Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca
Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca (Jerez de la Frontera, 1488/1490 - Seville, May 27, 1559) was a Spanish conquistador who explored the southern coast of North America from present-day Florida through Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana and entered Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and northern Mexico until it reached the Gulf of California, territories that were annexed to the Spanish Empire within the Viceroyalty of New Spain. Before starting his second trip to America, this time to the south, King Carlos I of Spain granted him the title of Second Advance and named him Captain General and Governor of the Río de la Plata and Paraguay, Paranáguazu and its annexes. He discovered the Iguazú Falls and the Paraguay River.
Biography
Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca was born between 1488 and 1490 into a noble family. He defines himself as "son of Francisco de Vera and grandson of Pedro de Vera, the one who won the Canary Islands and his mother Doña Teresa Cabeza de Vaca, a native of Jerez de la Frontera&# 34;. Approximately in 1512 he enlisted in the troops of the Holy League of 1511, formed by several countries, including Spain, to fight against France. Within the Holy League he served in the Italian campaigns in the companies of Bartolomé de Sierra and Alonso de Carvajal. He participated in the battle of Ravenna and soon after became an ensign in Gaeta.
Later, as a soldier, he fought in conflicts that occurred in Spain. In 1520 he fought in the War of the Communities while, orphaned by father and mother, he soon entered the service of the House of Medina Sidonia as a messenger. He participated in the capture of Tordesillas and in the battle of Villalar. In 1522 he fought in the battle of Puente de la Reina, in Navarra.
Family background
At the time of the reconquest, the Spanish chronicler Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo placed the origin of the Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca family in a famous and legendary shepherd who, during the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212, helped the armies of King Alfonso VIII to defeat the Almohads, through a path that he had marked with the skulls of some of his cows killed by wolves long ago. According to historians Diego Peña and Javier Martínez-Pinna, another possible origin of the surname of the famous Spanish explorer is the population of the same name, that of Cabeza de Vaca, located in the south of the province of Badajoz.
First trip to America
In 1542, in Zamora, Cabeza de Vaca published The Relation that Álvar Núñez Cabeça de Vaca gave of what happened in the Indies in the army where Pámphilo de Narbáez was governor from the year twenty-seven until the In the year of thirty-six, he returned to Seville with three of his company, today known as Naufragios, recounting his unsuccessful conquest trip to America in the expedition of Pánfilo de Narváez. In 1555, in Valladolid, publishes it again with some alterations. In his prologue, addressing the King of Spain, Cabeza de Vaca says that he needs to speak to obtain recognition since, due to his failures, his deeds had not been widely reported. He publishes his memoirs, "Well, this is just what a naked man could take with him."
On June 17, 1527, Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca left Sanlúcar de Barrameda, heading for America. He goes to America in the expedition led by Governor Pánfilo de Narváez, whose objective was the conquest of Florida and the search for the Fountain of Eternal Youth, between the Río de las Palmas and Cape Florida. He says that his offices were treasurer and constable, although he apparently lied about the latter.The expedition consisted of 600 men and five ships. In Santo Domingo, 140 sailors abandoned the expedition and in Cuba only 4 men survived in a strong storm, but they finally reached the Florida coast on Tuesday, April 12, 1528. In Tampa Bay, they saw indigenous houses.
At Aguas Claras, present-day Clearwater, the Indians told the Spanish that the gold was "beyond beyond," in the province of Apalachee in northern Florida. They went with their ships to that region and anchored them to continue on foot, although Cabeza de Vaca did not agree, thinking that it was hostile territory and that they had neither rations nor a way to communicate with the tribes they found. However, he did not want to stay to take care of the ships so that no one would think that it was fear that prevented him from continuing and that he would not compromise his honor. Appalachian Province may have been the old name for Tallahassee, in northern Florida, but the landscape depicted appears similar to the Everglades, which lie in the southern part of the peninsula. They went through the swamps using rafts and swimming. The horse of the drowning man served as food to the survivors. In those swampy areas where the water reached their chests, they were attacked by Indians with arrows and had to fight with their arquebuses and crossbows. The Appalachian Indians were tall and naked and used large, very broad bows and shot arrows with great accuracy capable of wounding the Spaniards despite their armor. On their way, they came across more than twenty indigenous nations. On the way to the town of Aute, they suffered another attack with arrows. From Tampa Bay, the Spanish had to deal with hurricanes and storms.
