CORONADO

If only. If only Cortes had conquered some afflicted American tribe like the one deVaca eventually encountered on Galveston Island. Some tribe besides the prosperous Aztecs Cortes had come across in central Mexico.

Because then, Panfilo de Narvez, dispatched by the Spanish crown to reign in the jubilant Cortes, might never have seen the enormous wealth Cortes was calling his, and might never have been inspired to attempt the same feat.

But what happened instead was that Narvaez returned to Spain to ask the King for a license to himself explore in the New World. With permission granted to conquer the Gulf Coast, the nature and extent of which was completely unknown to him nor to any other representative of European civilization, Narvaez immediately set about it.

Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, “La Relación… ,” trans. Fanny Bandelier, The Journey of Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca Famy and his Companions from Florida to the Pacific, 1528-1536,” (New York: A. S. Barnes & Company, 1905), p.1:

On the 27th day of the month of June, 1527, the Governor Panfilo de Nar­vaez departed from the port of San Lucar de Barrameda [Spain], with authority and orders from Your Majesty to conquer and govern the provinces that extend from the river of the Palms [Rio Grande] to the Cape of the Florida, these provinces being on the main land. The fleet he took along consisted of five vessels, in which went about 600 men.

Stopping in Cuba just long enough to refit his fleet, he proceeded to aim for the westernmost limit of his jurisdiction (present day Texas). But by the time he was ready and then waited out storms etc. that Cabeza de Vaca describes, it was nearly a year later that they made it to the American continent, sighting land on April twelfth.

But, because of a storm and the strong Gulf currents, he and his remaining 400 men arrived instead at Tampa Bay, all the while thinking they had reached what is now Texas. Narvaez pressed westward anyway, sending out three supply ships (which disappeared) and proceeded with the remaining 300 men and 50 horses over land.

Herbert E. Bolton, Coronado: Knight of Pueblos and Plains, (Albuquerque: Univ. of New Mexico Press, 1949), pp. 8-9: lays it out:

Narvaez began by seeking a place called Cale, whose inhabitants the Florida Indians said wore golden hats like chiefs. Finding this to be false and the natives inhospitable, he proceeded west to about Tallahassee, also rumored of promise. Instead, the Indians there also proved hostile. So Narvaez and company (now 250 men) killed the remainder of the horses they had been eating for lack of other sustenance, made five horsehide boats, and resumed the journey by sea.

About 80 did get as far as present day Galveston Island, but a hurricane there finished off the bulk of this force.

The only four to eventually make it to New Spain (Mexico City) included Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, treasurer for the expedition to whom we are indebted for creating a record of these events; a Captain ; a black slave, and this slave’s owner.

AURA

I’m going to jump in here to say I asked Sine to make this expedition on the Map be represented by a dark line in honor of that black slave. Because despite the triumphs of people like Obama, Tiger Woods, and Oprah, many blacks in the U.S. feel out of it. The fact is, the slave's role in this expedition, as well as in a later one pressed upon him personally by none other than the Spanish King’s top representative in Mexico City, established blacks as stakeholders in the American southwest three centuries before descendents of those aboard the Mayflower went west. His descendents were among those to greet “trail-blazing” American colonists when they arrived.

CORONADO

I’ll throw in here that they gave this guy a Spanish name probably because they didn’t know what else to call him. So they called him Estévanico, or Steve in Englsih. He was an Arab black from Azamor, [Bejar, Morocco]. And, by the way, the line Sine put on the map, running from Cuba to Mexico City, which is the distance these four sailed, swam, and walked, is incomplete. Incomplete, because the voyage began in the old world.

Anyway, once they made it to Galveston Island, some of the local Indians helped them, at first, but they were really lost. They didn’t even know which direction to go, or even if they could make it to Mexico City by land. They were hampered on the way by enslavement by various tribes, not knowing the territory, no animal driven transportation, foodstuffs never seen before, etc. Getting to New Spain at all was virtually accidental, and was facilitated in no small measure by their finding a role to play among the Indians – that of medicine men to down-on-their luck Indians suffering from, among other things, weather of the kind that had wrecked their ship. My guess is that worked because the Indians had never seen anybody like them before anyway.

Along the way, they heard tales of wealth and great beasts to the north, followed old Indian paths that later Spanish expeditions would retrace, and Esteban was given a gourd rattle by one tribe to enhance what they saw as his healing powers, an ornament that would ultimately seal his fate in the promised land of Cibola to the north. It wasn’t until the end of April, 1536, that the four survivors chanced upon some Spanish slave catchers, west of the mountains that border the Gulf of Cortez, and were conducted to the governor’s house in Compostela. That was like going to heaven. It had been eight years since they’d left Spain and they couldn’t even enjoy the clothing and beds they were offered because of having been without such things for so long. - By St James’ feast day July, 1536, they were back in New Spain (present-day Mexico City) describing their experience to Viceroy Mendoza.

AURA

What I find fascinating about this story is that it’s about the completely unpremeditated, yet fairly well documented, encounter between inhabitants of two different worlds on a virtually equal footing. It’s as if a literate child was the first person to enter the garden of Eden and write down what he saw and his reaction to it. (Though one could argue the four survivors had arrived because of an agenda of expropriation and apostolic zeal, the fact is that, separated as they were from their support system, they, like the peoples they encountered, were focused simply on living and surviving.) Of course the “new” world was not really a bright, newly created garden of Eden. It’s inhabitants had developed ways to live and to relate to one another. And it is the snapshot taken of this world not yet affected by the “old” world that sweeps away all the myths anyone might have of “wilderness” and of any preconceived ideas regarding how complete strangers from different worlds should or can meet. Unlike science fiction fantasies, this is a real event in the history of our evolutionary form encountering the “foreign.” Though the degree of unfamiliarity in this instance was mild compared to the future possibility of encountering intelligent life accustomed to surviving on elements we've never heard of, it is the event closest in nature to what we may yet experience as we seem destined to reach out to other planets, or as other planets reach out to us. I think that’s what hooked Sine, too.

SINE

Yes. That made me interested enough to read what deVaca wrote. Click this link to see it too. You may need to press your control and F keys (if you're using Windows) to bring up the box in which to insert this sentence: "Close to shore a wave took us and hurled the barge a horse's length out of water." (That's how the survivors arrived in the southwest about where Galveston, Texas is now.) What preceeds that sentence describes the journey from Spain via Cuba with a couple brief stops in what is now Florida, as described more briefly above in this note.)

........................................................................................................

Not computer savy yet? Here's greater detail about how to get to that sentence in DeVaca’s account:

In Windows, copy the sentence by highlighting it then right clicking it to select Copy in the resulting list. Now click on the link (here). When the DeVaca account appears, press your keyboard’s Control and F keys at the same time to then paste the sentence you’ve already copied into the little box that has come up near the top of your window by moving your mouse to it and then right clicking again to see the word Paste. Click the word Paste, and then your Enter key to get to the sentence in the narrative.

In Mac, copy the sentence by selecting it then pressing your keyboard’s Control and left click keys at the same time to bring up the word Copy. Click on Copy and then click on the link (here). When the DeVaca account appears, press your Command and F keys at the same time to bring up a box that has the sentence you copied in it. Click the return key or else the down arrow in the box and you’re now where you should be.