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Cabeza de Vaca
Cabeza de Vaca was the first European to describe America from Florida through Arizona. His writings are the oldest written history we have of Native Americans. He set the stage for the Conquest of this continent. This Site describes Cabeza de Vaca's eight year journey based on his own writings. DeVaca's translated narration is available on the Internet, thanks to PBS. That narration, annotated in parts here, is a large part of this presentation. What Vaca privately told two powerful Conquistadors who followed him into North America, Coronado and DeSoto, may never be known.
Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca was born in 1490 of Spanish nobility. His ancestors had been warriors for generations. Vaca's name translates into "Head of a Cow," a title bestowed upon an ancestor by Spain's King who was victorious in battle after following a difficult trail carefully marked with cow skulls. Vaca distinguished himself as a fine officer in battles against the French, Jews and Moors. He was merciless to the infidel; human suffering, to his way of thinking, was the fate of all good Catholics. In 1527 he was appointed Treasurer of the ill-fated Panfilo de Narvaez expedition, then sailed to America with 300 other soldiers. Vaca described his adventure using the same terms and concepts later used by DeSoto's Chroniclers, who followed most of Vaca's trail through Florida. Their relations of Vaca's contentions and actions are also presented.
From the time Vaca landed in South Florida, where his ships returned to Cuba for supplies, he skirted the Gulf of Mexico north and west, looking for food, shelter and his returning ships. Giving up finding food in abundance or the ships five months later, Vaca and 240 others coasted America's southern shoreline in crudely built rafts, headed for Spanish Mexico. Two men escaped just before Vaca's raft wrecked on an island he called "Misfortune," where he spent the next six years. Immediately upon his westward departure, Vaca crossed the biggest river he saw in America. The two escapees were reported later by DeSoto's people in Alabama, indicating that they had fled Vaca's rafts somewhere east of the giant river he crossed just west of the Isle of Misfortune. That river was the Atchafalaya River, still a large part of America's largest river, the Mississippi, not a Texas river as previous historians have suggested. Vaca had coasted Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana before wrecking: he did not have enough time to sail as far as the Texas shoreline after two of his men escaped near Alabama. He had hugged the shoreline for food and water while rafting. The island he wrecked on was on the Mississippi River Delta; we call it East Island, Louisiana, today.
Vaca would enter Texas by land six years later, and find visiting Caddo Indians, the most advanced he met in America, near Houston. Their sophistication persuaded Vaca that they lived well to the north in wealth and luxury, despite the fact that Vaca observed nothing of that sort during his trek across America. Vaca's writings [next page]