A Land So Strange

The horsemen were busy. Rounding up human beings was unpleasant but profitable. And they looked to an entire continent teeming with natives who could not move faster than their own legs would carry them. Even a small cavalry detachment could turn into an extremely efficient enslaving machine. And thus the posse burned villages and ran down men, women, and children.

One day, four of the slavers caught sight of thirteen Indians walking barefoot and clad in skins. In the distance the natives must have seemed ordinary to the horsemen except for one thing: rather than scurrying away, the Indians headed straight toward them. A sense of unease must have spread through the Christians. But they stayed put because the approaching Indians did not seem to harbor ill intentions.

At closer range the unexpected details began to emerge. One of the natives seemed very dark. In fact, he was black. Was he an Indian too, or an African emerging from the depths of North America? The horsemen's unease must have turned into shock when they realized that one of the others in the group was a white man. He had gone completely native. His hair hung down to his waist, and his beard reached to his chest. The man's skin was leathery and peeling.¹

As the two parties approached, the slavers could hear that the haggard white man spoke perfect Spanish. They became dumbfounded. "They remained looking at me for a long time"—Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca would later recall—"so astonished that they neither talked to me nor managed to ask me anything."²

Cabeza de Vaca had to do the talking. He first asked to be taken to the slavers' captain. Next he wanted to know what the Christian date was and requested to have it officially recorded. The precise date has not reached us in spite of Cabeza de Vaca's insistence, but it must have been April 1536. After these formalities were out of the way, Cabeza de Vaca and his African companion—a resilient slave named Estebanico—began to tell their story of wandering adrift in a completely alien continent, a tale that had begun eight years earlier with a flawed leader in search of redemption.

This small band of men thus became the first outsiders to behold what would become the American Southwest and northern Mexico, the first non-natives to describe this enormous land and its peoples. Conversely, innumerable natives living in the interior of the continent experienced the passage of the three Spaniards and the African as an extraordinary portent, a first brush with the world beyond America. The natives called the four travelers "the children of the sun" because they seemed to have come from such unimaginably remote lands.

It is tempting to narrate their journey as an extreme tale of survival: four naked men at the mercy of the natural elements, facing an extraordinary array of native societies. Comparisons to Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness are difficult to avoid. It was certainly a hellish journey. But it was also much more. At its heart, it is the story of how a handful of survivalists, out of necessity, were able to bridge two worlds that had remained apart for 12,000 years or more. Deprived of firearms and armor, the castaways were forced to cope with North America on its own terms. They lived by their wits, mastering half a dozen native languages and making sense of social worlds that other Europeans could not even begin to fathom. Incredibly, they used their knowledge of native cultures to escape from enslavement and re-fashion themselves into medicine men. Eventually, their reputation as healers preceded them wherever they went, as they moved from one group to the next in their quest for deliverance.

The castaways' insight into native North America is especially poignant at a time when Europeans debated whether the natives of America were fully human and crown officials reexamined Spain's conquests. In just five decades since Columbus, Iberians had rushed headlong into the New World. Men and women of enterprise and ambition had explored and ultimately devastated the islands of the Caribbean. More recently, Hernán Cortés and Francisco Pizarro had subdued millions of Indians in Mexico and Peru. These conquests constituted fantastic feats of daring. But they had been achieved at a great human cost, prompting a determined group of friars and crown officials to launch a reformist movement to change Spain's methods of conquest and convince colonizers of the essential humanity of Indians. The ensuing debate resonated throughout the empire. If it turned out that Indians did not possess human souls, then ruthless conquistadors would be permitted to enslave them by the millions. But if, however, these natives were endowed with God's spirit, then they would have to be painstakingly Christianized and their rights respected.³

Against this backdrop, the journey of the four castaways constitutes a rare turning point in the history of North America, every bit as momentous and full of possibilities as the landing of the Mayflower Pilgrims or the arrival of Cortés on the shores of Mexico. The experience of Cabeza de Vaca and his companions afforded Spain an opportunity to consider a different kind of colonialism. These four pioneers had revealed the existence of many native cultures north of Mexico and the availability of precious metals, buffalo, and other resources. But instead of advocating a conquest in the traditional mold, Cabeza de Vaca and the others proposed a grand alliance with the native inhabitants. Over the course of their long odyssey, they had come to recognize the natives of North America as fellow human beings. Their life-changing experience had persuaded them that a humane colonization of North America was possible—a far cry from the views held by most of their contemporaries in the Old World. Their journey thus amounts to a fork in the path of exploration and conquest, a road that, if taken, could have transformed the brutal process by which Europeans overtook the land and riches of America.

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 de Vaca's humble and self-reflective account circulated widely in the Spanish empire and even beyond it. Contemporary explorers pored over the Narrative, looking for even the most casual mention of metals or simply to learn about the terrain and human landscape of the interior of North America. More pious readers drew transcendent lessons from this text, recasting the four survivors as Christ-like figures; a seventeenth-century friar, for instance, matter-of-factly stated that Cabeza de Vaca and his companions "performed prodigies and miracles among innumerable barbarous nations" and "healed the Indians by making the sign of the cross over them." In either case, colonial Spaniards were well aware of this tale.⁵

More recently, however, the odyssey of Cabeza de Vaca and the others has fallen into relative oblivion. In the United States, the Florida expedition has received surprisingly scant public attention, even though historians and archaeologists have passionately sparred over the survivors' probable route across the continent for well over a century. These scholars have felt sufficiently motivated to venture into rugged lands and onto forgotten trails. A courageous writer even tried to "fix" Cabeza de Vaca's latitude by sleeping naked outdoors until he could not bear it any longer! Clearly, the Florida expedition has stirred powerful emotions among some enthusiasts and specialists. But beyond this circle, its impact has been modest.⁶

The survivors' saga is somewhat better known in Mexico. In the early 1990s an entire generation of moviegoers went to see a film bearing the slightly disorienting title of Cabeza de Vaca, or "Cow's Head." The film is mesmerizing as much for the plot (the world of conquistadors turned upside down) as for the surreal atmosphere (complete mutual incomprehension in the midst of a magical world). Although the film takes considerable liberties with the facts, it played a crucial role in bringing the story to a wide audience. Nevertheless, Mexico's narrative of conquest is still dominated by the towering figure of Cortés and the downfall of the Aztec empire; the Florida expedition remains something of a minor curiosity or a diversion.