They devoured their remaining horses and went in search of the coast, reaching the mouth of the San Marcos River, now the St. Marks River, and returned to the ships. Since they did not have cannons, boats or materials, they improvised forges with stick cannons and deer skins. Subsequently, they forged horse stirrups, spurs and metal materials for crossbows, and made tools. With these tools, they cut wood and made five barges, which they used to navigate the coast. They continued towards the West until they found an island with canoes, where they managed to get hold of some to embark on. Once in the canoes, they would suffer another attack by Indian flecheros that wounded all the remaining members of the expedition, including Cabeza de Vaca himself, who was wounded in the face.
They sailed along the coast for 30 days until they reached the mouth of the Espiritu Santo River, now known as the Mississippi River. Today, it is not known if this expedition was the first to discover the mouth of the Mississippi or if said merit should be attributed to Alonso Álvarez de Pineda. Then, there were currents and winds that separated the boats, and Cabeza de Vaca's boat ended up on Galveston Island, which he named Malhado Island (Isla de la Mala Suerte). At that moment, he and his group found themselves without Pánfilo de Narváez and abandoned to their fate.
Only 15 men were alive, but they were treated well by the Carancaguas Indians. It was a tribe that distributed its belongings and lacked leaders. Later, they were distributed as slaves to the Indian families. The 15 men agreed to send a four-man expedition to Panuco for help, but the expedition failed. After six years of life as a slave, learning the culture of wickerwork, camouflage and the guerrilla, as well as combining shamanism with the medical knowledge that he carried over from European culture, Álvar Núñez managed to cure the son of a cacique or tribal chief, feat that helped him to be released.
For some time, Cabeza de Vaca served as a merchant among the indigenous people of the territory surrounding San Antonio and the Texas coast. He took seashells and shells to the inland towns, exchanging them for hides and almagra; the latter was frequently used by the Indians of the coast for their paintings.
In Matagorda, near Galveston, Cabeza de Vaca met up with some of his former expedition companions: Andrés Dorantes de Carranza, Alonso del Castillo Maldonado and Estebanico, and together they went on a new journey.
Fearing the aborigines of the coast and believing that they would find gold in those northern territories, they went up the Rio Grande, instead of going to the Spanish settlement on the Pánuco River. During the trip to the northwest of Mexico, they acted as healers through the laying on of hands and the recitation of Hail Marys and Our Fathers in Latin. When Cabeza de Vaca successfully extracted the tip of an arrow that an indigenous man had stuck near his heart, the reputation of healers and good people among the indigenous tribes no longer left them.
They won the will of the natives and made several explorations in search of a route to return to New Spain through what is now the southwestern United States and northern Mexico. After wandering for a long time through the extensive area that is now the border between Mexico and the United States, they arrived at the Rio Grande area; Following the course of the river, they found tribes dedicated to hunting bison, with which they lived.
Finally, on the banks of the Petatlán River, now called the Sinaloa River, in the town of Bamoa Guasave, they reestablished contact with a team of Spanish explorers in 1536, a few leagues from Culiacán, a Spanish settlement.
During that trip, he collected the first ethnographic observations on the indigenous populations of the Gulf of Mexico, writing a narrative entitled Shipwrecks, considered the first historical narrative on the territories that today correspond to the United States.
Seven Cities
After this trip, a myth very similar to that of El Dorado took hold in America, which is that of the Seven Cities of Cíbola and Quivira, full of gold. The four survivors of the exploration spoke in Mexico about reports of cities brimming with gold. The viceroy of New Spain organized an expedition under the command of Fray Marcos de Niza, who was accompanied by Estebanico.
During the march of the expedition, Estebanico was assassinated by indigenous people, who made the rest flee, and the friar recounted on his return that the story of the cities full of gold and jewels was true. So, a military expedition led by Francisco Vázquez de Coronado was sent to find the place, but the search proved that the story was false.
