How many voyages did cabeza de vaca

In the spring, the men traveled west by land, walking along the Colorado River. By , there were only four survivors, including Cabeza de Vaca. The men were enslaved by some Indian tribes along the way and helped by others.

They were the first non-natives to travel in this area of southwestern North America and the first Europeans to see the bison or American buffalo. During this time, he became a trader and shaman to various Native American tribes. He explored along the Paraguay River in After a conflict with other Spanish Nobles and area settlers in , he returned to Spain and never came back to the Americas.

Later, he published an account of his travels, noting the appalling treatment of Indians by the Spanish. His writing encouraged many other Spanish expeditions to the Americas, including those of Hernando de Soto and Francisco Vasquez de Coronado.

Rough water whipped up by still another Gulf storm kept the boat carrying Cabeza de Vaca from reaching land for several more days. On board the Spaniards were so weak from hunger that "the men…had passed out, one on top of another, so near death that few of them were conscious and fewer than five were still upright. On the morning of November 6, , don Alvar was awakened by the roar of breakers, and shortly thereafter "a great wave took us and cast the boat out of the water as far as a horseshoe can be tossed.

Cabeza de Vaca and his companions had landed on an offshore island, which he named Isla de Malhado, or Isle of Misfortune. A second boat containing Andres Dorantes de Carranza, his African-born slave, Estevanico, Alonso Castillo Maldonado, and perhaps forty-five others had apparently landed on the same island on the previous day.

Malhado was occupied by Karankawa Indians who soon appeared near the site of the landing. To Cabeza de Vaca and the other survivors, it was a unnerving experience: "We were so scared that they seemed to us to be giants, whether they were or not. We could not even think of defending ourselves, since there were scarcely six men who could even get up from the ground.

The natives were true to their word, providing fish and some edible roots on the following day. After receiving food and water, Cabeza de Vaca and his crew attempted to relaunch their boat, but their efforts ended in disaster. The craft capsized, drowning three, while the rest of the men were enveloped in waves and cast ashore on the same island. In don Alvar's words, "Those of us who survived were as naked as the day we were born and had lost everything we had. The miserable state of the Spaniards was such that the Indians sat down with them and began to cry, weeping and wailing for more than half an hour.

For Cabeza de Vaca, it was an disturbing experience. After joining with the survivors of the other boat that landed on Malhado, the Spaniards, certain that after more than a month at sea they were very close to the province of Panuco, selected four robust men, all good swimmers, and sent them down the coast in the company of an Indian guide.

Among those who remained on Malhado, exposure, hunger, and dysentery had taken their toll by the spring of , leaving only fourteen or fifteen men alive. Throughout the winter months, Cabeza de Vaca had become a close observer of the Karankawa Indians, and he later recorded unique ethnographic information about them.

He described those Native Americans as tall and well built, with weapons consisting only of bows and arrows.

And he credited Karankawas with loving their children more than any other people in the world, for when a child died, parents, relatives, and indeed whole villages would mourn the loss for an entire year. Karankawas also accorded much consideration to everyone except the elderly, whom they regarded as of little use, since they occupied space and consumed food that was needed by children.

Cabeza de Vaca also described marriage customs among the Karankawa and the role of in-laws in their society. He wryly commented that these "Indians often went hungry, for food and firewood was scarce but mosquitoes were plentiful. Against his better judgment, Cabeza de Vaca was compelled by the Karankawas to treat their ill. He noted that the Indians "wanted to make us physicians, without testing us or asking for any degrees.

The fact that these ministrations regularly improved the condition of the sick certainly suggests the presence of psychoneurotic afflictions among the coastal Karankawas.

During that same first winter, Cabeza de Vaca recorded that five Spaniards had become separated from the larger group and were stranded on the mainland coast in cold and stormy weather. These men, whom he listed by name, became so desperate for food "that they ate one another one by one until there was only one left, who survived because the others were not there to eat him. The Karankawas' revulsion to this form of cannibalism stands as a meaningful counterpoint to often repeated but sparsely documented assertions of their appetite for human flesh.

