Chronicle of the Narváez Expedition by Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca (review)

The Norton Critical Edition of Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca’s Relacíon is the latest mark that the work has entered the American literary canon. The Relacíon, first published in 1542, then again in 1555, tells of three hundred Spanish conquistadors sailing to the west coast of Florida; traveling the peninsula by foot; being separated from their ships; building makeshift boats to sail the Gulf of Mexico; being stranded on Galveston Island; dwindling to four survivors, three Spanish gentlemen and an African slave; living as captives; traveling from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific; surviving as faith healers; and having mixed feelings upon arriving in Mexico, where Native Americans, companions and saviors during the Spanish survivors’ travels, are being enslaved. It is no wonder that the non-fiction Relacíon has been called novel-like. As Ilan Stavans points out in his introduction to this Norton Critical Edition, it is a forerunner of American narratives of self-discovery, of self-invention, and of magic realism (x–xi). It is a complex and fascinating story, so there is little wonder why Cabeza de Vaca’s text has become central among early European writings about North America. The question becomes, then, where does the Stavans and Frye version fit among classroom-oriented editions of Cabeza de Vaca’s work.

To begin, anthropologist David Frye’s new translation of the Relacíon works well. When I first taught the text in 1991, the only affordable translation was historian Cyclone Covey’s problematic Cabeza de Vaca’s Adventures in the Unknown Interior of America (New York: Collier, 1961), which rearranged material, putting events in their “proper” order, and interjected square bracketed explanatory notes throughout. Covey’s edition is still widely available and used in classrooms, reprinted by the University of New Mexico Press in 1983, and republished as The Journey and Ordeal of Cabeza de Vaca: His Account of the Disastrous First European Exploration of the American Southwest (Mineola, NY: Dover, 2003). Since the early 1990s, several affordable and more literarily aware translations have appeared, including The Account: Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca’s Relacíon, translated by Martin A. Favata and José B. Fernández (Houston: Arte Público P, 1993); Castaways, edited by Enrique Pupo-Walker and translated by Frances M. López-Morillas (Berkeley: U of California P, 1993); The Narrative of Cabeza de Vaca (Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2003), excerpted from Rolena Adorno and Patrick Charles Pautz’s 1999 three-volume edition, translation, and study; and Chronicle of the Narváez Expedition, Harold Augenbraum’s revision of Fanny Bandelier’s 1904 translation, introduced by Stavans (New York: Penguin, 2002). Finally, archaeologist Alex D. Krieger’s We Came Naked and Barefoot: The Journey of Cabeza de Vaca across North America includes Krieger’s translation of the Relacíon as an appendix (Austin: U of Texas P, 2002).

Each translation, including Frye’s, reflects the translator’s background. Adorno and Pautz work as bibliographers, translating the 1542 publication, maintaining original paragraphing and capitalization while omitting the later 1555 chapter divisions. Other translations are based on the 1555 edition, including chapter divisions and additional paragraph breaks for easier reading, and the translators have differed in choosing how much to modernize vocabulary, phrasing, and capitalization. Krieger’s translation is similar to Covey’s in inserting interpretative material in square brackets, but Krieger inserts much less than Covey. Frye’s language is perhaps the most modern, making the work feel contemporary without mis-representing the voice of the original. All the translations include notes on sixteenth-century Spanish terms, identification of Native American cultures, geographic locations, and so on. Frye’s are among the most extensive, on par with Favata and Fernández’s, but with a slightly more culturalanthropological rather than historical bent. Whether a new translation was really needed, Frye’s stands up well.

Ancillary...