The Incredible Journey of Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca (1527-1536). Discoverer, conqueror, and advanced.

 

Discoverer, conqueror, and advanced Álvar Núñez Cabeza De Vaca identified the following peoples by name in his La Relación (1542). The following list shows his names, together with what scholars suggested in 1919 were the likely tribes identified by names used in the 20th century. By that time, tribal identification was also related to more linguistic data.

Possible Karankawan groups:
Capoques – Cocos
Deaguanes – Cujanes
Quevenes – Copanes
Guaycones – Guapites
Camones – Karankaguases?

Related to Karankawa:
Charruco – Bidai-Orcoquiza
Han – Bidai-Orcoquiza

Possible Tonkawan groups:
Mendica – Tamiques
Mariames – Jaranames
Iguaces – Anaquas

Possible Coahuiltecan or desert groups:
Quitoles
The "Fig People"
Acubadaos
Avavares
Anegados
Cutalchuches
Maliacones
Susolas
Comos – Comecrudo
Cuayos
Arbadaos
Atayos
Cuchendados.

The Incredible Journey of Cabeza De Vaca (1527-1536), https://youtu.be/P_ozbidkNZo. When Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca was born in 1488, in Jerez de la Frontera, Cádiz, Andalusia, Spain, his father, Francisco de Vera Hinojosa, was 23 and his mother, Teresa Cabeza de Vaca Suárez de Figueroa, was 38. He died on 27 May 1559, in Sevilla, Andalusia, Spain, at the age of 71, and was buried in Valladolid, Valladolid, Castilla y León, Spain.
 

World Events: 1492, The Muslims of Granada were defeated; Christopher Columbus voyage to America was financed by Queen Isabella I and her husband, Ferdinand II of Aragon. 1513, Vasco Núñez de Balboa crossed Central America.
 

Álvar Núñez's life maintains many obscure areas, beginning with the loss of his baptismal certificate, which has given rise to a multitude of conjectures; However, it has been possible to date him approximately, based on a document from 1509 on the "constitution of curatela" (custody) over the minor Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, then fourteen years old. Meanwhile, his birthplace, also the subject of numerous questions, would be, according to the aforementioned documentation and his own work Shipwrecks and Comments, that of Jerez de la Frontera.
 

Álvar Núñez appears as a member of an ancient lineage of “old Christians”, with a great imprint on Jerez at the time. On his paternal line, he would come from the Vera family —a surname that, curiously, he did not use—, his father being Francisco de Vera, a knight of the Order of Santiago and Twenty-four of the city of Jerez, son of Pedro de Vera Mendoza, an Aragonese who later After moving to Castilla, he took root in Jerez, becoming mayor of Arcos and Jimena (Cádiz), as well as the conqueror of the Canary Islands. Regarding his maternal line, Cabeza de Vaca was a perfectly established surname in the town of Jerez and according to legend, Sancho de Navarra gave it to the shepherd Martín Alhaja, for having indicated, with the skull of a cow, the passage through which Christians penetrated to defeat the Arabs in the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa. The Cabeza de Vaca from Jerez would be linked with the most significant lineages in the area, such as the Núñez or the Zurita, the latter with a manor house in the collation of San Juan de Los Caballeros, and even Beatriz, Teresa's sister and therefore Álvar's aunt Núñez, married Pedro de Estopiñán, conqueror of Melilla and later governor and captain-general of Santo Domingo (1503), although he did not take office when he died at the time of embarkation.
 