Second trip to America
Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca returned to Spain in 1537, and was awarded the title of second advance (interim governor) of the Río de la Plata. At the end of 1540 he began his second trip from Cádiz that took him to the south of the American continent. He arrived on the island of Santa Catalina, in January 1541, in the Spanish territory that was then called La Vera or Mbiazá —currently part of the Brazilian state of Santa Catarina— and that corresponded to the governorate of Paraguay.
From that island he started on a journey by land, for almost five months, with the purpose of reaching the then town and fort of Asunción del Paraguay, headquarters of the Río de la Plata governorate. Guided by Tupi-Guarani indigenous people, he crossed the Paraná jungle with his expedition, following the path of Peabirú.
Although the description of Alvar Nulez's journey in his Commentaries is repetitive and imprecise, he is credited with being the first European to discover the Iguazú Falls: «the river leaps over some rocks very high below, and the water gives such a great blow in the depths of the earth that it is heard from afar; and the foam of the water, as it falls with such force, rises up two spears and more». At first, he called it "Salto de Santa María", in January 1542.
According to the chronicler Ruy Díaz, the winding Iguazú River -which had several waterfalls of a certain magnitude, today submerged by the reservoirs of hydroelectric dams in Brazil- was crossed at least three times on the journey.
For the mention in the Comments of its arrival at the Piquirí River, which flows into the Paraná River north of Asunción, and that the Paraná was crossed "at 24 degrees latitude&# 3. 4; and where the river narrows to "a great crossbow shot" (no more than a hundred meters), it is far more likely that Alvar Núñez was among the first Europeans to spot the towering Saltos del Guairá, in whose vicinity there were indigenous communities that Irala would conquer shortly after. There is no doubt, however, that the Iguazú Falls were sighted more than a decade later by the expedition that brought Mencía Calderón and his family to the city of Asunción.
Álvar Núñez in Asunción
When Álvar Núñez arrived in the city of Asunción, he soon came into conflict with the Spanish captains and colonists established there, who, encouraged by Domingo Martínez de Irala, rejected the authority of the governor and his plans to organize the colonization of the territory, forgetting about pursue the chimerical treasures of which the indigenous myths spoke. He would finally take office as governor on March 11, 1542.
Upon arriving in the city, Cabeza de Vaca learned about the case of India Juliana, a Guarani woman who had murdered her Spanish master but was released, despite having confessed to the crime and bragging about it to her friends. companions. Cabeza de Vaca arrested Juliana and ordered her execution by dismemberment, as punishment for the crime and as a warning to the other women not to do the same.
His aim to eradicate chaos and tame the insurgents caused the discontented to rise up in 1544 and sent Cabeza de Vaca to Spain accused of abuses of power in the repression of dissidents, as well as the burning of Asunción in the last year. Actually, for having demanded compliance with the Laws of the Indies, which protected the indigenous people from the abuses of the conquerors, among other non-political measures. The Council of the Indies banished him to Orán in 1545, a sentence that perhaps he did not fulfill, since Cabeza de Vaca appealed the sentence and continued fighting until the end of his life with the purpose of seeing his honor restored, no longer the hacienda. of the.
Although the last years of his life are perhaps unknown, based on the documents found by some historians whose works are reflected in the bibliography, he died in Seville on May 27, 1559. It is unlikely, as others have stated, that he had some important position in his later years. Although there is no record of him, he could have taken the habit and ended his days in the silence of a monastery.
In the words of the Inca Garcilaso: "He died in Valladolid, appealing to the Council of the Indies, with the purpose of seeing his honor restored and his goods that were confiscated when he was arrested in Asunción".
In the chapel of the Convent of Santa Isabel, on Calle Encarnación in Valladolid, the tombstone that kept the remains of this conqueror is preserved.
Filmography
In 1991, director Nicolás Echevarría made a film based on this character, Cabeza de Vaca. The role of Cabeza de Vaca was played by the Spanish actor Juan Diego.
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