I recently finished the first hand account written by Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, Journey From Florida To The Pacific 1528-1536. Homeslice walked across the good old US of A, starving his ass off and getting enslaved by every band of injuns along the way. Fun stuff. Anyway, after finishing his story I started The Journey of Coronado 1540-1542, written by Pedro de Casteñeda. Pedro was a regular foot soldier who wrote his book 20 years after the fact back in Spain. According to him, there were tribes of Indians who looked like white men, had beards and white skin. They nicknamed one of their guides "Whiskers" on account of his beard. They kept meeting these different Indians along the way and the men would give them nicknames like Juan and Pedro due to their uncanny resemblance to people they knew back home.

Anyway, I always like to point out the white slaves and white Indians to ya whenever I come across em.

-T-Rex

One of the European Indians that de Vaca ran into when he was part of the 1528 Florida entrada was Juan Ortiz, a man who had been adopted by the tribe that became the target of the lead conquistador’s cruelty, a low-IQ captain who had a chief’s nose bitten off and his mother killed. Interestingly, when Soto headed further north in Florida in 1541 he was actually punched by an Indian, which is a European behavior. Amerindians of Asiatic origin, like most aboriginal peoples the world over, have demonstrated no conception of punching, this being a practice completely tied to civilized disarmament in the Old World.

I would like to pause and take a moment for Esteban the Black, a Moor, and possibly a Berber with black hair, which is what that designation generally meant in the early modern era, who was sold by his Spanish master back into slavery. D Vaca and Esteban did most of the faith healing work that ingratiated these four marooned souls into the hearts of the Indians. After being one of the four expedition survivors to escape with their lives after years of slavery, toil and faith healing, he was monetized. It is further rather certain that captives, deserters and rapists from among the Spanish soldiers and adventurers accounted for a healthy infusion of Iberian blood into the Amerindian genome during these various entradas, their having been 5 entradas I can recall into what is now the United States of America.

Thank you, T-Rex.

Editor: Miss Lockhart, please provide me with a copy of both of the journals mentioned above. I have read de Vaca twice, but that was a lifetime ago and I must read Casteneda.