READ THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE AND RESPOND TO THE QUESTIONS BELOW IN AT LEAST 150 WO

Question

READ THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE AND RESPOND TO THE QUESTIONS BELOW IN AT LEAST 150 WORD. PLEASE INCLUDE QUOTES IN YOUR RESPONSES. THANKS

On April 14, 1528, a band of 400 Spanish explorers in
fourships made landfall on the west coast of Florida,
in a bay not far from the present-day city of Sarasota. The
expedition was led by red-bearded Panfilo de Narvaez, a oneeyed
former governor of Cuba. His second in command was
37-year-old Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, a veteran of several
military campaigns on behalf of the Holy Roman Empire and
the heir to a family with large landholdings near the southern
Spanish coastal city of Cadiz. After being deposed as governor
of Paraguay, Cabeza de Vaca would return in chains to Cadiz in
1543, the same port to which Christopher Columbus, the
devoutly Catholic explorer from Genoa, had returned bound in
irons following his third voyage to the New World, in 1500.
Cabeza de Vaca, like Columbus, was subject to the whims of
his sponsors and the resentments of his subordinates. His setbacks,
however, could not diminish the magnitude of his
achievement as the first European to travel across the North
American continent, from Florida to the Gulf of California.

Cabeza de Vaca compiled a report of the ill-fated Florida
expedition that has been described as the first great work of
American literature. It is also a testimony to the author's powerful
devotion to the Roman Catholic Church. The Spanish
expeditionary party, which included five priests of the
Franciscan order (a community founded by St. Francis of Assisi
in 1209), was charged with conquering the Florida territory,
believed at the time to extend far to the west of its location on
the peninsula. Shortly after going ashore the Spaniards captured
four Native Americans, whom they called Indians and
who indicated through the use of sign language the existence of
a gold-laden province to the northwest. In the course of seeking
and later fleeing from that desolate terrain, all but four of
the original explorers perished. Among the survivors was
Cabeza de Vaca, who was shipwrecked off the coast of Texas
and rescued by Native Americans in November 1528. He
served them over the next six years as healer, slave, and merchant
before fleeing with his three compatriots into the interior
of New Spain, in what is today the country of Mexico.
The Spaniards came to the New World to seek riches and
to claim vast expanses of land for the Crown as well as to win
souls for the church. Along with the vast majority of Europeans
who came to North America, Cabeza de Vaca believed that the
Indians were "wild, untaught savages" who must be converted
to Christianity. The idea that Native American civilizations
could be considered complete and valuable in their present
state was inconceivable to Catholics and Protestants alike in
the age of exploration and conquest. In his report to Charles I,
the king of Spain, who also ruled as Holy Roman Emperor
Charles V, Cabeza de Vaca described how he and his colleagues
"taught the people by signs, which they understood, that in
Heaven there was a Man we called God, who had created the

heavens and the earth; that all good came from Him and that
we worshipped and obeyed Him and called Him our Lord; and
that if they would do the same, all would be well with them."
Yet just as Cabeza de Vaca recognized differences between the
Native American tribes he encountered, he also learned that
not all of his compatriots shared his view that the Indians
"must be won by kindness, the only certain way."
Cabeza de Vaca referred to the Europeans in North
America simply as Christians. Martin Luther, the German
leader of a reform movement that led to a proliferation of
Protestant churches in northern Europe, had been excommunicated
from the Roman Catholic Church just seven years
prior to the expedition led by Panfilo de Narvaez. But the
Reformation was of little concern to the Spaniards, who continued
to equate Christianity with the Roman Catholicism that
had reigned throughout Europe for well over a thousand years.
Roman Catholics believe that Jesus was crucified, died, and
was buried, and rose again on the third day as a sign that he
truly was the Messiah, the only Son of God. Forty days after
his resurrection Jesus ascended into heaven and took his place
at the right hand of God. The third person of the Blessed
Trinity, the Holy Spirit, soon directed the apostles to spread
the news of Christ's life and resurrection, through which he
conquered death and offered eternal life to those who believed
in him. The leader of these apostles, Peter ("You are Peter, and
on this rock I will build my church," Jesus tells his disciple, as
reported in the Gospel of Matthew), eventually made his way
to Rome, the center of the Western world at that time.
Peter's successors as head of the church, the bishops of
Rome, came to be known as the popes. The early church
endured much suffering and persecution, but by the fourth century
Roman Catholicism had become the dominant religious

