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Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca (Jerez de la Frontera, Cádiz, ca. 1490/1507 – Sevilla, ca. 1557/1559) was an early Spanish explorer of the New World and is remembered as a protoanthropological author.

Family

Cabeza de Vaca was the son of Francisco de Vera (a distant relative of Francisco Pizarro), of Jerez de la Frontera, and wife Teresa Cabeza de Vaca y de Zurita. His name is spelled as Aluar nuñez cabeça de vaca in 16th century documents. Cabeza de Vaca means "cow's head". This surname was granted to his mother's family in the 13th century, when his ancestor aided a Christian army attacking Moors by pointing out a secret mountain pass by leaving a cow's head there. In the prologue to his great story relating his shipwreck and wanderings in North America, he refers to his forefather's service to the King, and regrets that his own deeds could not be as great, due to forces beyond his control.

Narvaez Expedition and Early Indian Relations

As treasurer, and hence one of the chief officers, of the Narváez expedition, Cabeza de Vaca and three others were the only survivors of the party of 300 men who landed near Tampa Bay, Florida on April 15, 1528.¹ Over the course of eight years, various members of the expedition succumbed to disease, starvation, exposure, and the attacks of various Native American groups as they slowly made their way west, toward Mexico, where they knew there were other Spaniards. Others among them simply gave up the effort and "went native." For a few years, the survivors were enslaved by various Native American tribes of the upper Gulf coast (including the Hans and the Capoques of Galveston Island, which the explorers termed Malhado, or Island of Doom).² Only the final four--Cabeza de Vaca, Dorantes, Castillo, and a Moroccan Berber named Esteban (who was later called Estevanico)--ultimately escaped and eventually reached Mexico City.

A plaque commemorating Cabeza de Vaca for being the first european to see the Iguazu Falls.

Sculpture of thinly-clad Cabeza de Vaca on display at the Whitehead Memorial Museum in Del Rio, Texas, as he appeared to Native Americans in the Rio Grande area

Traveling mostly in this small group, Cabeza de Vaca explored what is now the U.S. state of Texas, and possibly smaller portions of New Mexico and Arizona. He traveled on foot along the Texas coast and up the Rio Grande and then down the Gulf Coast to Sinaloa, Mexico, over a period of roughly eight years, during which time he lived in conditions of abject poverty and, occasionally, in slavery. During his wanderings, passing from tribe to tribe, he developed sympathies for the indigenous population. He eventually became a trader, which allowed him freedom to travel among the tribes. Cabeza de Vaca claims to have learned to heal the sick, and to have gained such notoriety as a healer that he and his companions gathered a large following of natives who regarded them as "children of the sun" endowed with the power to both heal and destroy, and who accompanied them in their journey across what is now the American Southwest and Northern Mexico. Eventually, after returning to the colonized reaches of New Spain and encountering a group of fellow Spaniards in the vicinity of modern-day Culiacán, he went on to Mexico City and returned to Europe in 1537. A number of people have struggled to trace the exact route travelled by Alvar Núñez. But given the doubtful reputation of the chronological and geographical information presented by Cabeza de Vaca, it is impossible to discern his exact course. A difference of fifty leagues to the south or to the west probably would not have concerned the author who did not begin writing his chronicle until after he was back in Spain. Cabeza de Vaca himself was uncertain of the route he traversed. Perhaps in the future some method to achieve this will exist, but for now, one can only conjecture. The information that Cabeza de Vaca and his companions gave about these territories upon their arrival in Mexico was motivation for the expeditions of first Fray Marcos de Niza, a Franciscan nominated by Bishop Zumárraga, and later Francisco Vázquez de Coronado, neither of whom found anything other than poverty and disillusionment upon visiting the lands that had been described so differently by the future author of the Naufragios. It would be risky to undo the imaginary world that Alvar Núñez created in order to sustain the interest and suspense of his story. Naufragios contains a strong dose of emotive elements destined to elevate the central figure of the narration to a superior level, achieving with this technique that the reader, identifying with the protagonist, will accept a large part of the fiction that has been poured into the text. A fundamental factor in this process is not simply the novelistic content of the work, but the ability of Cabeza de Vaca to present events that, even if they were real, in many instances are surrounded by such a supernatural halo that it seems Cabeza de Vaca obeys not his own interests but divine ones. A man capable of delaying for six years his escape from an island where he was enslaved, for the sole reason of waiting for one of his companions, should qualify for sainthood. However, his true motives were very far from this end. Cabeza de Vaca wrote about his experiences in a report for Charles V. It was later published in 1542, under the title La Relación (The Report), later known as Naufragios, and is considered a classic of colonial literature. Cabeza de Vaca desired to succeed Pánfilo de Narváez (whose supposed ineptitude is commonly credited with causing the deaths of most of the party) as governor of Florida and return there, but Charles V had already appointed Hernando De Soto to lead the next expedition. Cabeza de Vaca declined to travel with the expedition as second in command. His apparent reluctance to provide his countrymen with sufficient information about the uncharted territory may have been due to his jealousy over De Soto's appointment.