Already orphaned, in 1505, Álvar appears under the guardianship of his aunt Beatriz and thanks to the deep friendship between the Estopiñán and the Dukes of Medina Sidonia, he entered the service of the latter, showing his prudence and ability, in all those "embassies" that were entrusted to him. Due to the ancestry and conquering tradition of his family, he left as treasurer and major constable, in the expedition of Pánfilo de Narváez, to whom the King had granted the entire coast of the Gulf of Mexico. Five ships and six hundred soldiers weighed anchor in 1527 from Sanlúcar de Barrameda (Cádiz), with the intention of populating the vicinity of the Río de las Palmas (now Soto de la Marina), beginning a long and dangerous voyage. After a long journey that took them to Santo Domingo, Cuba, and Trinidad Island, a storm made them land in Tampa Bay. Here, the expedition (contrary to the opinion of Cabeza de Vaca) was divided: the ships would go along the coast towards Panuco (west of the aforementioned Gulf of Mexico), until they found a suitable port to wait for the rest of the expedition, which they would not achieve, having to return to Tampa, to, after a year, go definitively to Mexico.
 

Meanwhile, the said Narváez, with three hundred men, including the Jerezano, made his way overland, painfully traversing mangrove swamps and swamps until he reached an Indian village called Apalache (near Tallahassee). Harassed by the Indians and given the numerous casualties, he decided to return to the coast, making five boats with the means that nature offered him; They navigated painfully along the coast of the Gulf until they reached an island near Galveston, which Cabeza de Vaca himself baptized Malhado (Bad Luck). Narváez disappeared one night swallowed by the sea, while the others re-entered the mainland, where disorientation, hunger, and cold overcame them, leaving only fifteen survivors, including the man from Jerez. They were soon captured by the Indians and, although Álvar Núñez did not take long to flee, he fell again into the hands of another Indian tribe, finding four of his former army companions there (Dorantes, Castillo, Maldonado, and the black Estebanico), remaining all of them six years as slaves, to be considered later, extraordinary thaumaturges. The natives came to attribute the virtue of performing miracles to them, considering them children of the sun and, in fact, achieved surprising cures through prayer and medicinal herbs.
 

In 1534 they managed to evade definitively, always marching west, covered in furs, with long beards, and tanned by the sun and air. “Frequently,” says the discoverer, “three to four thousand people accompanied us and since we had to blow on them and sanctify their food and drinks [...] and give them permission to do a multitude of things, as they came to request, it was easy it is to understand how great were our fatigues”. The trip lasted about ten months, crossing present-day Texas and its surroundings, crossing the Rio Grande (above its confluence with the Pecos), until reaching what is now El Paso; from there and again across the river, they continued through Sonora to San Miguel de Culiacán, culminating in Mexico, from where they left for Spain in 1537 with a lot of 300,000 Castilians in gold and silver. Ten years had passed since this amazing and painful journey through the South of the current United States began.
 

Upon his arrival in Spain, Cabeza de Vaca wrote down his adventures and impressions in his work Shipwrecks (1537-1590). Soon the Crown again required his services, this time to continue the conquest of the Río de la Plata, a point of growing interest due to its role as a bastion against the Portuguese advances from Brazil. Although the economic incentive also weighed, given the rumors of a "Sierra de la Plata" and the "Empire of a White King". However, at that time the situation in the River Plate could not be more compromised, since the disease was irremediably consuming Pedro de Mendoza, the first advanced man of those lands. On April 15, 1540, the Crown signed the corresponding Capitulation with the Jerez citizen, allowing him to conquer the provinces of the Río de la Plata, "from the said river to the South Sea, with more than 200 leagues, from where the governorship ends." from Almagro to the Strait of Magellan”. Said Certificate was complemented by another, dated the 24th of the same month, in which he was granted the title of advance.
 

In November, the ensuing expedition set out from Cádiz, made up of three ships, 46 horses, and four hundred men, including some relatives of the new adelantado, Pedro Estopiñán Cabeza de Vaca and Alonso Riquelme de Guzmán. On March 29, 1541, they arrived at the island of Santa Catalina, learning of the changes that had occurred on the mainland. On the death of Mendoza and his lieutenant Juan de Ayolas, it was Domingo Martínez de Irala (a future nightmare for newcomers) who held command. It had precisely been his decision to leave Buenos Aires and take refuge in Asunción (present-day Paraguay), to free himself from indigenous attacks and, at the same time, be closer to the supposed Serranía de la Plata.
 

