Representing Native American women in early colonial American writings: Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, Juan Ortiz and John Smith
Keywords:
Native American women, Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, The Account, Naufragios, Juan Ortiz, Captain John Smith, PocahontasAbstract
Most observers of Native Americans during the contact period between Europe and the Americas represented Native American women as monstrous beings posing potential threats to the Europeans’ physical integrity. However, the most well known portrait of Native American women is John Smith’s description of Pocahontas, the Native American princess who, the legend goes, saved Smith from being executed. Transformed into a children’s tale, further popularized by the Disney movie, as well as being the object of innumerable historical studies questioning or asserting the veracity of Smith’s claims, the fact remains that the Smith-Pocahontas story is at the very core of North American culture. Nevertheless, far from being original, John Smith’s story had a precedent in the story of Spaniard Juan Ortiz, a member of the ill-fated Narváez expedition to Florida in 1527. Ortiz, who got lost in America and spent the rest of his life there, was also rescued by a Native American princess from being sacrificed in the course of a Native American ritual, as recounted by the Gentleman of Elvas...
Downloads
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
The copyright holder of the published contributions is SEDERI.The hardcopy and an open-access version of the journal will be published simultaneously. The issues will be available online in the SEDERI website (http://www.sederi.org/yearbook/) and other repositories that have signed an agreement with SEDERI.
The authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
a) SEDERI retains copyright of the essay.
b) If the author wishes to republish or rewrite the essay for another journal, or include the essay published in SEDERI in their personal repositories, or in any other way, they should contact the editors to obtain permission to do so. This will entail citing SEDERI as the original source and sending the editors a copy of the new version, or the link to the website, in case of online publishing.
The author(s) hereby warrant(s) that:
a) The essay submitted for publication is an original creation and does not infringe any copyright or property right of another journal, author or publisher.
b) The essay submitted for publication has not been previously published, whole or in part, and is not being considered for publication elsewhere.
c) Written permission has been obtained for any material from other sources included in the essay submitted for publication.