In the late weeks of winter, Cabeza de Vaca crossed over to the mainland, where he became seriously ill. Believing rumors that don Alvar had died, all but two of the survivors decided to travel down the coast toward Mexico.

Cabeza de Vaca recovered, although for a variety of reasons he kept Malhado as his home base for nearly four more years. Cabeza de Vaca acknowledged that initially he was unable to follow his companions because of illness. But after his recovery, he was forced to stay with Indians who treated him poorly and worked him hard for more than a year. Don Alvar eventually escaped from captivity and fled to live among other Indians who dwelled farther inland. The new hosts, whom he called the Charruco, treated Cabeza de Vaca well enough, but his primary source of food was roots that grew under water among canes.

In pulling these roots his hands became so sore "that a light brush with a piece of straw would cause them to bleed. Opting for a chance at a better life, Cabeza de Vaca again moved inland, where "he fared a bit better. The former were especially valued by the inland groups who lacked tools for cutting mesquite beans. In the interior Cabeza de Vaca collected hides and red ochre, which was used for dye, flints for arrowheads, and canes for the shafts of arrows. He reported that he much enjoyed being a trader, because it gave him the freedom to travel where he wished; and it afforded him an opportunity to learn the land and search for a possible escape route to New Spain.

Cabeza de Vaca noted that although he enjoyed the freedom of being a trader, it was still a life filled with peril, for he was frequently hungry, suffered from cold, and faced the wilderness alone. Because of the extremes of temperature, he did not carry out his business ventures in winter.

During that season, he regularly returned to Malhado and followed this pattern for three consecutive years. Don Alvaro delayed following his former companions down the coast toward Mexico, for to do so would mean the abansonment of the two Spaniards who remained on Malhado. One of these men eventually died, and the sole survivor, Lope de Oviedo, refused to leave the island. With a note of exasperation, Don Alvar remarked: "To get him out of there, I would cross over to the island every year and plead with him for us to leave as best we could in search of Christians.

Every year he held me back, saying that we would leave the following year. In late , Cabeza de Vaca finally convinced the reluctant Spaniard to leave the island and to accompany him down the coast toward Panuco, following roughly the same course that the party had taken four years earlier. But the two men successfully crossed four rivers along the coast, only to be confronted by a wide inlet where Oviedo became increasingly frightened. Across this body of water were Indians who made contact with the two Spaniards.

The natives reported that "farther ahead were three men like us and gave us their names. When Cabeza de Vaca asked about the status of the three survivors, the Indians replied that they were badly mistreated because their captors "kicked and slapped them, and beat them with sticks.

All of this was more than the faint-hearted Oviedo could endure. Despite the efforts of Cabeza de Vaca who "argued with him not to do it," Don Lope in the company of some Indian women turned back toward Malhado and disappeared from history. The three men were astonished to see Don Alvar, for they believed he had died several years earlier. They also were no doubt more than a little embarrassed that they had not verified his death before departing from Malhado. But Cabeza bore them no animus, remarking that "we thanked God very much for being together" and that the reunion was one of the happiest days of their lives.

Once united, Cabeza de Vaca and Dorantes were in agreement that they should press on toward Mexico at the first opportunity. The other two men had theretofore been reluctant to do so, because they could not swim and greatly feared the rivers and bays they would have to cross. After assuring the non-swimmers that they would be helped en route, the four men agreed on the absolute necessity of keeping secret their plans for escape, for they believed the Indians would surely kill them if their intentions were discovered.

The four ragged castaways decided to wait six months before attempting to flee, because at that time the Indians would gather at another land farther south and strategically closer to New Spain to feast on the fruit of the prickly pear cactus.

And at that juncture Cabeza became the slave of Indians who also owned Andres Dorantes. Those natives were a hunting and gathering group called the Mariames, while a neighboring group known as the Yguazes claimed Castillo and Estevanico.

During their captivity, the four men learned the fate of many of their former companions. Some had died of exposure and hunger; others had been the victims of violence perpetrated by Spaniard on Spaniard. Once again, the last survivors had temporarily kept themselves alive by eating the flesh of their countrymen. But in the end, there were only the ragged four—three Europeans and an African. As a captive, Cabeza de Vaca again revealed the trained eye of an ethnologist by memorizing the things that he saw and by asking good questions.

