James Baquet

It’s hard to believe that much of our heavily-populated world was largely unmapped just a few centuries ago. One expedition meant to claim what is now the Gulf Coast of the United States for the Kingdom of Spain started out in 1527 with about 600 men; only four returned, as a result of storms, attacks by indigenous forces, disease, starvation, and bad decisions.

After “crash landing” in Florida, some of the men attempted to sail to Mexico on makeshift rafts; about 80 survived a storm that swept them onto the coast of modern Texas, where they were enslaved by native peoples.

By the end of eight years, only four were alive: the Captain Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, who was Narvaez’s second-in-command; Alonso del Castillo Maldonado; Andrés Dorantes de Carranza, “owner” of an enslaved Black man; and Dorantes’ slave Estevanico.

Cabeza de Vaca later wrote an account of their journey for the King of Spain. Given the king’s importance, we might imagine that Cabeza de Vaca would try to tell the unvarnished truth. What he wrote was, instead, frankly incredible. This much is certain: Cabeza de Vaca and the three men traveled across what is now Texas, into parts of northern Mexico and parts of the American southwest; they eventually met other Spaniards and returned to Mexico City. Cabeza de Vaca’s work was published in 1542, the first written account of the peoples, flora and fauna of inland North America.

But beyond that, Cabeza de Vaca claimed to have become a healer, and saying (among other “miracles”) he performed the first surgical operation, removing an arrowhead that had struck a native in the chest and lodged above his heart. He also claimed to have healed people merely by breathing on them, and using this method even said he once raised a man from the dead! Numerous local people began to follow him on his journey (he says), believing he was a man of great power (all of which he attributed to God).

Castillo and Dorantes both died decades later in Mexico. Cabeza de Vaca became governor of a province in South America before returning to Spain, where he died. Estevanico later returned to New Mexico guiding an expedition, and disappeared into the wilderness, presumed dead.