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

BECOMING AMERICA
PRE- AND EARLY COLONIAL LITERATURE
endeavored to slay me; but God our Lord in his mercy chose to protect and preserve
me; and when the season of prickly pears returned, we again came together in the
same place. After we had arranged our escape, and appointed a time, that very day
the Indians separated and all went back. I told my comrades I would wait for them
among the prickly pear plants until the moon should be full. This day was the rst
of September, and the rst of the moon; and I said that if in this time they did not
come as we had agreed, I would leave and go alone. So we parted, each going with
his Indians. I remained with mine until the thirteenth day of the moon, having
determined to ee to others when it should be full.
At this time Andrés Dorantes arrived with Estevanico and informed me that
they had left Castillo with other Indians near by, called Lanegados; that they
had encountered great obstacles and wandered about lost; that the next day the
Indian’s, among whom we were, would move to where Castillo was, and were going
to unite with those who held him and become friends, having been at war until
then, and that in this way we should recover Castillo.
We had thirst all the time we ate the pears, which we quenched with their juice.
We caught it in a hole made in the earth, and when it was full we drank until
satised. It is sweet, and the color of must. In this manner they collect it for lack
of vessels. There are many kinds of prickly pears, among them some very good,
although they all appeared to me to be so, hunger never having given me leisure to
choose, nor to reect upon which were the best.
Nearly all these people drink rain-water, which lies about in spots. Although
there are rivers, as the Indians never have xed habitations, there are no familiar
or known places for getting water. Throughout the country are extensive and
beautiful plains with good pasturage; and I think it would be a very fruitful region
were it worked and inhabited by civilized men. We nowhere saw mountains.
These Indians told us that there was another people next in advance of us,
called Camones, living towards the coast, and that they had killed the people who
came in the boat of Peñalosa and Tellez, who arrived so feeble that even while
being slain they could oer no resistance, and were all destroyed. We were shown
their clothes and arms, and were told that the boat lay there stranded. This, the
fth boat, had remained till then unaccounted for. We have already stated how the
boat of the Governor had been carried out to sea, and the one of the Comptroller
and the Friars had been cast away on the coast, of which Esquevel narrated the fate
of the men. We have once told how the two boats in which Castillo, I and Dorantes
came, foundered near the Island of Malhado.
Chapter XX
OF OUR ESCAPE.
The second day after we had moved, we commended ourselves to God and set
forth with speed, trusting, for all the lateness of the season and that the prickly
pears were about ending, with the mast which remained in the woods, we might
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