Andrés Reséndez

Closer to being an academic monograph than one usually sees in history for the general reader, Resendez has a mystery of attribution he wants to tease apart. On one hand, the Spanish tended to grant credit to the first transit of the so-called "vuelta" of the Pacific Ocean, a circuit of that ocean without being forced to perform a circumnavigation, to the navigator Andres de Urdaneta in 1565, who received much acclaim. However, several months earlier in 1565, another ship from the same show more expedition to what became the Philippines arrived back in Mexico first, piloted by an Afro-Portuguese man named Lope Martin. What happened to get Martin erased from Spanish imperial history then becomes the backbone of this book, and quite a tale it is. I'm inclined to let the individual reader discover this story for themselves, as it is a good one. show less

When you hear or see the word 'slavery', what comes to mind? As Andres Resendez points out, the vast majority of us will envision African slaves, over-crowded and disease-ridden boats, and southern plantations. While that is a tragic, inexcusable part of American history, Africans were not the only people enslaved during the early, tumultuous years of America's beginnings. The Native Americans who'd roamed the country freely, who'd called the land their own for centuries before Europeans show more appeared, suddenly found themselves ripped away from their homeland and families, bought, sold, and traded. This occurred in staggering numbers, over a period of centuries.

This book is exceptionally well researched, yet it does not read like a dry textbook. Yes, it's a fairly academic read, in that it's rich in detail, but the writing is alive with texture and emotion. Resendez takes us back to an America most of us wouldn't recognize, to a time when owning a person was somehow justified as a Christian act of kindness. People disguised greed and bigotry as a necessary and righteous behavior, enabling themselves to steal Indian children and put them to work in the name of God.

Resendez takes us from the early struggles with Mexico, up through the Civil War. Most of the focus here is on the American Southwest and Mexico, then over to the American West. He highlights the country's dichotomy in fighting a Civil War to free African slaves, while continuing the enslave a disturbing number of Native Americans. In closing, Resendez briefly discusses our world history of slavery, and how it has never gone away but only evolved into something else to fit the circumstances and skirt the law.

This is a powerful, well written, disturbing, must-read book that should be in every school, a part of every history curriculum, and read by every adult. We need to acknowledge our problematic past if we have any hope of preventing a disastrous future. show less

An interesting introduction to thinking about enslavement of American Indian people from the beginnings of colonization. Reséndez traces not only explicit enslavement, but also the ways in which enslavers (particularly Spanish enslavers) managed to keep systems of enslavement in place even when laws dictated they should fall apart. Through this analysis, Reséndez makes the systems of enslavement that still exist more legible as such.

His analysis does fail entirely to go into the ways that show more sexual violence was a major part of this--he makes clear that women were more highly valued on slave markets, but just erases the reasons for that, which mirrors the continual erasure of the amount of sexual violence that Native women experience to this day. This massive gap in his analysis really needs to be addressed, and the fact that it is not in this book is really a problem.

Nevertheless, undoubtedly this book will open doors for more historians to examine this phenomenon, and to begin to make connections intellectually between American Indian enslavement and African enslavement on the North American continent, making both avenues of thought more productive. show less

As the saying goes, the truth is stranger than fiction. This account of an early Spanish explorer is so surreal that it is hard to believe. Even stranger still is that this story is relatively unknown in the English speaking world. Why this epic hasn't been made into a major movie, I can't say.

In summary, Cabeza de Vaca is part of a colonization expedition to Florida that goes horribly wrong. Stranded there, the conquistadores raft from Florida to Texas, but most die along the way. Cabeza show more de Vaca and 3 others manage to survive through adapting to different native cultures, first as slaves, then as shamanistic healers. After wandering from along the coast of Texas and Mexico, and then walking through the continent to the Pacific Ocean (!), they eventually meet up with Spanish slavers after 6 years. Cabeza de Vaca returned to Spain and wrote a record of his journey.

His is an amazing story on its own, but of equal intrigue are the tantalizing details of the many Native groups he and the 3 other castaways encountered. Some of the groups that Cabeza de Vaca encoutered disappeared almost immediately after contact from either disease or enslavement. His historic record is one of the only glimpses we will ever have of some of these peoples.

Resendez retells Cabeza de Vaca's tale based on his and other historic records, as well as providing some context around the larger political machinations occuring at the time. For example, Cabeza de Vaca's ill fated journey was an indirect result of Cortes' conquest of Mexico and the rivalry of conquistadores.
Fascinating story and well compiled and presented by Resendez. I would recommend to anyone who is interested in the early history and conquest of North America. show less