The Man who is not a Man, but a Thing/Savage

Who or what the heck is this. This thing is Cabeza de Vaca. In his narrative Cabeza describes how he was captive and was forced to follow the same customs as the Indian tribes he was "forced" to lived with. This picture of this savage like man shows how Cabeza went from being a somewhat famous Spaniard to looking like a wild Indian man. One word that is mentioned many times is hunger. In the picture the man looks very scrawny and small, his size could mean that he doesn’t eat well and according to Cabeza, some of the Indian tribes which he stayed with went days or weeks without eating. Cabeza talks about how the Indians live a hard life and by looking at this man’s face one can tell that his life has been rough. Not every attribute gained has been a bad one; living with various tribes of Indians has made Cabeza stronger and a hard worker. Towards the end of the narrative, Cabeza says that the Christians (who are actually another group of Spainards) didn’t even know who he was, they couldn’t tell him apart from the natives until he started to speak in his native tongue. At the beginning Cabeza refer s to the natives and their customs as ignorant and barbarous, but in the end he refers to them as a generous group of people who live tough lives but still find away to rely on another. Not only has Cabeza de Vaca learned from the Indians, he has become one just like in the picture.