Accounts: Translations of historical relaciones about Erauso

This chapter consists of a translation of the Accounts, or Relaciones, which are among the first historical documents to mention Erauso. All of them, except the last one, were published while Erauso was alive and provided the sources for many of the stories that would lead to Erauso's celebrity. The Accounts are the first traces of Erauso's voice, which was often preserved through oral juridical declarations. They contain a wealth of details about everyday soldier and merchant life in the Americas. The Accounts were written by different anonymous authors. Some of these Accounts are based upon Erauso's actual testimonies and/or those of people who met Erauso in their travels. They have strikingly different styles, from the traces of a notarial process in the 1617 Account to the literary re-elaboration of the last years of Erauso's life in the 1653 Account. The Accounts of 1618 and 1625 likely informed the plot of the play The Lieutenant Nun.