For example, he observed that the Mariames regularly killed infant daughters and fed their bodies to dogs. When asked why they would do such a seemingly cruel and irrational act, the Indians replied that it was "an unseemly thing to marry them to relatives"—an option no doubt proscribed by incest taboos. The alternative was to marry daughters outside the group, but since the Mariames were surrounded by more numerous and powerful tribes with whom they were constantly at war, married daughters would bear children that strengthened their enemies.

Don Alvar also remembered interesting details about the Yguazes. He described them as well-built archers. But their principal food came not from hunting.

Rather, they dug two or three varieties of roots, which were hardly ideal foodstuffs in that they caused severe bloating. Furthermore, the roots were difficult to dig, required two days of roasting, and were bitter to the palate. The Yguazes occasionally supplemented their diet with deer and fish, but they were often so hungry that they ate "spiders, ant eggs, worms, lizards, salamanders, snakes and poisonous vipers.

Besides these named foods, the Yguazes consumed "other things" that Cabeza de Vaca could not bring himself to record. One may well wonder what these "unmentionables" might have been. Don Alvar added a concluding thought that my observations lead me to believe that they would eat stones if there were any in that land. Cabeza de Vaca found the Yguazes to be lacking in character, given as they were to thievery, drunkenness, and prevarication.

He also recorded his profound distaste for sodomites among this hunting and gathering culture, who were "so abominable that they openly have another man for a wife" and so effeminate that they "do not understand a thing about men but perform every activity pertaining to women.

To ward off the insects, the Indians burned damp firewood because it emitted a lot of smoke. The downside to this means of insect repellent, as campers can attest, is eyes that water all night, and the Spaniards and Estevanico also found their sleep interrupted by a sharp kick or beating by an Indian when it was time to gather more firewood. Despite the best efforts of the Iguazes, Cabeza de Vaca described those who suffered the most severe reaction to mosquito bites as resembling lepers or the Biblical Lazarus.

During this captivity, Cabeza de Vaca mentioned seeing buffalo, the first account on record of these wild bovines.

He called them "cows" and remarked that they were about the same size as Moorish cattle in Spain, although bison had longer hair. Don Alvar observed that the animals had small horns, that their skins were like fine blankets, and that the Iguazes used the hides to make shoes and shields. According to Cabeza de Vaca, buffalo "have more and better meat than cattle…in Spain. At the end of six months when the Indians had congregated to gather the prickly pears, the castaways' plans to escape went awry.

When they were about to flee, their Indian masters got into a hot dispute over a woman, which ended in blows with sticks and fisticuffs. Their masters became so angry that they marched off in different directions, forcing their slaves to accompany them. Consequently, all plans to flee toward New Spain were placed on hold for another year. The survivors then cobbled together five flimsy boats and headed to sea, where they endured vicious storms, severe shortages of food and water and attacks from Native Americans wherever they put to shore.

During the next four years, the party barely managed to eke out a tenuous existence by trading with the Native Americans located in modern-day east Texas. The crew steadily died off from illness, accidents and attacks until only Cabeza de Vaca and three others remained. In , the four survivors set out on an arduous journey across the present-day states of Texas, New Mexico , and Arizona. Captured by the Karankawa Natives, they lived in virtual bondage for nearly two years. Only after Cabeza de Vaca had won the respect of the Karankawa by becoming a skilled medicine man and diplomat did the small band win their freedom.

In , the men encountered a party of Spanish explorers in what is now the Mexican state of Sinaloa. They followed them back to Mexico City, where the tale of their amazing odyssey became famous throughout the colony and in Europe. Despite the many hardships experienced by Cabeza de Vaca and his men during their northern travels, their stories inspired others to intensify exploration of the region that would one day become Texas.

But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! On November 6, , Rutgers beats Princeton, , in the first college football game. The game, played with a soccer ball before roughly fans in New Brunswick, New Jersey, resembles rugby instead of today's football.