Secondary sourceBook1605

La Florida del Inca

Inca Garcilaso de la Vega · 1605

A 1605 chronicle of the Hernando de Soto expedition in Florida that draws on and compares Cabeza de Vaca's earlier account of the same region.

This later chronicle of Florida draws on and compares Cabeza de Vaca's own earlier account of the same region.

Ask Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca about this source View the original

Title page of the 1605 first edition of La Florida del Inca, printed in Lisbon. Large capital title at top, followed by a long subtitle about Hernando de Soto and the Florida region, dedicated to the Duke of Braganza, with licence and printer lines at the bottom. — Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, La Florida del Inca, 1605, Lisbon.

About this source

What it is

This is the title page of the 1605 first edition of La Florida del Inca, written by the Peruvian author Inca Garcilaso de la Vega and printed in Lisbon. It tells the story of Hernando de Soto's expedition into Florida.

Why it matters

Garcilaso de la Vega used and compared earlier accounts of Florida, including that of Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, whose own journey through the same region decades earlier gave later chroniclers crucial information about the land and its peoples.

Look closer

Why would a historian writing decades later rely on an earlier survivor's account like Cabeza de Vaca's?
What does the long, descriptive subtitle on the title page tell you about how books were marketed in this period?
What happened to the Indigenous peoples described in this and similar accounts, and whose voices are missing?

This book is part of the curated material that grounds the AI version of Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca and Hernando de Soto on Humy.ai — when students ask about related events, the AI can quote it and cite it.