Becoming America - An Exploration of American Literature from Precolonial to Post-Revolution, 2018a

BECOMING AMERICA
PRE- AND EARLY COLONIAL LITERATURE
1.5 ALVAR NUNEZ CABEZA DE VACA
(c. 1490–1558)
Alva Nunez Cabeza de Vaca carried a
name bestowed upon his maternal grandfather
who fought the Moors in Spain and
who used a cow’s skull to mark a strategic
pass through a mountain. Cabeza de Vaca
fought in Italy and Spain before leaving
with Panfilo de Narvaez (1478–1528) on
his 1527 expedition to Florida. Narvaez
proved an unwise captain, losing men and
all of his six ships to desertion, hurricane,
and a failed attempt to discover a port
along the Florida shore.
Stranded in Florida along with a
fraction of Narvaez’s remaining sailors,
Cabeza de Vaca was left to fend for himself
against threatening Native Americans and
an inhospitable land. The men journeyed
to what is now Texas. Of the 600 men
who undertook the expedition, only four
Image 1.5 | Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca
ultimately survived, one of whom was Artist | Unknown
Source | Wikimedia Commons
Cabeza de Vaca. For ten years, Cabeza de
License | Public Domain
Vaca faced extraordinary hardships as
he traveled along the Texas coast, including being taken as a prisoner by Native
Americans (the Karankawa) for over two years. Among the Native Americans, he
gained a reputation as a trader and then as a healer, a power he himself attributed
to his Christian faith. He ultimately gathered a following of Pimas and Opatas who
traveled with him to what is now New Mexico and northern Mexico.
There, he once again encountered fellow Europeans who took Cabeza de Vaca
prisoner and enslaved the Native Americans with him. In 1537, Cabeza de Vaca
returned to Spain where he vocally protested the predatory behavior of slave
hunters like his captor Diego de Alcaraz (c. 1490–1540). He returned again to South
America as leader of an expedition but saw his own colony devolve into predatory
behaviors. In Rio de Plata, Cabeza de Vaca was removed as leader; he ultimately
returned to Spain where he lived the remainder of his life.
The Relation of Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca was begun in 1540 while he was
still in Spain. In it, he describes the dangers and suering he endured from the
Narvaez expedition, the Europeans’ unjust treatment of Native Americans, and the
opportunities for further exploration and colonization in the New World.
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