61 pages • 2 hours read
Laila LalamiThe Moor's Account
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2014A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 19-22Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 19 Summary: “The Story of Compostela”
The men travel to Compostela at the mayor’s insistence. Their sleeping arrangements reflect their status: The white men are invited to stay at a captain’s hacienda, Mustafa is taken to modest lodgings, and their native wives are taken to a pantry with no beds or windows.
Mustafa explains to Oyomasot that they will again try to buy the natives’ freedom, but he’s not sure if Governor Guzman will agree. Mustafa realizes that he’s lost power and he risks losing his wife’s respect: “For nearly as long as she had known me, I had the power that came with healing, when I spoke, people listened. But here, in New Spain, my words did not hold the same value” (265).
The four men take baths at Guzman’s request. Even as he enjoys his bath, Mustafa feels terrible guilt about the natives who are penned in the horse run at Culiacán. He thinks about the shard of Castilian glass he found in the wilderness and wonders, “Would I ever be able to stir a finger without bringing harm to somebody?” (267).
The four survivors meet Governor Guzman for dinner. Cabeza de Vaca tells the governor about all the different tribes they’ve met and informs him that the natives are trusting and can join the empire through “peaceful means” (267). Castillo reinforces Cabeza de Vaca’s claim that the natives can be converted without force.
Mustafa, having witnessed the “bloodless conquest” (268) of his hometown, feels compelled to speak out for the natives’ humanity. He explains that the natives are like people everywhere else in the world:
They are born and die, and in between they live lives according to their own laws and customs: they worship God in their own way, find joy in raising their children, and when the moment comes they mourn their dead. […] All they wish is to carry out their own lives in peace (268).
The governor ignores the men’s comments, saying, “It is my duty to pacify any savages that could pose a threat to us” (268). He then asks the men to draw a map of all the territories they’ve explored. When Cabeza de Vaca objects to his characterization of the natives as “savages,” the governor says “they kill their own infants, treat their women like beasts, practice sodomy, and worship stones” (269). Mustafa observes that “there was something coarse and obdurate about him, something that could never be moved by the power of words” (269).
When Mustafa tells Oyomasot about their encounter with the governor that evening, he sees the “expectation on her face slowly turned to disappointment and shame” (269). They both know that the natives who followed them to Culiacán will never be set free. Mustafa watches as the “awe that once colored my wife’s eyes whenever she gazed at me began to disappear. Slowly, I was returning to what I had always been: a man” (269).
Guzman meets with each of the three Castilian survivors separately. Each meeting ends with the same request that they draw him a map of the areas they’ve explored. Each man gives a different reason for why he cannot draw a map. When Guzman summons Mustafa, Mustafa pretends he cannot read a map and doesn’t pay attention to time. Finally, Guzman meets with Dorantes’s brother-in-law, Satosol.
The next day, the men are told that they must travel to Mexico. When Satosol announces that he’s staying behind, the men realize that he’s going to help Guzman find the native settlement in the Land of Corn. They try to talk him out of it, but Satosol refuses to change his plans.
Mustafa reminds Dorantes that he needs a letter from a notary to travel home freely. Dorantes promises that when they get to Mexico, he will find a notary to create a document that declares him “a free man” (276). Mustafa is hopeful and dreams of a new life: “I could not continue to be involved with conquest. I would go to Mexico and there I would get a contract that made legal the freedom that God has bestowed on me at birth” (272).
Chapter 20 Summary: “The Story of Mexico-Tenochtitlán”
The men arrive at Tenochtitlán. Mustafa anticipates being set free, returning to his homeland, and beginning “to repair the thread of my life where it had been broken” (273).
The men are brought to a cathedral and instructed to change out of the Spanish clothes they were given in Compostela and adorn themselves with native clothing and jewelry. They are ushered into the church in costume and stared at by a group of 400 men, women, and children.
The bishop introduces them as the only survivors of the Narváez expedition. He compares them to St. Francis, who survived in the wilderness. As he listens to the bishop’s version of their survival, Mustafa realizes that “he, too, wanted to tell the story of our adventure in his own way” (274).
Mustafa understands that the bishop wants to use their story as an example of how natives can be converted to Christianity without violence. But he also sees the irony in this portrayal of events. Instead of converting the natives to Christianity, the men had taken on native wives, learned the native language, and adopted native dress and customs.
Mustafa and his wife Oyomasot are given a little house to stay in, and she is given a dress. She tries it on and finds it constricting. The native wives, all dressed in European clothes, meet with a priest to receive Christian instruction.
Mustafa reflects on the change of circumstances he and Dorantes had undergone. Dorantes risked his fortune to seek gold in the new world and failed. Mustafa lost far more than a fortune.
When Mustafa asks Dorantes about the papers that will set him free, Dorantes says that he will give them soon. Dorantes also mentions that his native wife Tekotsen is pregnant. He claims she is not his wife since they never married in a church. Mustafa asks if he could marry her again in a church, but Dorantes replies, “It is not that simple” (280).
Chapter 21 Summary: “The Story of the Palace”
The survivors learn that the viceroy of New Spain, Mendoza, is the most powerful man in the territory. They also hear that there’s a great rivalry between Mendoza and Cortés, the famous conquistador who conquered the Aztecs and their riches.
