Julie Borrego

English 48a

Journal for De Vaca

“They have a strange custom when acquaintances meet or occasionally visit, of weeping for half an hour before they speak.”

Summary: De Vaca is describing a custom of the Natives crying when they meet after sometime.

My Ideas: The above quote make me wonder if this custom is not what De Vaca, truly interpreted as considering he did not know their language. And that is how I feel regarding his whole interpretation, it is just that an interpretation of what he had experienced. It is hard for me to take his accounts for fact.

It is very confusing for me that in the end he would lead the Spanish to the Natives after he had lived with them for some long. They had befriended him it is very sad. But he may have been a situation where he had no choice. However some where along the way the Natives were not the only one’s betrayed…maybe the Spanish promised that they would not take, De Vaca’s group, as long as they provided food because they were starving. He could have been so naïve because he had been a way from Whites for so long.