Cabeza De Vaca, Alvar Núñez (1492?-1559?)

Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca (1492?-1559?)

Spanish journer in north america

Sources

Early Life. Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca was born around 1492 in Andalusia, a region of Spain. His parents died while he was young, so he moved in with an aunt and uncle, and he probably had a fairly comfortable early life. During his teenage years he was appointed chamberlain for the house of a noble family, and he later served the household in a war in Italy where he fought with distinction. He returned to Spain in 1521 and enlisted as an officer in the crown’s army.

Narváez’s Expedition. What happened next in Cabeza de Vaca’s life is unclear, but in the summer of 1527 he embarked with six hundred other men Panfilo de Narváez had assembled to explore Florida. Because of a hurricane and logistical problems Narváez landed in present-day Tampa Bay with only half of his original force and a handful of supplies. When he asked his leading men what to do next, he received two responses. Cabeza de Vaca urged him to stay close to the coast and to his ship so that the party could return to Cuba in a moment’s notice. Others, however, appealed to the aspiring conquistador to march inland and to search for treasure. Emboldened by the last option, Narváez led most of his men into the interior while the others remained on the ship and were ordered to sail along the coast. The party soon met with some Indians whom they forced to locate a supply of corn for the hungry Spaniards. The amount of gold the explorers saw in the village surprised them, and the inhabitants informed them that in a nearby land called Apalachee they would find all the riches they could want. The local chief also hoped to use the Spaniards to attack the rival chiefdom, but something happened to change the Indians’ minds. One evening they ambushed a group of Spaniards, and the next morning the Indians abandoned their village. Forced to rely on captured guides, Narváez set out to find Apalachee, a place he hoped would rival the Aztecs in splendor and riches. When they reached the chiefdom they were immediately caught in an ambush. After the Spaniards beat the Apalachees back, they found forty houses and large quantities of corn but no gold. In the next town they were not as lucky because the Indians had burned everything to the ground. Disease, starvation, and ambushes had taken a toll on the party, and they returned to the coast to link up with the supply ship. For whatever reason, the ship was nowhere to be seen, so Narváez elected to build boats to carry the men to Mexico. Two months later the motley fleet set sail.

Sailing the Gulf. The crude ships drifted in the Gulf of Mexico for months. On one occasion Indians invited the men ashore for a feast, but while they slept an attack awakened them. After several attacks and counterattacks the Spaniards demanded the return of the men who had been captured. The Indians refused to return the captives, so the survivors headed back out to sea where a storm broke up the fleet. Some boats sank or crashed on the shore of East Texas, and the starving crews were either drowned, killed by Indians, or reduced to cannibalism before dying of exposure. Cabeza de Vaca’s weary crew washed up on a beach and surrendered to a large group of Coahuilticans armed with bows and arrows and bearing gifts of food. “They are a very generous people,” Cabeza de Vaca wrote, “sharing whatever they own with others.”

Slave and Healer. The Archaic hunting-and-gathering Coahuilticans enslaved Cabeza de Vaca and made him gather roots, work done customarily by the women. He resented his treatment and planned to run away to a neighboring tribe. Gradually he met with three other survivors of the expedition, all of whom lived as slaves in different bands. Their scattered situation as well as their lowly status made it hard to plan an escape, and on several occasions they were frustrated in their efforts. Finally they escaped to a nearby tribe that welcomed the four men as healers. Their reputation spread, and they made their way slowly to the South and to the West, staying with different tribes and working their miraculous cures.

Encounter with the Spanish. In late winter 1536 Cabeza de Vaca encountered four Spaniards mounted on horseback. They were stunned by the sight of the bedraggled wanderer, but they took him and the others to a small town, New Galicia. At the urging of the local military commander, Cabeza de Vaca called together the Indians with whom he had been living, not suspecting the commander’s motives. “After this,” he wrote, “we had many great altercations with the Christians, because they wanted to make slaves of the Indians we had brought. . . .” An angry Cabeza de Vaca sent the Indians home, and he and his men were in turn sent under guard into Mexico. The stories they told amazed the imperial officials.

Return to Spain. Cabeza de Vaca rested in Mexico for several months before returning to Spain in 1537. Upon his arrival he began composing and editing his memoirs. Based on his experience King Charles V put him in charge of an expedition to explore the Rio de la Plata in South America. His tenure as governor of the region reflected the lessons he had learned from his travels, for he immediately sought to end the settlers’ abuse of the Indians. Such measures, however, were unpopular, and the colonists revolted in 1544 and put Cabeza de Vaca on a ship back to Spain, where he faced several lawsuits and the open hostility of the royal government. In 1551 the Crown forbade him to return to the New World, and he died a broken and vilified man sometime around 1559. His memoirs, however, are one of the most important documents in early American history, for Cabeza de Vaca recorded what life was like in a region that would not be colonized for another three centuries.

Sources

Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, Castaways: The Narrative of Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, edited by Enrique Pupo-Walker, translated by Frances M. López-Morillas (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993);

David J. Weber, The Spanish Frontier in North America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992).