They visit Mendoza’s mansion, built from the stones of Moctezuma’s palace. They are greeted by officers, city officials, priests, and Aztec nobles. Mendoza tells the men that they must give the official account of what happened. He says that “all this will be of great help as we seek to pacify the northern territories” (284). The men ask how long it will take to give the testimony, as they are eager to return to Castile. Mendoza informs them that it should take a couple months.
The captains give their account of the trip. Mustafa notes that “in telling this history, my companions began to modify the more damaging details” (287). They blame Narváez for “all the poor decisions” (287) and leave out many details, such as their native wives. No one asks Mustafa to testify, but he doesn’t mind because he anticipates being set free as soon as the testimony is completed. He observes that “the only thing at once more precious and more fragile than a true story is a free life” (286).
Dorantes is irritated that the Europeans want them to draw a map of the territories they’ve explored. Dorantes questions “why should we give away all of our knowledge for nothing” (287). He asks, “Are we just going to sit here and wait while others take the territory from us?” (288).
When Mustafa again asks Dorantes about the papers that will give him freedom, Dorantes changes the subject. While the native women receive Christian instruction and the Castilian men give their testimony, Mustafa has nothing to do but wait.
Chapter 22 Summary: “The Story of the Hacienda”
The men are invited to a lavish banquet given by the famous explorer Hernan Cortés. Mustafa had heard many tales of Cortés’s conquest and destruction of Tenochtitlán. When Cabeza de Vaca complains that people are making up stories about them, Cortés replies that he knows what it is like to be the subject of rumors, but notes that “one must trudge on, even as the rumors swirl” (290).
When Cortés asks if the viceroy has collected their testimony, they reply that they are almost done. Cabeza de Vaca explains that the viceroy has asked him to deliver the report to Santo Domingo and then he will return home to Castile.
Dorantes explains that he is still trying to raise money to return home. Cortés offers to help with expenses if he can have Mustafa as his slave. Mustafa knows that he wants him as a guide and interpreter for a mission to the north. Dorantes, initially excited at the prospect of help, is dismayed to realize that Cortés wants Mustafa. He tells Cortés that although he appreciates the offer, he is expecting money from his father.
After finishing his testimony, Cabeza de Vaca dresses in fine Castilian clothes and leaves on a magnificent horse. Dorantes is envious as he is almost out of money and is being moved from a room in the palace to the guesthouse with Mustafa.
With the report done, Mustafa again asks Dorantes when they will go see the notary to set him free. When Dorantes replies that the viceroy offered 500 pesos for him, Mustafa doesn’t know what to say. He realizes that he has lost his status as Dorantes’s equal; “once again, he was the speaker and I was the listener; he was the decider and I was the supplicant. Once again he was the master and I was the slave” (294).
Dorantes reminds Mustafa of all the privileges he’s enjoyed in Tenochtitlán and asks him, “Is there another slave in New Spain who can claim to have been invited to the tables of both the viceroy and the marquis?” (295). Dorantes tells Mustafa to be patient.
Discouraged, Mustafa recalls the time before he found the shard of Castilian glass, shocked and angry with himself as he realizes that he could have kept his freedom simply by ignoring the artifact. By rejoining the Spanish colonial world, he unwittingly sacrificed both his freedom and that of his wife.
After a deep sleep, he wakes up and thinks he has lost everything: “I had given up my right to go where I please, my right to work as I wished, my right to worship as I wanted. I had sacrificed my wife at the altar of my ambition. I had willingly walked back into darkness” (296). Mustafa then realizes that he still has the power to set the record straight.
Chapters 19-22 Analysis
Mustafa has two major concerns in this section of the novel: the fate of his followers and whether Dorantes will ever officially set him free. In Chapter 19, Mustafa realizes that he has started a chain of events that led to his followers’ enslavement and that he’s lost his wife’s respect. In Chapter 20, Mustafa starts to understand that although he and Dorantes relied on each other in the wilderness, he may not be able to rely on Dorantes now that they are back in civilization. Mustafa observes:
We had had to depend on one another so often during the last eight years that it seemed to me we could never go back to the way things had been. But would he make legal and official in New Spain what was tacit and obvious out there, in the Land of the Indians? (253).
This distinction between two worlds—”New Spain” and “The Land of the Indians”—depends on The Tension Between Storytelling and Recordkeeping. In the sphere of colonial power that Mustafa calls “New Spain,” reality is determined by official records maintained by notaries and other authorized record keepers. What they set down becomes true regardless of its relationship to observable facts. In “The Land of the Indians,” by contrast, reality inheres in daily interactions and in the stories that give those interactions their significance. The equality between Dorantes and Mustafa is “tacit and obvious” in the way they relate to each other, and in the “Land of the Indians,” this is all that matters.
Dorantes shows loyalty to Mustafa by not accepting Cortés’s offer to purchase him. But when Mustafa asks Dorantes when he will set him free, Dorantes suggests that Mustafa should be satisfied that he’d turned down Cortés and tells him that he’s the only enslaved who can boast of having dined with both the viceroy and the marquis. That Dorantes would try to use such markers of official status to impress Mustafa tells him everything he needs to know about Dorantes’s worldview: He continues to put stock in the system of power and authority that has produced slavery. Mustafa realizes he was free when he was with the Indigenous tribes, but he’s lost his freedom now that they are among the Europeans again.
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