years with the native’s tribes of Texas –Northern Mexico, learning their customs and language. In “From The Relation of Alvaz Nunez Cabeza de Vaca”, De Vaca writes to the King to explain that those people are smart, with their own culture and rules. They are human being not animals, and they should not be enslaved. De Vaca goes on and explains how the natives treated them and helped them with food and accommodation: “they also brought whatever else they had; but we wished only a meal…” (Norton 47).
