Alvar Nunez Cabeza De Vaca was a Spanish colonial official and explorer. He spent eight years in the Gulf region of present-day Texas.
Background
Alvar Nunez Cabeza De Vaca was born about 1490 in Jerez de la Frontera, Spain. His father, Francisco de Vera, was a member of the municipal council of Jerez, and his paternal grandfather, Pedro de Vera Mendoza, one of the conquerors of the Canaries and their governor. His mother, Teresa Cabeza de Vaca, was descended from that shepherd, Martín Alhaja, who was ennobled and given the name Cabeza de Vaca by Sancho, King of Navarre, for showing the Christians a pass through the mountains by placing a cow's head at its entrance and thus enabling them to win the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa (June 11, 1212) from the Moors. Instead of bearing his father's name, Alvar was named for a maternal ancestor who was captain of the fleet of Jerez.
Career
In 1511 and 1512 Alvar fought in Italy, in 1520 against the comuneros in Spain, and still later in Navarre against the French.
On February 15, 1527, he was appointed treasurer and alguacil mayor of the expedition of Pánfilo de Narváez which set out to conquer and settle Florida. While wintering in Cuba, he and another officer were sent with two ships to get provisions at Trinidad, but both ships were lost in a sudden hurricane. Shortly afterward he was made commander of Narváez's fleet at Jagua, Cienfuegos Bay. When the expedition reached the coast of Florida in April 1528, he vainly advised Narváez not to abandon the fleet. After the costly overland march to Apalache, when the remnant of the expedition embarked on September 22, 1528, in five rude boats made near the site of the present St. Marks, he was given command of one of them. Two only of the boats finally came through stress of weather to a small desolate island off the coast of Texas, dubbed Mal Hado (Bad Luck) by the men. The eighty survivors, succored for the moment by the wretched Indians of the island, were soon reduced by hunger, cold, and disease to fifteen, who were enslaved by the Indians and separated one from another.
In February 1530, Cabeza de Vaca escaped to a friendly tribe and became a trader, bartering articles from the coast for others from the interior. Once a year he returned to Mal Hado to try to persuade a Spaniard, Lope de Oviedo, to escape with him, and in 1532 succeeded, but shortly after, Oviedo, fainthearted, turned back.
In 1534, Cabeza de Vaca and three others-- Andrés Dorantes, Alonso del Castillo, and the latter's black slave Estavanico--took refuge among the Avavares or Coahuiltecas, among whom they plied the art of the medicine man with success. At last, in the spring of 1535, they set out in earnest on their long trek westward, traveling triumphantly from tribe to tribe, healing as they went. Their route led them across the continent, through what is now southern Texas and northern Mexico. In March 1536 they came to the Sinaloa River, and on July 23, to Mexico City, where they were met by Cortes and Mendoza.
In 1537, despite the wishes of Mendoza, who desired to employ him in other expeditions, Cabeza de Vaca returned to Spain. Finding that the Florida expedition which he wished to obtain for himself had been given to Hernando de Soto, he remained inactive for about two years.
On March 18, 1540, he was commissioned to lead an expedition to the Rio de la Plata region in South America. Its most noteworthy incident was the thousand-mile march from the Brazilian mainland opposite Santa Catalina Island to Asunción, Paraguay, during which for the first time Europeans gazed upon the falls of the Iguazú. On April 25, 1544, festering dissatisfaction among some of his men came to a head; he was arrested and held in close confinement for some months, and then sent back to Spain to be tried on certain definite charges, some of which seem to have been trumped up. Reaching Seville in August 1545, he was kept in prison until March 18, 1551, when he was sentenced to deprivation of all offices and titles, permanent banishment from the Indies, and exile to Oran for five years. Later in that year his exile to Oran was repealed, and on September 15, 1556, being ill, he was given a royal grant of 12, 000 maravedis. In La Relacion que Dio Alvar Nuñez, Cabeça de Vaca de lo Acaescido enlas Indias (Zamora, 1542), Cabeza de Vaca, first of all Europeans, described the opossum and the American bison and gave information of the Texas Indians.
Personality
Cabeza de Vaca was sane, capable, adaptable, honest, and sincere. His narrative may contain some exaggerations and some inaccuracies, but he was no lover of the marvelous. He was thoroughly imbued with the religious faith of his day and his success in healing he attributed to divine intervention. Working alone, or almost alone, with the Indians, he was resourceful and successful, but with men of his own race, he ran almost immediately into difficulties, although he inspired devotion in not a few.