Cabeza de Vaca and the Problem of First Encounters

The Pánfilo de Narváez or Florida expedition issued from Spain (by way of Cuba) in 1527, at a time when only some regions in central Mexico were effectively under Spanish control. Three hundred European men, ten women, a sprinkling of African slaves, and forty-one horses traveled to the Florida peninsula with the intention of exploring and settling it permanently.

Yet this colonization effort rapidly became a desperate journey of survival. Narváez, the one-eyed, red-headed veteran leader, took the fateful decision to divide the expedition. The men and the horses were put ashore in the vicinity of Tampa Bay, Florida, while the ships with the crews and the women sailed along the coast. The idea was that the land contingent and the ships would meet a few days later. However, owing to a tragic navigational mistake, the two groups were never able to rendezvous. And thus the overland party became stranded in North America. The closest Spanish stronghold was Santiesteban del Puerto in the modern state of Tamaulipas, about 1,500 miles away from Tampa Bay.

The expeditionaries made heroic efforts to save themselves—they even fashioned makeshift rafts out of logs lashed together with manes and tails of the deceased horses and made sails with their tattered shirts—and were able to navigate the northern rim of the Gulf of Mexico. But ultimately most succumbed to illness, Indian attacks, hunger, and Spanish-on-Spanish cannibalism. Out of 300 men only four survived: three Spaniards in commanding positions (Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, Andrés Dorantes, and Alonso del Castillo), and an African slave named Estebanico. These four men were enslaved by the Capoques and the Hans, nomadic Indians of what is now the coast of Texas.

All of this would have been nothing but a tale of resilience and suffering if not for the unlikely turn of events that followed. During their years as slaves, the four castaways were able to understand their newfound social milieu and eventually used this knowledge to extricate themselves. Essentially, just as they went from conquistadors to slaves, they now made the transition from slaves to medicine men. They cured the sick by saying Pater Nosters and making the sign of the cross over their indigenous patients. And, apparently, it worked. The castaways became powerful shamans moving from one group to the next, passed as precious possessions. And in this fashion, they crossed the entire continent and reemerged in what is now northwestern Mexico. Cabeza de Vaca and his companions were the first outsiders to have lived in the immense territories north of Mexico. Their accounts give us the rarest of glimpses into pre-contact North America. These pioneers were able to see the continent before any other outsiders—one of the few undisputable instances of "first contacts" that are truly first. There are only two surviving accounts of this disastrous expedition. One was the testimony provided by the three surviving Spaniards upon their return. This document is often referred to as the Joint Report. Although the original testimony was lost at some point, a near-complete transcription has survived, thanks to the assiduous work of fellow explorer and chronicler Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo (1478-1557), who included it as part of his massive Historia general y natural de las Indias, islas y tierra firme del mar océano. The second source is a first-person Narrative written by Cabeza de Vaca and first published in 1542, six years after he completed his journey. Cabeza deVaca's account is humble and self-reflective, and it circulated widely within the Spanish Empire and beyond.

Neither text tells us much about how violently the members of the Pánfilo de Narváez expedition treated the natives of Florida. There were good reasons for this. During the 1510s and 1520s the Spanish Crown did considerable soul-searching with regard to the mistreatment of the natives of the New World. In fact, just a few months before the departure of the Pánfilo de Narváez expedition, in 1526, the Crown issued a harshly...