Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca (ca. 1490-ca. 1557) was a Spanish explorer. Marooned on the Texas coast, he wandered for 8 years in a land no European had ever seen. His account is the earliest description of the American Southwest.

Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca was born into a distinguished family in Jerez de la Frontera. His strange name, literally "head of a cow," was won by a maternal ancestor, Martin Alhaja, who showed King Sancho of Navarre a pass marked with a cow's skull. Use of this pass enabled Sancho to win the famous battle of Las Navas de Tolosa against the Moors in 1212.

Raised by his paternal grandfather, Pedro de Vera, one of the conquerors and governor of the Canary Islands, Cabeza de Vaca joined the Spanish army in 1511 and served in Italy, Spain, and Navarre. In 1527 he joined the Florida expedition of Pánfilo de Narváez as treasurer and chief constable. When the party landed in Florida in April 1528, Narváez unwisely split his land from his sea forces and led an expedition inland. Upon their return to the coast in August, they discovered the ships had left for Cuba. Desperately short of supplies and harassed by hostile Amerinds, the Spaniards built small boats and set sail along the Gulf coast, hoping to reach Mexico.

The voyage was a nightmare. There was little food or water, and the small flotilla was beset by storms. In November 1528, the tiny fleet was wrecked on Galveston Island. Many of the men were lost at sea, and most of the others died during the winter from cold and exposure. Captured and enslaved by the Karankawa tribe, Cabeza de Vaca managed to survive. In 1534, along with Alonso del Castillo, Andrés Dorantes, and the Moor Estevánico, he escaped and headed for Mexico. For 2 years the Spaniards lived by their wits, trading with wandering tribes and gaining a reputation as healers and medicine men. Their exact route is unknown, but modern scholars believe they wandered along the Texas coast to the Río Grande and turned first north and then west across present-day Texas and northern Mexico. Finally, in March 1536 the group encountered a small party of Spaniards near Culiacán in western Mexico.

After reporting to Viceroy Antonio de Mendoza in Mexico City, Cabeza de Vaca returned to Spain, where he sought a new post. In 1540 he became governor and captain general of Río de la Plata (Paraguay). During his 4 years in South America he made a 1,000-mile march into the interior, opening previously unexplored territory. Denounced by his subordinates, Cabeza de Vaca returned to Spain in 1544 as a prisoner, but later most of the charges against him were rescinded. He spent his remaining years writing and publishing the story of his remarkable exploits in the New World, Los naufragios (The Shipwrecked).

Further Reading

There are several translations of Cabeza de Vaca's Texas adventures, of which the best are Fanny Bandelier, The Journey of Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca (1905; repr. 1964), and "The Narrative of Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca" in Frederick W. Hodge, ed., Spanish Explorers in the Southern United States (1907). An excellent biography is Morris Bishop, The Odyssey of Cabeza de Vaca (1933). See also Cleve Hallenbeck, Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca (1940), and John Upton Terrell, Journey into Darkness (1964).

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(äl'vär nū'nyāth käbā'thä dā vä'kä) , c.1490–c.1557, Spanish explorer. Cabeza de Vaca [cow's head] was not actually a surname but a hereditary title in his mother's family; he is frequently called simply Álvar Núñez.

North American Adventures

Cabeza de Vaca came to the New World as treasurer in the expedition of Pánfilo de Narváez that reached Florida (probably Tampa Bay) in 1528. When hardship and native hostility caused the end of the expedition, he was one of the survivors whose barges were shipwrecked on an island off the Texas coast, possibly Galveston or Mustang Island. Their story is one of the most remarkable in the annals of exploration.

After suffering considerably as slaves of the Native Americans inhabiting the island, Cabeza de Vaca and three other survivors escaped and started a long journey overland. His companions were Alonso del Castillo Maldonado, Andrés Dorantes, and Estevanico. They gained great repute among the Native Americans as healers since remarkable cures were attributed to their Christian prayers. Their route westward is as disputed as is the identity the island of the shipwreck, but after much wandering they did reach W Texas, then probably New Mexico and Arizona, and possibly (some argue) California before, turning south in 1536, they arrived in Culiacán in Mexico and told their story to Spaniards there.

They were almost certainly the first Europeans to see bison, and their stories about the Pueblo gave rise to the legend of the Seven Cities of Cibola, later magnified by Fray Marcos de Niza, and brought explorers in search of El Dorado. Cabeza de Vaca's own account, Los naufragios [the shipwrecked men] (1542), is the chief document of the startling adventures of his party. An English translation (1851) by Thomas Buckingham Smith is reprinted in I. R. Blacker and H. M. Rosen's The Golden Conquistadores (1960).

South American Career

After returning to Spain, Cabeza de Vaca was appointed governor of the Río de la Plata region and reached Asunción after an overland journey from the Brazilian coast in 1542. His South American career was sadly different from that in North America. He got into trouble with the popular Domingo Martínez de Irala, and after he returned from a journey up the Paraná River to Bolivia, he was arrested, accused of high-handed practices, imprisoned for two years, and sent back to Spain. There he was found guilty but was pardoned by the king. Cabeza de Vaca wrote his own account of the South American events in his Comentarios (1555).

Bibliography

See M. Bishop, The Odyssey of Cabeza de Vaca (1933); J. U. Terrell, Journey into Darkness (1962); H. Long, The Marvelous Adventures of Cabeza de Vaca (1973).