Chronicle of the Narvaez Expedition

Gift-giving is an important aspect of diplomacy among Indigenous peoples—Cabeza de Vaca records this practice often while on his way to Mexico over the ensuing years. The language that Cabeza de Vaca uses, however, leads one to suspect that he either wasn’t aware of the importance of gift giving among the Indigenous people, or that it was a self-understood truth. In Chapter 11, when 100 Indigenous archers arrive to reinforce those following Lope de Oviedo, Europeans give them bells and beads—a gesture that placates them. More likely than not, ethnocentrism, or the narrow view that other cultures must have the same values and ethos as one’s own, kept the Europeans from using the tactic of gift-giving when encountering Indigenous people for the first time, rather than their strategy of conquering and enslaving. Nevertheless, episodes like the one recorded by Cabeza de Vaca in Chapters 11 and 12 reinforce the argument that friendly dealings with Indigenous people were possible. Towards the end of his chronicle, Cabeza de Vaca arrives at the same conclusion, arguing for fair and equitable treatment for the Indigenous people with the governor of a Mexican province.

Chapter 12 highlights some of the preconceived notions Europeans held about Indigenous people of the Americas. Even after Indigenous people feed and warm Cabeza de Vaca and the other survivors in their village, the Europeans still fear that the Indigenous people will sacrifice them in some ceremony or ritual. This fear possibly came from reports of Hernán Cortés’s 1521 conquest of the Aztecs, which circulated stories of mass human sacrifice among the Aztec and Maya. Ironically, the fear of being a human sacrifice may have also given the conquistadores justification for their shoot-first-ask-questions-later mentality.

In Chapter 13, Cabeza de Vaca mentions their next destination: “We agreed that four of the most able-bodied men should go to Pánuco, which we believed to be nearby” (35). In the early 16th century, Pánuco was a small town on the eastern coast of Mexico, in modern-day Veracruz. The name came from the Nahuatl word meaning “pass.” That Cabeza de Vaca and the others believed Pánuco to be nearby, illustrates just how unaware they were of their position. In Chapter 15, Cabeza de Vaca and the others dub the island on which they are living with the Indigenous people, the Isle of Misfortune. Most scholars who have studied Cabeza de Vaca’s route conclude that was most likely Follet’s Island in Texas, 50 miles southeast of Houston and 1,340km (833 miles) from Pánuco.

In Chapter 14, Cabeza de Vaca mentions that half of the Indigenous people fell ill and died and that out of 80 Europeans, only 15 remained. The Indigenous people at first thought that the conquistadores were the cause of the illness; one of their own convinced them otherwise by pointing out that if the conquistadores were the cause of the illness, then their own people wouldn’t have died. However, we now know it was very likely that the Europeans were indeed responsible for the illness.

Cabeza de Vaca remembers witnessing several customs while with the Indigenous people—the Cavoques (also spelled Capoques) and Han, most likely branches of the Karankawa—on the Isle of Misfortune. Cabeza de Vaca describes men of the Cavoque tribe piercing their nipples and placing a long reed through them, and piercing their lips and ornamenting them with a piece of cane. Cabeza de Vaca notes that women did much of the physical labor. He also witnesses a funeral rite: When a relative dies, family members pound to dust the bones of the deceased and drink them with water. He sees that medicine men are highly revered and are awarded special privileges such as multiple wives. Cabeza de Vaca also describes dietary practices: The Cavoques subsist on roots gathered from the shore for much of the year, some fish, and oysters. Cabeza de Vaca’s detailed descriptions of Indigenous practices provide some of the more important anthropological information in his chronicle.

Chapter 15 records the beginning of one of the most important aspects of Cabeza de Vaca’s chronicle: that he and the others became medicine men among the Indigenous people after saying a Catholic prayer over and miraculously healing someone who was sick. Cabeza de Vaca contrasts his approach to illness—placing faith in God without much reference to the sick body—with the much more physical ritual performed by Indigenous medicine men, who “make a few cuts where the pain is located and then suck the skin around the incisions. They cauterize with fire […] Then they breathe on the spot where the pain is and believe that by doing this the disease goes away” (40). Cabeza de Vaca is facetious about becoming a medicine man, snidely commenting that Indigenous people “wanted to make medicine men of us without any examination or asking for our diplomas” (40). This serves two purposes: ridiculing Indigenous medicine and highlighting the miraculous nature of the Europeans’ healing given their lack of medical knowledge and training. The medicine that Cabeza de Vaca and the others perform is just as ritualistic as that practiced by the Indigenous people, but the European method’s success lends credence to Cabeza de Vaca’s later argument for more missionary work among the Indigenous population.