After a rather painful journey, crossing rivers and Guaraní lands, Alvar Núñez arrived in Asunción at the beginning of 1542, beginning a process that would not achieve the expected success. Contrary to what the new adelantado thought, these were moments of conquest and not so much of government, although Cabeza de Vaca would carry out expeditions to the west of the Paraguay River and north and south of the Pilcomayo, culminating in notable success. But very soon, the officers—military, fiscal, and even religious—felt annoyed, given the measures implemented by the man from Jerez, which, according to his words, curtailed the freedom and independence enjoyed up to now. Very soon the conspiracies led by Irala would begin, based on the fact that the new government of Cabeza de Vaca was despotic, not sharing a function with the royal officials (the veedor Cabrera was a friend of Irala); taxation on food had been prohibited and polygamy was likewise banished; the policy developed was too favorable for the indigenous, and above all, most importantly, the march to the Sierra de la Plata had been postponed indefinitely, under the "excuse" that first a good point of support had to be chosen and established and communication with the Peninsula.
 

It didn't take much more for the discontent to spread, as the Spanish claimed to have crossed the Atlantic in search of fame and riches, especially after Hernando de Ribera, sent by the adelantado to the Chaco, returned spreading legendary news about the Amazons. and Eldorado. On April 25, 1544, the people of Asuncion rebelled to the cry of "Freedom!", rioting with the royal officers at the head and some of the settlers, former participants in the Castilian community struggles. Irala, who had not figured ostensibly in these events, was left as master of the situation, and not wanting to admit it, Cabeza de Vaca was imprisoned and isolated and even suffered an attempted poisoning. By then, the mutineers would have destroyed all the documentary evidence proving the management of the afore mentioned advance, while the royal officials were in charge of collecting (under pressure) all kinds of statements from the neighborhood that were harmful to them. Whoever did not do so, risked jail or a good round of lashes, as happened to Cristóbal de Vitoria, a native of Medina del Campo.
 

Finally, the man from Jerez left the Indies for good in 1545, aboard a ship, the Communard, witness to another poisoning trial, neutralized by the victim with “oil and a piece of unicorn”. After suffering a dangerous storm and his guards unsuccessfully trying to keep him in the Azores so that he would not reach Spain, Cabeza de Vaca did so at the end of that year. Once again, the prison was his immediate destination, although he was granted bail on April 19, 1546, forcing him to remain in court for the duration of the lawsuit, which would last eight years. The prosecutor of the Council of the Indies, Marcelo de Villalobos (also from Jerez), would present numerous charges against him, in the already known line of argument, placing special emphasis on his supposed arrogance, because "I am the lord of this land" and above all his reaction before “the people of war”, despite his fatigue: “he would not give them anything that he did not need”. The defendant presented as the basis of his defense the text that would later see the light precisely as the second part of his written work (Comments), in which, chronologically, he explained his version of the facts, although for some historiographers the text would reflect the hand of his notary, Pero Hernández, a trustworthy man and witness to the facts.
 

Seven years later the mandatory sentence was handed down, condemning him to permanent banishment from the Indies under penalty of death and to serve His Majesty for five years in Oran, with arms and horses, under penalty, this time, of doubling the sentence. However, a similar sentence was immediately appealed, which forced a revision from which a second and definitive sentence would be derived, dated in Valladolid, on August 23, 1552, by which he was exonerated from the service in Orán, although he was kept out of the Indies. From these moments, little more could be said about the life of the adelantado, who spent his last years in Seville and died between 1558 and 1564, when, according to some versions, he had become prior to a convent, while others did. They situate performing the post of judge in the Royal Court of Seville, also receiving a significant pension of 2,000 ducats per year. https://dbe.rah.es/biografias/7081/alvar-nunez-cabeza-de-vaca.
 

San Jose Costa Rica, Thursday, January 19th, 2023, alberto.doer@gmail.com. Rafael A. Vilagut-Vega.