Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca: American Trailblazer by Robin Varnum (review)

Robin Varnum’s comprehensive and engaging biography of Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca brings this fascinating sixteenth-century Spanish explorer to life. As the first single-volume account spanning his entire life and work in almost a century, her book not only contributes to ongoing scholarship of the Americas but also introduces new readers to Cabeza de Vaca’s legacy. For Varnum, Cabeza de Vaca was “a trailblazer” not only because he opened roads and encountered new lands and peoples, but also because “he endeavored to set a moral course for others to follow” (xi). Although by the standards of his day his voyages ended in failure, “in our own multicultural world, his successes at brokering agreements and accommodating people of different races and cultures seem exemplary” (xi).

Varnum’s work is meticulously researched and documented, yet written in an accessible and lively narrative style. It consists of sixteen chapters, arranged mostly chronologically. The first two establish the historical context for New World exploration, outline Cabeza de Vaca’s family history, and introduce us to Pánfilo de Narváez, the leader of the ill-fated 1527 expedition to La Florida. Chapters 3 through 10 detail the disastrous North American expedition itself, which shipwrecked off Florida’s coast, stranding its members in an unknown and hostile environment. Of the original crew, only four would survive, living among the Indians as slaves, traders, and eventually “healers.” Varnum narrates their decade-long journey in the New World, which culminated in an amazing 2,500-mile pilgrimage on foot through Texas, across northern Mexico, and ultimately to Mexico City. Along the way Cabeza de Vaca witnessed through a new lens the destruction Spaniards were inflicting upon Indigenous lands and peoples, an experience that made him one of the most vocal and passionate advocates for Native American rights at the time.

Before describing the next phase of his life, Varnum pauses in chapter 11 to elaborate upon the “Further Explorations” of Cabeza de Vaca’s three companions who remained in North America after he returned to Spain to write his Relación (1542) or “Account” of his experience. Chapters 12 through 16 then take up his subsequent failed exploits as governor of the Río de la Plata region in South America. While this phase of his life has generally received less scholarly attention, Varnum does a fine job synthesizing and interpreting the contradictory sixteenth-century accounts of his leadership, beginning with a historical context to the region and its government, including the petty rivalries, jealousies, and political disputes among the various personalities involved. She goes on to narrate Cabeza de Vaca’s attempts to govern a group of lawless Spaniards who resented the new governor’s strict policies of fairness toward the Indians and who eventually mutinied, jailing their leader and returning him to Spain where he was found guilty on multiple criminal charges. The closing chapter outlines his final years of legal battles and appeals, his ultimate “acquittal,” and the writing and eventual publication of his revised Relación y comentarios (1555). Varnum’s book includes a brief glossary of Spanish terminology, an extensive bibliography, several maps, and an index, all useful for students and scholars of the Americas.

Varnum offers a “braided narrative” in her work, weaving strands of information from sixteenth-century texts (which are frequently incomplete and lacking in specificity and clarity) with recent scholarship and archeological investigation to provide readers with a rich and full portrayal of Cabeza de Vaca’s exploits (xiii–xiv). Her method is often illuminating, as when she uses archeological research to flesh out details regarding various Indigenous tribes, reconstructs problematic aspects of narrative chronology by drawing upon multiple primary sources, or evaluates the validity of the differing (and much debated) theories of Cabeza de Vaca’s route. Occasionally, though, Varnum gets weighed down in details or lets her imagination get the best of her, as when she speculates about the memories...