and cultural force in Europe. Through the centuries, the
church inevitably became embroiled in political controversies
that led to calls for reform. Martin Luther, a former priest who
rose to prominence in the early 16th century, was not the first
but was by far the most influential critic of certain practices
within the church that were widely viewed as scandalous. In the
two centuries before Luther's time the church had suffered
from corrupt leadership and rampant nepotism (the granting of
high positions to family members, in this case relatives of the
popes). Martin Luther particularly objected to the church's
selling of indulgences, spiritual favors that removed "vestiges"
of sins already forgiven by God through the church. Luther
insisted that God's grace was a free gift not linked to such spiritual
"works" as indulgences. The Protestant reform movement
Luther helped launch taught that women and men were granted
salvation by faith alone, not by "good works" that could be
manipulated by the church's earthly leaders.
The Spanish Catholic explorers of the New World believed
that in bringing Christianity to its Indians and claiming its possessions
for the Crown they would earn eternal salvation.
Cabeza de Vaca was not a priest, but he was no less committed
than his Franciscan countrymen to the conversion and spiritual
welfare of the Native Americans. Tensions unavoidably erupted
among the Spaniards in North America, however, pitting those
who viewed their mission as primarily religious against the
many conquistadores (conquerors) whose motives were more personal,
political, and economic in nature. Cabeza de Vaca sought
to spare the Native Americans from the conquistadores who were
killing or enslaving them. At the same time, however, he warned
the Indians, as he wrote in his report to the king, that if they
failed to "serve God as we required," the Christians "would
treat them hard and carry them away to strange lands as slaves."

Some conquistadores claimed that the Native Americans
should not be converted to Christianity, arguing that they were
not even human. In response, in 1537 Pope Paul III issued a
papal decree in which he affirmed that "the Indians are truly
men" who "are by no means to be deprived of their liberty or
the possession of their property; even though they be outside
the faith of Jesus Christ; and that they may and should, freely
and legitimately, enjoy their liberty and the possession of their
property; nor should they be in any way enslaved." But a year
later, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V—who in his other
capacity as the king of Spain was also the sponsor of Cabeza de
Vaca's mission—convinced the pope to revoke punishments
imposed by missionaries on conquistadores who had mistreated
Indians. Although Charles subsequently instituted reforms
designed to lessen the abuse of Native Americans by Spaniards
in the New World, irreparable harm had already been done.
Cabeza de Vaca's journey helped pave the way for the rapid
expansion of Roman Catholicism in the regions he explored.
On September 8, 1565, a solemn mass was celebrated at St.
Augustine, Florida, on the feast day of the nativity of the
Blessed Virgin Mary. The ceremony also marked the arrival of
Pedro Menendez de Aviles, captain-general of the Indies fleet,
who had been dispatched by King Philip II of Spain to establish
a permanent Catholic settlement in Florida. St. Augustine
became the site of the first American parish. Mission stations
were soon established in nearby villages by Franciscans as well
as by Jesuits, members of a religious order (the Society of
Jesus) founded by Ignatius Loyola and formally established by
the church in 1540. A former soldier from the Basque region of
present-day Spain, Ignatius developed a spiritual doctrine that
stressed the integration of prayer and service: Jesuits were
urged to "find God in all things." Spanish Catholicism of the Franciscan and Jesuit varieties
exerted great impact on the missions created between the early
17th and late 18th centuries in present-day Texas, Arizona,
New Mexico, and California. Because Mexico City was the
capital of New Spain, these remote northern outposts were
often sparsely populated and many were short-lived, but they
left a complex legacy among the Native American populations
for many generations to come.
The missions were a central component of both the church's
activity in the New World and the highly elaborate imperial
bureaucracy orchestrated from Spain. The missions were
designed to gather local Indians together in one place so that, as
Pope Paul III commanded in 1537, they "should be converted to
the faith of Jesus Christ by preaching the word of God and by
the example of good and holy living." Far more than mere centers
of conversion and worship, the missions also provided educational,
medical, and social services. The Spanish hoped to
transplant a piece of their civilization to the frontier and build a
self-sustaining community that would separate converted Indians
from the non-Christians living outside the walls of the mission.
The Indians were enticed by the spiritual and healing
prowess of the missionaries as well as by the promise of protection
and the offer of such basic necessities as food and shelter.
As a Jesuit in Arizona explained, "Indians do not come to
Christian service when they do not see the maize pot boiling."
At the same time, many Indians were attracted to the richly
symbolic nature of the Roman Catholic faith. As a priest at the
mission in San Francisco recalled, "I brought out a representation
of our holy father St. Francis, most edifying, and upon my
presenting it to the Indians to kiss they did so with much veneration,
to all appearances, and willingness, that they stole my
heart and the hearts of all who observed them."

