(Crossing the Continent 1527 1540 The Story of the First African American Explorer of the American South) PDF ñ Robert Goodwin

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Read Crossing the Continent 1527 1540 The Story of the First African American Explorer of the American South Crossing the Continent 1527 1540 The Story of the First African American Explorer of the American South Read & download ↠ PDF, DOC, TXT, eBook or Kindle ePUB free Robert Goodwin ï 2 Read & download N eight year journey from Florida to California in the early sixteenth century three hundred years before Lewis and Clark ventured west An extraordinary true life saga of courage trials and discovery that t. After I made it through the forward introduction and first chapter I checked around online to see what others thought of this book Several mentioned that the title was very inaccurate and that if the book had actually been what the title was about it would have likely been a lot interesting Only having made it that far I already agree After this point in my reading of this book I put it down and picked up the similar and I saw in my ramblings on the net generally better rated A Land So Strange In the first four pages I finally understood an event that Goodwin had spent a good part of the first chapter on but had done so in a rambly confusing way Goodwin seems to be one of those postmodern historians who believes that the essence of something is important than the historical specifics With almost no citations or references and as in the event I mention freuently a lack of interest in telling exactly where something occurred this is not the historian nor the book for me Additionally he claims in his introduction to be the first historian to have written about the man he calls Esteban but my search for reviews of his book unintentionally showed that not only is that inaccurate but that other historians have called him by the name he appears to have actually been known by Estebanico And beyond that even in the amount of pages I read Goodwin repeatedly does the exact same thing he haughtily accuses other historians of doing takes history and throws a ton of speculation onto it labelling said speculation as musts Esteban must have been able to escape from his slavers at some particular time and place and chosen not to The slavers must have been thinking this or feeling that Etc etcIf you want to write a postmodern book why not stick to writing about literature Sure history is somewhat subjective but not to the degree that writing about reading a work that doesn t even claim to be based on fact would be

Read Crossing the Continent 1527 1540 The Story of the First African American Explorer of the American South

Read Crossing the Continent 1527 1540 The Story of the First African American Explorer of the American South Crossing the Continent 1527 1540 The Story of the First African American Explorer of the American South Read & download ↠ PDF, DOC, TXT, eBook or Kindle ePUB free Robert Goodwin ï 2 Read & download He Philadelphia Inuirer calls “an adventure story thrilling than Defoe or Melville could have imagined” Crossing the Continent breaks new ground as it challenges the traditional view of American history. The book s subtitle is uite accurate although American South is misleading Esteban the Spanish speaking African traveled along the Gulf coast from the Florida panhandle to Texas and then spent the rest of his life in the American Southwest and Mexico He was one of a foursome who were the first non Native Americans to cross the North American continent Goodwin convincingly argues that he was the leader of the group and the one responsible for their survival Lewis and Clark s journey was a cakewalk compared to hisThe story starts about 1500 in West Africa then to North Africa then on to Spain the Caribbean Florida Texas New Mexico Arizona NW Mexico and Mexico City From Mexico City Esteban the slave returned to America and forged the way in advance of Coronado s famous expedition up into Arizona New Mexico Oklahoma and Kansas He ended up alone in Zuni New Mexico most likely the first non Native American that the Zuni had ever seen He may have died there or perhaps not Read the book to delve this mysteryI found the book very intriguing and well written but sometimes frustrating Goodwin devotes half of his account to the details of his historiography including his personal travels over the past 20 years He seems most concerned to build his case in the face of objections The book could be presented as the class notes of a history course in some North American university The advantage of that is that it is very educational The disadvantage is that the story is very disjointed Most readers like me will be awed by the incredible ethnic diversity of the Native Americans that Esteban meets along the way Oh what cultural riches we have lost by extinguishing all of these peoplesI m surprised that this book has not been made into a movie Wolf Creek Widow expedition up into Arizona New Mexico Oklahoma and Kansas He If I Cant Let Go If You Come Back To Me #2 ended up alone in Zuni New Mexico most likely the first non Native American that the Zuni had Coming Home for Christmas ever seen He may have died there or perhaps not Read the book to delve this mysteryI found the book very intriguing and well written but sometimes frustrating Goodwin devotes half of his account to the details of his historiography including his personal travels over the past 20 years He seems most concerned to build his case in the face of objections The book could be presented as the class notes of a history course in some North American university The advantage of that is that it is very Whos Afraid of the Big Bad Boss? educational The disadvantage is that the story is very disjointed Most readers like me will be awed by the incredible Behind the Mountain ethnic diversity of the Native Americans that Esteban meets along the way Oh what cultural riches we have lost by Addiction extinguishing all of these peoplesI m surprised that this book has not been made into a movie

Read Crossing the Continent 1527 1540 The Story of the First African American Explorer of the American South Crossing the Continent 1527 1540 The Story of the First African American Explorer of the American South Read & download ↠ PDF, DOC, TXT, eBook or Kindle ePUB free Robert Goodwin ï 2 Read & download A triumph of historical detective work Crossing the Continent is the remarkable never before told story of the first black explorer and adventurer in America Esteban Dorantes An African slave Dorantes led a. The epic tale of African slave Esteban Dorantes tells of his travails in the North American wilderness with three conuistadors lost in the disastrous 1527 expedition of Panfilo Narvaez Narvaez led an army of 300 men into the swamps of Florida and it was all downhill from there as they wandered through Alabama Mississippi Louisiana and Texas Searching for treasure the conuistadors found mostly death from hostile Indians disease starvation and exposure A handful of survivors constructed rafts and set sail across the Gulf of Mexico landing at present day Galveston Island where they lived as slaves among the Karankawa Indians By 1533 only four men were left alive and as author Goodwin tells it the slave Esteban took a leadership role affording an escape from the increasingly hostile Karankawas Thereafter they drifted west from tribe to tribe throwing themselves on the mercy of Indians who were often on the brink of starvation themselves Goodwin tells of tribes forced to rely on the most dismal of diets including prickly pears and mesuite pods living in abject poverty On one occasion they encountered a tribe where the men wore no clothes and the women barely covered themselves with deerskins Traveling up the Rio Grande through northeast Mexico they foursome eventually met up with Indian communities which were well established and prosperous with fields of corn suash beans and a relative abundance of food Eventually they managed a few miraculous cures and were hailed as shamans Esteban took to wearing shamanic feathers bells and beads carrying a large calabash rattle that bespoke his status as a witch doctor By the time they eventually ran into a party of Spanish slavers the foursome were at the head of an army of hundreds of worshipping Indians who followed them from village to village heralding their approach Esteban and his companions had spent eight years wandering across what is now the southern United States Once reunited with the Spanish in Mexico he faced the grim situation of renewed enslavement However his knowledge of the Indians to the north led to an assignment to track down the fabled Seven Cities of Cibola under Coronado In 1539 Esteban made contact with the Zuni Indians and what was perhaps considered to be the city of Cibola actually a humble pueblo and was either killed or fled his Spanish captors for a life among the Indians with four wives depending It s a riveting story and Goodwin s writing is rich with imagery At times the narrative gets bogged down as he compares three different 16th century accounts of the journey and the reading gets to be a bit of a chore but you can t fault him for trying to get it right What I enjoyed most about this book was the descriptions of life among the Indians by the first Europeans and an African who d ever made contact Through sources that are 350 years old Goodwin gives us an unvarnished vision of Indian life hundreds of years before they were overwhelmed by white settlers