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

In this well-researched biography, Robin Varnum presents a sympathetic portrayal and extremely comprehensive one-volume synthesis of Cabeza de Vaca’s tumultuous life. Indirectly borrowing historian David Hackett Fischer’s concept of a “braided narrative” (311n4), Varnum adopts an interdisciplinary approach that combines Spanish documents, contemporary historical and anthropological accounts, and archeological reports and to convincingly prove her thesis that Cabeza de Vaca “was a trailblazer because he opened roads and endeavored to set a moral course for others to follow” (xi). What Varnum finds most significant about Cabeza de Vaca is his success as a cultural broker. Much like Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas, he viewed “the native peoples of the New World as human beings,” and, as governor of the Río de la Plata province, he wanted Spaniards to “work together” with them “for mutual benefit” (xii).

Varnum’s sixteen-chapter chronological study can be divided into two sections. The first eleven chapters, which draw from the works of Rolena Adorno and Patrick Charles Pautz, Donald Chipman, and Andrés Reséndez, describe what little is known of Cabeza de Vaca’s Spanish upbringing in Jerez de la Frontera, his improbable survival in Pánfilo Narvaéz’s ill-fated expedition to the Florida and Texas Coast, and the impact that the Joint Report (1536) prepared by Cabeza de Vaca, Alonso de Castillo, and Andrés Dorantes had on subsequent Spanish exploration efforts in North America. Chapters twelve through sixteen, which rely heavily on David Howard’s Conquistador in Chains (1997), focus on Cabeza de Vaca’s years governing the Río de la Plata province of modern Paraguay, and his prolonged seven-year struggle for exoneration from the criminal charges his enemies brought against him in the Council of the Indies in Spain.

Varnum’s thoroughness represents this book’s greatest strength and weakness. Ethnohistorians, anthropologists, and archeologists will appreciate her careful descriptions of the material cultures of the native peoples whom Cabeza de Vaca encountered across the Americas and her efforts to show their sophistication. Her use of archeological artifacts to show the participation of early southwestern natives, such as the Sonora River culture, in long-distance trade networks is especially impressive. Although upstreaming is risky, Varnum is also adept at identifying the potential locations of places not clearly delineated in Cabeza de Vaca’s Relación (1542), from La Junta to Casas Grandes, by consulting Spanish documents from subsequent Spanish expeditions.

Varnum’s penchant for detail, however, especially her frequent reliance on block quotations and devotion of so much space to providing Spanish colonial context for Cabeza de Vaca’s expeditions, disrupts the flow of the narrative and may frustrate readers. The book could also benefit from further analysis from the author. For example, Varnum clearly supports Cabeza de Vaca in his disagreement with Domingo Martínez de Irala over the enslavement of Indians in the Río de la Plata, yet she includes a propagandistic Spanish statue of Governor Irala embracing a Guaraní warrior without offering critical commentary. Exhaustively researched and contextualized, this book is best suited for professional researchers, rather than undergraduates in Texas or Latin American history courses.