Cabeza da Vaca survived to write the story of this disaster; first, however, he was to live through one of the most incredible experiences in all Spanish-American history. After Narvaez’ disappearance, he and his comrades on the last lonely craft continued along the coast. They no longer dared to go ashore, but soon their food supplies dwindled so low that the decision would have to be made. A sudden winter storm, however, ended all further speculations; a great wave tossed them up on an island beach somewhere off today’s Galveston, Texas.
No sooner had the Spaniards recovered their senses, when out of the woods appeared some Indians with supplies of cooked fish and vegetables and fresh water. Through friendly gestures and signs they lead the white men to understand that they would return again soon. By that evening they did indeed come back again with more food, and this time they also brought their families. When the Spaniards gave them some glass beads, the Indians repeated these visits for several days more. Da Vaca and his men had meanwhile tried to refloat their stranded craft, but the shaky and poorly balanced boat finally capsized and sank; the mere handful of survivors of the Narvaez expedition were now hopelessly stranded on a strange and completely unknown island.
At sunset of that same day, the Indians once again appeared with food; they had been watching the white men’s unsuccessful attempt at launching their craft, and now they invited the Spaniards to their village. Some of these men, no doubt, must have thought of the stories of Mexico, of their countrymen being sacrificed to the Aztec gods; their own experiences during the past weeks could certainly not have encouraged them to accept this invitation. But at this point there was hardly any choice in the matter; the only alternative was a slow but certain death by starvation off the coast of New Spain.
Their fears were to prove groundless. The natives of the island were friendly and hospitable, and they willingly shared their food with the visitors. And when da Vaca noticed one of the natives wearing an ornament of obviously European design, they were led to another party of about eighty Spaniards who had been stranded on that same coast only a few weeks earlier.
But as happened so often in the history of the New World, the initial friendly relations with the native population came to an abrupt end. This was wintertime, and the sudden increase in hungry mouths soon proved a serious strain on the Indians’ food supplies. Also, many of the Indians suddenly came down with strange and previously unknown diseases that killed many of its victims, and their relatives naturally blamed the newcomers. And when rumors arose that these white men were even practicing cannibalism among themselves, the horrified Indians had enough. One night they suddenly attacked the weakened and unsuspecting Spaniards, killing some and capturing many more, and all the survivors were thereafter kept as slaves in their village.
Only Cabeza da Vaca apparently escaped the fate of his comrades. Soon after their capture, he later claimed to have cured one of the Indians by merely making the sign of the cross and by praying over the patient. As a result of this miraculous cure, the Indians seem to have treated Da Vaca extremely well, even depriving themselves of food to give to him. Medicine man Cabeza, in fact, seems to have received a share of every successful hunt from the grateful people of the Texas coast; but, as he remarked later, he often had to gobble the meat up raw, or someone less grateful would snatch it away from him again and broil it for himself.
His relative freedom among the Indians finally provided Da Vaca with opportunities to cross over to the mainland, and early in 1529 he managed to escape to another tribe. For nearly three years he stayed there, living among the natives, naked like they were, achieving some success as a medicine man and as a trader between the different villages. On one such trip he suddenly encountered three more survivors of the Narvaez expedition, two Spaniards and an African named Estavanico, who had been carried off by other tribes. The four men immediately decided to try an escape from this wilderness, and with that decision began an incredible four-year, 2,000-mile trek across the North American continent.
“Throughout all this country,” Cabeza da Vaca wrote later, “we went naked, and twice a year we cast our skins like serpents.” Whenever they approached an Indian village, their reputation for healing had already preceded them, and invariably they were received with food and presents. Weeks turned into months and then into years as the four men trudged across the immense expanse of the American Southwest. They crossed the Pecos River near the junction of the Rio Grande and headed for the Gulf of California.
It was now the year 1536. Eight years had gone by since Panfilo de Narvaez had set out on his expedition and then disappeared in the Gulf of Mexico. Hernando Cortes was no longer all-powerful in Mexico, Francisco Pizarro had meanwhile conquered the still greater wealth of Peru, and every Spaniard in the New World was on a ruthless search for glory and wealth. The government in Mexico had meanwhile fallen to Nuno de Guzman who, anxious to make a reputation for himself, had set out to make further conquests. In the process, his armies had cut a wide swath of blood and destruction throughout Mexico. In April, 1536, a company of his soldiers rode along the Sinaloa River when suddenly, in the distance, they saw several men on foot walking in their direction. As they came closer, the soldiers saw three white men and one black man, naked as they had been born, and nearly exhausted; Cabeza da Vaca and his companions had arrived in Mexico, the only known survivors of the Narvaez expedition.
Gradually the four men recuperated from their eight-year ordeal. The local Spanish authorities provided them with shelters and new clothes but, wrote da Vaca, “we could not wear them for some time, nor could we sleep anywhere but on the floor.” Da Vaca and the two Spaniards, however, had seen enough of the New World to last them a lifetime. Once back among their countrymen, they were determined to remain there, and all three returned to Spain shortly thereafter. Estavanico, on the other hand, lived only long enough to participate in yet one more fruitless adventure.