An Italian Jesuit, Francisco Eusebio Kino, founded Spanish
missions across southern Arizona in the 1690s. In 1700 he
established the mission of San Xavier del Bac on a site near contemporary
Tucson. The church Kino built there was destroyed,
but another mission church was erected in the last two decades
of the 18th century. The church of San Xavier del Bac (known
as "the White Dove of the Desert" for its graceful appearance)
is a blend of baroque, Moorish, and Byzantine styles and is
widely considered the finest example of Spanish Renaissance
architecture found in America. Kino worked among the Pima
Indians and was more respectful of Native American cultures
than many of his missionary colleagues were. In an account of
his work, written in 1710, Kino described his travels in the
Southwest and reported that over a 21-year period "there have
been brought to our friendship and to the desire of receiving
our holy Catholic faith . . . more than thirty thousand souls,
there being sixteen thousand of Pimas alone."
The California missions founded by the Spanish
Franciscan Junipero Serra between 1769 and his death in 1784
were noted for their ambitious and often lucrative agricultural
programs. Serra was a former philosophy teacher who was
working as a missionary in Mexico when, at the age of 59, he
was appointed to launch the Franciscans' California mission
program. He quickly established communities at San Diego,
San Luis Obispo, San Francisco, and other locations along the
California coast. Serra's motto was "Always forward, never back,"
and he proved an able builder and administrator of missions.
The California missions, like those in the desert
Southwest, offered their subjects protection against both rival
Native Americans and violent elements within the community
of Spanish settlers. The mission padres (Spanish for "fathers")
insisted that the Indians under their care convert willingly, butthese "neophytes," or newly converted people, were not permitted
to leave the missions for extended periods, in part
because the padres took full responsibility for the souls of their
converts. The inhabitants of the missions were often severely
punished if they attempted to leave, and even after converting
to Christianity they had few of the rights and privileges
enjoyed by the Spaniards. Between 1769 and 1784 more than
6,000 California Indians were baptized at missions founded by
Serra. For several decades after his death, California was
dependent for its survival on the economic productivity of the
missions he had set up.
The Spanish missions in North America differed from one
another in certain respects but shared many features in common.
The missionaries directed much of their efforts toward
Native American children, through whom they hoped to create
new generations of Christians. In fact, the missionaries tended
to treat all the Native Americans as children who could only
gradually embrace the European Christian way of life; in the
meantime they would remain separated from both the
Spaniards and other Indians outside the enclosure. This segregation
did not, however, prevent the spread of diseases among
the native populations, who lacked immunity to many sicknesses,
such as cholera and smallpox, introduced to North America by
Europeans. The combination of disease, mistreatment, and
overwork had a devastating impact on Native American populations
throughout the Southwest.
While some of the earliest Franciscan and Jesuit missionaries
had a sincere desire to understand the Native Americans'
languages and cultures, the Spanish government quickly discouraged
these efforts for fear the missionaries would shift
their loyalties from the Crown to their Indian subjects.

Although Catholicism was the official state religion in Spain,
the church had allowed itself to become dominated by the
monarchy, which therefore enjoyed full control over the religious
institutions established in North America.
The Spanish conquerors found themselves beset by internal
strife, especially between missionaries and colonial administrators.
In 1773 Father Serra traveled to Mexico to petition the
colonial government successfully to free the missions from civil
control. Several years later he reported that "when we came
not a Christian existed here . . . we regenerated all in Christ;
and . . . we have come and we are all here for their welfare and
salvation. At all events, I believe it is well known that we love
them." That love did not translate, however, into a belief in
self-rule for their Native American Christian neophytes. The
Franciscans' deeply spiritual concern for the welfare of their
charges was not always sufficient to protect them against
exploitation and brutality, though the plight of the Indians in
California only worsened when the Mexican government
removed the padres from the missions in the 1830s.
Junipero Serra and many other Spanish missionaries to
North America were inspired by the religious renewal that
began in 16th-century Spanish Catholicism, an era dominated
by such remarkable figures as St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the
Cross, and St. Ignatius Loyola. These individuals were visionaries
who inspired many others to endure hardship and suffering
and to sacrifice their own desires for the good of the church.
But Spanish Catholics in North America sometimes combined
this powerful quest on behalf of the church with an
equally fervent drive for personal spiritual authority. Alvar
Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, for example, had returned to New
Spain in 1543 to conduct an expedition deep into the jungles of

