Brutal Journey
Brutal Journey

Author: Paul Schneider

Publisher: Macmillan + ORM

Published: 2013-04-26

Total Pages: 400

ISBN-13: 1466843292

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A gripping account of four explorers adrift in an unknown land and the harrowing journey that took them across North America 270 years before Lewis and Clark One part Heart of Darkness, one part Lewis and Clark, Brutal Journey tells the story of a group of explorers who came to the new world on the heels of Cortés; bound for glory, only four of four hundred would survive. Eight years and some five thousand miles later, three Spaniards and a black Moroccan wandered out of the wilderness to the north of the Rio Grande and into Cortes' gold-drenched Mexico. The four survivors of the Narváez expedition brought nothing back from their sojourn other than their story, but what a tale it was. They had become killers and cannibals, torturers and torture victims, slavers and enslaved. They became faith healers, arms dealers, canoe thieves, spider eaters, and finally, when there were only the four of them left in the high Texas desert, they became itinerate messiahs. They became, in other words, whatever it took to stay alive long enough to inch their way toward Mexico, the only place where they were certain they would find an outpost of the Spanish empire. The journey of the Cabeza De Vaca expedition is one of the greatest survival epics in the history of American exploration. By drawing on the accounts of the first explorers and the most recent findings of archaeologists and academic historians, Paul Schneider offers a thrilling and authentic narrative to replace a legend of North American exploration.

Early U.S.-Hispanic Relations, 1776-1860
Early U.S.-Hispanic Relations, 1776-1860

Author: Rafael Emilio Tarragó

Publisher: Scarecrow Press

Published: 1994

Total Pages: 186

ISBN-13: 9780810828827

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Tarrago goes back to 1776, when the thirteen rebel English colonies in North America sought the help of the Spanish Crown. A selective bibliography, including many printed primary sources, as well as monographs and journal articles.

A Forgotten Kingdom
A Forgotten Kingdom

Author: Frederic J. Athearn

Publisher:

Published: 1989

Total Pages: 118

ISBN-13:

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"This volume represents a bridge between Colorado's pre-historic past and the time of Anglo-American settlement in our state. Few people realize that hundreds of years before the discovery of gold in Colorado during 1859, a highly developed civilization had explored and settled the area now known as New Mexico. ... This long cultural heritage was overshadowed when Colorado [and New Mexico] became part of the United States during the mid-1800s"--Foreword

Bernardo de Gálvez
Bernardo de Gálvez

Author: Gonzalo M. Quintero Saravia

Publisher: UNC Press Books

Published: 2018-03-23

Total Pages: 617

ISBN-13: 1469640805

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Although Spain was never a formal ally of the United States during the American Revolution, its entry into the war definitively tipped the balance against Britain. Led by Bernardo de Galvez, supreme commander of the Spanish forces in North America, their military campaigns against British settlements on the Mississippi River—and later against Mobile and Pensacola—were crucial in preventing Britain from concentrating all its North American military and naval forces on the fight against George Washington's Continental army. In this first comprehensive biography of Galvez (1746@–86), Gonzalo M. Quintero Saravia assesses the commander's considerable historical impact and expands our understanding of Spain's contribution to the war. A man of both empire and the Enlightenment, as viceroy of New Spain (1785@–86), Galvez was also pivotal in the design and implementation of Spanish colonial reforms, which included the reorganization of Spain's Northern Frontier that brought peace to the region for the duration of the Spanish presence in North America. Extensively researched through Spanish, Mexican, and U.S. archives, Quintero Saravia's portrait of Galvez reveals him as central to the histories of the Revolution and late eighteenth-century America and offers a reinterpretation of the international factors involved in the American War for Independence.

Knight Without Armor
Knight Without Armor

Author: Félix Díaz Almaráz

Publisher: Texas A&M University Press

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 494

ISBN-13: 9781603447140

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"Knight without Armor: Carlos E. Castaneda" is the definitive biography of one of the most honored yet unknown historians of the twentieth century. No other historian of Hispanic descent has matched Castaneda's success, with twelve books and nearly eighty articles published in three decades. He was also one of the most distinguished, having earned prestigious accolades such knighthood in the Vatican's Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem and in Spain's Order of Isabel la Catolica as praise for his contributions to the study of Catholicism and the history of the Spanish borderlands in North America. Castaneda personified the ideal of knighthood as he overcame the limitations of financial burdens and ethnic discrimination. Rising out of humble origins in south Texas, he fought to improve school conditions in the barrios of San Antonio, and later served on Franklin D. Roosevelt's Committee on Fair Employment Practices during World War II. In 1939, he realized his dream of becoming a professor and historian. While teaching at the University of Texas, Castaneda specialized in Latin American history and focused on the history of Catholicism as the subject closest to his heart. His eight-volume work "Our Catholic Heritage in ""Texas"," 1519-1950" has been called the best work ever written on the Spanish colonial era in Texas. Until his death in 1958, Carlos Castaneda worked to educate others on the history of Hispanic Americans and their culture, and courageously sought equality for his people. Author Felix D. Almaraz, Jr. has compiled numerous writings, interviews and photographs from private collections as well as state and national archives in order to present a worthy tribute of a historian whose praise is long overdue.