Return to Spain

Instead, in 1540, he was appointed adelantado governor of the Río de la Plata, for the purpose of re-establishing the settlement of Buenos Aires.

En route, he disembarked from his fleet at Santa Catarina Island and followed Alejo Garcia's route overland to the district's capital at Asunción. On this course, he is thought to have been the first European to behold the Iguazu Falls, among the most spectacular in the world.

The second foundation of Buenos Aires was also unsuccessful and had to be abandoned by February 1543.

His unusually sensitive and benevolent attitude towards the Indians led to resentment among the encomenderos, and this, along with the misfortune of Buenos Aires, allowed the former governor Domingo Martínez de Irala to arrest him for maladministration in 1544 and return him to Spain for trial in 1545.

He was eventually exonerated, but never returned to the colony. He wrote an extensive report on South America, highly unfavorable to de Irala, which bound with his earlier La Relación and published under the title Comentarios (Commentary).

Ancestors

Bibliography

English

• Cabeza de Vaca, Álvar Núñez: The Narrative of Cabeza De Vaca. Translation of La Relacion by Rolena Adorno and Patrick Charles Pautz. University of Nebraska Press 2003. ISBN 080326416X (Many other editions)
• Cabeza de Vaca, Álvar Núñez: Cabeza de Vaca's Adventures in the Unknown Interior of America. Translation of La Relacion by Cyclone Covey. University of New Mexio Press 1983. ISBN 082630656X
• The Account: Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca's Relacíon. Translated by Martin Favata and Jose Fernández. Houston: Arte Público Press. February 1993. ISBN 978-1558850606. http://alkek.library.txstate.edu/swwc/cdv/la_relacion/index.html. 
• Cabeza de Vaca, Álvar Núñez: The Commentaries of Alvar Nunez Cabeza De Vaca. The Conquest of the River Plate, part II. London: Hakluyt, 1891. (First English edition).
• Reséndez, Andrés. "A Land So Strange: The Epic Journey of Cabeza de Vaca." Basic Books, Perseus, United States of America, 2007. ISBN 0-465-06840-5
• Schneider, Paul:Brutal Journey, Cabeza de Vaca and the Epic First Crossing of North America. Henry Holt, 2007. ISBN 0805083200
• Udall, Stewart L.: Majestic Journey: Coronado's Inland Empire. Museum of New Mexico Press, 1995. ISBN 0890132852

Spanish

• Maura, Juan Francisco. Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca: el gran burlador de América. Parnaseo/Lemir. Valencia:Universidad de Valencia, 2008.http://parnaseo.uv.es/lemir/Textos/Maura.pdf
• Maura, Juan Francisco. Carta de Luis Ramírez a su padre desde el Brasil (1528). Introducción, edición, transcripción y notas, Juan Francisco Maura. Lemir (Departamento de Filología Hispánica de la Universidad de Valencia), <http://parnaseo.uv.es/Lemir/Textos/Ramirez.pdf> 2007.

See also

• Choctaw
• Mississippian culture
• Quivira and Cíbola

References

Sources

• 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica

External links

• PBS documentary The Conquistadors Site with map of proposed southern route through Texas and northern Mexico.
• PBS website for Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca
• Details of Cabeza de Vaca's Trail through today's United States
• The journey of Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca and his companions from Florida to the Pacific, 1528-1536, hosted by the Portal to Texas History
• The Journey of Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, from American Journeys.
• Cabeza de Vaca Primary Source Adventure, a lesson plan hosted by The Portal to Texas History
• Cabeza de Vaca ; La Salle. published 1901, hosted by the Portal to Texas History.
• Cabeza de Vaca's Florida History
• Free on line, book "Naufragios" by Álvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca. En español (pdf)
• Cabeza de Vaca's journal
• Naufragios de Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca at Project Gutenberg (in Spanish)
• link to movie based on his book on IMDB
• Maura, Juan Francisco (2008). Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca: el gran burlador de América. Parnaseo/Lemir, Universidad de Valencia. http://parnaseo.uv.es/lemir/Textos/Maura.pdf. 
• Maura, Juan Francisco (2007). Carta de Luis Ramírez a su padre desde el Brasil. Parnaseo/Lemir, Universidad de Valencia. http://parnaseo.uv.es/Lemir/Textos/Ramirez.pdf. 

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