Modern boundaries have further obscured the significance of this venture. Cabeza de Vaca, Estebanico, and the others walked across the continent long before the border between Mexico and the United States came into being. But now the route of their journey is bisected by this national boundary, relegating their story to the fringes of both countries—neither a wholly American story nor a Mexican one.

Finally, the story of this extraordinary expedition has become less well known to us simply because the passage of time has rendered Joint Report and Cabeza de Vaca's Narrative increasingly difficult to read. Many passages within both texts are downright perplexing to modern readers. Since they were written for sixteenth-century Spaniards, they offer little by way of context. They tell us nothing about how the expedition was conceived, why the leaders became involved in this venture, and what exactly they intended to do upon reaching Florida. Context is even more sorely needed once the expedition lands on the continent and begins interacting with Native Americans.

Understanding the Joint Report and the Narrative is also complicated by the fact that both are very public and official documents. In casting their narratives, Cabeza de Vaca and the other survivors engaged in self-conscious scripting. They wrote their reports in part to establish their virtues and merits and thereby curry royal favor. They thus avoided controversial subjects. For instance, neither source contains a single word about intimate relations between the castaways and native women, even though other evidence suggests that it occurred. Similarly, to avoid problems with the Inquisition, Cabeza de Vaca studiously refrains from using the word "miracle" to describe his incredible healings.⁷

And yet despite the fact that both documents were shaped, in part, by the agendas of their authors, they remain extraordinary historical sources. Both are remarkably detailed and complement each other well, except in some minor but significant points. But to fully understand them, one must also resort to scraps of information buried in many other sources and avail oneself of recent findings on the archaeology, climate, geography, botany, and population history of North America. The most daunting aspect of writing this book has been the quest to locate all sorts of elusive information to help me explain the curious behavior of sixteenth-century Spaniards and their often perplexing interactions with very different native groups. In spite of my best efforts, I am far from having succeeded in every case. I can only say that I have gained an enormous appreciation for the craft of the storyteller.⁸

But the lands visited by Cabeza de Vaca and the others were by no means static or prelapsarian; North America was changing profoundly and irreversibly even during the half a century since Columbus. The population of the Americas was already declining with startling speed due to epidemic diseases introduced by Europeans. In the course of the sixteenth century, many indigenous groups disappeared from the face of the earth. Even those who survived had to change beyond recognition or merge with larger groups in order to endure.⁹

What the castaways saw and recorded constitutes our very first and frequently our only window into a continent before and during this great devastation. They depicted a world that was alive. Wherever the survivors went they found Native Americans, all vigorously exploiting the environment by setting fires to hunt deer or replacing large tracts of North American Eden with plots of corn. These groups moved about in deliberate circuits to take advantage of different edible sources, possessed intricate trading networks, and waged war on one another with the same cunning and vindictiveness of their European counterparts. Tantalizingly, the castaways also reported dramatic instances of population decline. America was changing before their very eyes.

By the time English, French, and Spanish colonists penned their impressions in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the indigenous populations had been greatly diminished, and the flora and fauna had reclaimed the abandoned lands. It is no wonder that such writers were prone to conjuring images of a wild, virgin North America only sparsely populated by bands of Indians who were themselves primeval and incapable of conquering nature. This perception has endured to the present time in what one scholar has aptly called "the pristine myth" of America. In this sense, the castaways offer a much-needed corrective to a seductive but ultimately distorted image.¹⁰

And beyond these insights into pre-Columbian North America, the story of the castaways constitutes an extraordinary instance of first contacts between peoples whose ancestors had remained apart for at least 12,000 years. When these two peoples finally came face to face with one another, they did it from the perspective of vastly different cultures, lifestyles, technologies, and expectations. Yet, no matter how outwardly different they appeared from each other, they were still ordinary humans trying to come to terms with one another as best as they could.

Too often, the human dimension of these encounters is lost in the crucible of grand imperial narratives. The script is predictable: gold-crazed conquistadors confront either savages or unsuspecting exemplars of paradise on earth. The outcome of such encounters is never in doubt. The odyssey of the Florida survivors reminds us that first contacts were in fact far more interesting. Not all voyages of exploration were equal, just as not all Native Americans were the same. Early encounters were intensely personal affairs guided by the personalities of those involved and resources available to them. The Florida expedition makes this point powerfully. Here are conquerors who were themselves conquered and Indians who became masters and benefactors, all the while acting in deeply human ways.

At its most elemental, the castaways' tale constitutes in microcosm the much broader story of how Europeans, Africans, and natives set out to bridge the enormous cultural distances separating them. It is, in essence, the story of America. The journey of Cabeza de Vaca, Estebanico, and the others was thus spiritual as much as physical. Their life depended on their ability to understand the basic humanity of their indigenous masters and hosts. Time and again, as the survivors came within sight of a new native group, they had to find a middle ground. They were European and African by birth but were becoming American by experience. So profound was the survivors' spiritual journey that fellow conquistadors could scarcely recognize them on the radiant spring day when they finally reemerged from the depths of the continent.¹¹