From the 1400s to the 1700s, the age of exploration took place. During this time, thousands were coming over to the ‘new’ land of the Americas to settle and grow their country. Two leaders in this growing migration to the Americas were Britain and Spain. Each sent countless men, women, and children to begin settling and expanding their rule over not just the land, but the Native inhabitants as well. As the number of foreigners grew, Native American people began to be forced out of their land. This tension festered and led the way to countless battles. During one of these battles, Mary Rowlandson, a European mother of four, was taken from her home after an attack by a tribe of Native Americans and held captive for three months. In these three …show more content…
However similar, their lives can not be compared. In every way their stories are similar, they differ tenfold. Rowlandson was a woman living in her home in modern-day New York. When her town was attacked, her family killed, and herself taken hostage, “All was gone, my husband gone (at least separated from me, he being in the Bay; and to add to my grief, the Indians told me they would kill him as he came homeward), my children gone, my relations and friends gone, our house and home and all our comforts—within door and without—all was gone (except my life), and I knew not but the next moment that might go too”( Her story is in stark contrast to that of Cabeza de Vaca. From his memoir, we can piece together that he was an explorer for Spain who was stranded in Texas after his ship was wrecked on its shores. His captures were a different tribe to those of Rowlandson and so their methods of treating prisoners were completely different. Cabeza de Vaca shared his captures’ customs with the king, “To this island we gave the name Malhado. The people we found there are large and well formed; they have no other arms than bows and arrows, in the use of which they are very