Paraguay in search of the legendary golden city of Manoa. His
troops soon grew resentful of him, however, not only because
he forbade them to mistreat the native peoples but also because
he presented himself as a "divine agent" and ordered his men
to transport his weighty camp bed across the jungle. He was
deposed and returned to Spain a prisoner, then was vindicated
only a few years before his death in 1557. Cabeza de Vaca's
complex legacy—his blend of religious zeal and personal
grandiosity—was echoed in the lives and work of numerous
Europeans who sought to bring Christianity to North America
in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries.
While the Spanish focused their colonizing efforts on the
"borderlands" of Mexico, the 17th century saw the French concentrate
on Canada. From that base adventurers and missionaries
explored parts of the future states of Maine, New York, and
Michigan, as well as the Mississippi Valley. Unlike Spain,
France was home to a significant community of Protestants,
known as Huguenots, who had been granted limited religious
freedom under the Edict of Nantes in 1598. In 1608 the first
permanent French settlement in North America was founded
at Quebec by Samuel de Champlain, a devout Catholic acting
as the agent of a Huguenot businessman, Pierre du Guast,
Sieur de Monts. Because few Huguenots had settled in North
America prior to the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685,
French Canada became dominated by Catholics, many of
whom hoped to build a Christian society in the wilderness,
while others—notably the fur traders—came seeking riches.
From the 1630s until 1763, when Canada came under
British rule, the Jesuits were the dominant missionaries of New
France. The Jesuit missionary Isaac Jogues worked among the
Huron Indians in Michigan and northern New York, where he
was captured by Iroquois rivals of the Huron in 1642.

1) Who was Cabeza de Vaca? How was his journey important for the history of Catholicism in Americas? What regions of the Americas did the Spanish explore?

2) What were some of the prime motivations for the Spanish who came to the New World? How did religion fit in?

Explanation / Answer

1. The expedition led by Panfilo de Narvaez,On April 14, 1528 consisted of a 400 spanish explores on the west coast of Florida. Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca was 37 year old, who was a veteran of several military campaigns on behalf of Roman Empire , was also a rich heir to a familynear western spanish Coastal city of Cadiz.
His journey is compared with great voyager Colombus; Cabeza would return in chains to the same port to which Colombus had returned. Cabeza compiled it as ill-fated Florida expediion that has been described great in American literature. It was a journey of conversion to christianity, they had wanted to spread christianity across the whole globe.Cabeza also believed that Indians were "wild, untaught savages" who must be converted to Christianity. They also believed that in bringing Christianity to its Indians and claiming its possessions for the Crown they would earn eternal salvation. His troops soon grew resentful of him, however, not only because he forbade them to mistreat the native peoples but also because he presented himself as a "divine agent" and ordered his men to transport his weighty camp bed across the jungle. He was deposed and returned to Spain a prisoner, then was vindicated only a few years before his death in 1557. Cabeza de Vaca's complex legacy—his blend of religious zeal and personal grandiosity—was echoed in the lives and work of numerous Europeans who sought to bring Christianity to North America in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries.
The regions that were explored st.augustine,texas,arizona,new mexico,california.

2.The Spaniards came to the New World to seek riches andto claim vast expanses of land for the Crown as well as to winsouls for the church. Along with the vast majority Europeans
who came to North America, Cabeza de Vaca believed that theIndians were "wild, untaught savages" who must be converted to Christianity. The Spanish Catholic explorers of the New World believed that in bringing Christianity to its Indians and claiming its possessions for the Crown they would earn eternal salvation.Cabeza de Vaca was not a priest, but he was no less committed
than his Franciscan countrymen to the conversion and spiritual
welfare of the Native Americans. Tensions unavoidably erupted among the Spaniards in North America, however, pitting those who viewed their mission as primarily religious against themany conquistadores (conquerors) whose motives were more personal,political, and economic in nature. Cabeza de Vaca sought to spare the Native Americans from the conquistadores who were
killing or enslaving them. At the same time, however, he warned the Indians, as he wrote in his report to the king, that if they failed to "serve God as we required," the Christians "would treat them hard and carry them away to strange lands as slaves." IN this way gradually a religious theme had approach in the vicinity of exploration.

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