The Explorers: Christopher Columbus, John Smith, and Alver Nunez Cabeza de Vaca

In fourteen hundred ninety-two Columbus sailed the ocean blue...and that's how the lecture about Columbus started in elementary school. The teacher talked about how great he was for “discovering” America then we would make his three ships out of marshmallows and toothpicks stuck to miniature flags labeling them. Christopher Columbus was always told to be the noble man who sailed to America and worked alongside the Indians that he encountered to bring back different foods and spices to Spain. Little did I know, he really wasn’t. Now that I’m in college, I have found out the truth about this greedy explorer who cared of nothing but his success, which was inexistent after his first voyage. According to literary texts in The Norton Anthology of American Literature Vol. A, Columbus failed in his mission for King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella and did nothing but cause distress for the Indians he encountered.

As for John Smith, my introduction to him was through Disney's Pocahontas. In the cartoon, John Smith was portrayed as the courageous explorer who fell in love with chief Powhatan’s daughter Pocahontas. Other then this phony love story that I thought was true, I did not know much about Smith at all. As I now study Smith’s voyages I have found out that he exaggerated his story about Pocahontas and invaded Indian land as he pleased.

Although Columbus and Smith are the most talked about explorers, there is another explorer who I believe is more respectable. Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca is a respectable explorer because of the experiences he went through alongside the Indians he encountered. Unlike Columbus and Smith who saw themselves as lords over the Indians, Cabeza de Vaca saw himself as one of them. He struggled with them in their time of distress and experienced everything first hand as he describes in his literary text in The Norton Anthology of American Literature Vol. A, “Six out of eight months we dwelled with these people we endured acute hunger; for fish are not found where they are either.” (P.44)

Furthermore, from Columbus, Smith, and Cabeza de Vaca, I believe the noblest bringer of light is Cabeza de Vaca for all the hardship he endured to exist with groups of people he never met before.