Both worlds spent thousands of years apart and had no contact with one another what so ever. Until Europeans finally discovered the “new world”. At first contact, both groups appeared very different to one another. The Europeans questioned whether the Natives were human and the natives questioned whether the Europeans were human. Although they thought they were very different at first glance, they would have noticed the similarities between one another if they had tried to interact closely. When Resendez states that, “Despite their long separation, the Old and the New World had undergone remarkably parallel developments.”, he means that both worlds had not been in contact for thousands of years and yet had very distinct similarities. Both…show more content… They didn’t have the luxury to interact with them very closely and didn’t think to find the similarities between the two. Even If they did, they would have ignored it. Even much so, many of them believed Native Americans were uneducated and savages. I don’t think finding similarities would have been to their liking. Especially if the first thing they looked for was how to educate them. While other Europeans would have seen Native Americans differently, Cabeza de Vaca and his crew developed a different perspective. They were able to get a direct observation of the Native Americans they encountered and were able to find commonalities between the two groups. Cabeza de Vaca and his crew even lived with a Native American group and had to adapt to their lifestyle in order to survive. From looking at the text, while Cabeza de Vaca observed the Natives, he appears to have thought highly of them. He saw them as highly intelligent and skilled, especially with the knowledge of their environment, and their hunting skills. Cabeza de Vaca and his crew’s experiences shone a new light on Native Americans in a way that most Europeans wouldn’t have thought, and it showed that they weren’t so different. It helped Europeans think better of the Native
