
The text of the Relación of Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de
Vaca (that's Cabeza pictured above) is his narrative of the ill-fated 1527 Narváez expedition. He
describes the shipwreck of the expedition on the coast of Florida and his
landing on an island near what is now the Texas coast.
Here is
the entire text!

Cabeza de Vaca Stranded Among the Indians by Frederic Remington
The first Europeans to explore the Southwest were Spanish conquistadors
searching for gold. Cabeza de Vaca sailed to Florida in 1528 with an
ill-fated expedition. The men built boats and tried to sail home around
the coast but were shipwrecked off Galveston Island. Cabeza de Vaca
(that's him in the middle) spent
years as a captive of the Indians in Texas before he and three other
survivors walked through the area of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, to
reach Spanish settlements in New Spain (Mexico) in 1536.
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Panfilo de Narvaez Pánfilo de Narváez arrived
near Tampa Bay with a large army from Spain on April 14, 1528. The
Spanish government had given him permission to settle and rule the land
along the Gulf Coast from Northern Mexico to the Florida peninsula and
as far inland as he was able to control.
When Narváez
landed, he took three hundred soldiers and forty horses with him to
explore the interior of the state. The ships, which were carrying food
and supplies, were sent ahead to a harbor north of where they had
originally landed.
A Terrible
Mistake! This turned out to
be a terrible mistake. Instead of landing at the harbor described by
Narváez, the ships landed somewhere else. Narváez and his men waited for
the ships at the harbor where Narváez intended the ships to have landed,
but the ships could never find him and his men. The ships' captains
searched up and down the coast for almost a year, then gave up and
returned to Spain.
Stranded, Narváez
along with his treasurer and provost marshal, Nuñez de Cabeza de Vaca,
led his men northward up the peninsula to the chiefdom of the Apalachee.
This would have been near present-day Tallahassee. The Spaniards met
hostility and violence in the Apalachee territory. This was not
surprising since along their route the Spaniards had seized an Apalachee
village, stolen maize and other crops, and even held a chief hostage.
After about a
month, Narváez and the Spaniards gave up their hope of ever finding the
ships and receiving their supplies. They were getting low on rations and
many of the men were weak from illnesses.
Panfilo de Narvaez, the leader of a Spanish expedition,
entered the territory in 1528. The expedition's chronicles, recorded by Cabeza de Vaca
(see sidebar), offer not only the earliest information
concerning Indians of the southeast, but also reveal the Spanish cruelty
and total lack of respect for other cultures.
Their preoccupation with finding gold, and their fanatical
religious attitude prevented them from attempting to learn about the newly
discovered people. Cabeza de Vaca wrote
some very critical reports of what the Spanish were doing to the Native
American populations they encountered.
After entering the
Apalachee territory, Cabeza says the expedition
encountered some Indians who led the Spaniards to their village.
He doesn't say if the Indians invited them out of friendliness or
coercion. But upon entering the village
he reports:
"There we found many boxes ... In every one of them was a corpse
covered with painted deer hides. The
commissary thought this to be some idolatrous practice,
so he burnt the boxes with the corpses."
Actually, the bodies were being
preserved until an appropriate burial time.
This desecration of remains did not create a favorable
impression of the "hairy invaders" among the North Florida tribes.
The Spaniards then
proceeded to the Indian town of Apalachen
where Cabeza entered with nine horsemen and fifty foot soldiers.
There were only women and children in the town, but the Indian men
soon returned and started shooting arrows at the intruders. No doubt,
word had already reached them of the Spanish desecration at the first
village two hours earlier. After a
skirmish, the Indian warriors fled, but later returned
asking for the release of their women and children.
The Spaniards did so, but kept a Caciques, or chief, as prisoner.
This angered the Indians, of course, and they attacked again the
following day. The Apalachees continued to attack daily, losing only two
warriors in the twenty five days the
Spaniards occupied their village. The
Spaniards were exposed to guerrilla warfare wherein their horses
and men were frequently wounded or killed when they went for water.
Pursuit of the Indians was futile, as they would disappear into the big
patches of corn or a shallow lake or
pond. Cabeza reported that in one
fight:
"... some of our people were wounded in spite of their good armor.
There were men that day who swore they had seen two oak trees,
each as thick as the calf of a leg,
shot through and through by arrows, which is not surprising if we
consider the force and dexterity with which they shoot. Those people (of
Florida) are wonderfully built, very
gaunt and of great strength and agility.
Their bows are as thick as an arm, from eleven to twelve spans (hands)
long, shooting an arrow at 200 paces with unerring aim."
The Spanish finally made
it back to the Gulf coast where they
made five barges and sailed west,
having nothing further to do with the inhabitants or the Apalachee
territory. Narvaez, with four ships and
about 400 men, had originally set out to explore the
northern coast of the Gulf of Mexico.
Many of the men were killed by Indians;
Navarez himself was drowned near the mouth of the Mississippi River.
In the end there were only four men left, Cabeza de Vaca and three
companions. The great army had wandered
about for eight years, traveled over
two thousand miles across the continent,
with only four survivors finally reaching a Spanish settlement on the
western coast of Mexico...
The story lives on.
Cabeza de Vaca
shared this information of Narváez's journey with the Spanish Viceroy.
(See the sidebar.) This story was read by Hernando de Soto, who was about to make his first
journey to Florida.
By 1728, there were only
two Apalachee towns surviving in the
territory. One, called Hamaste, was about six miles
from Fort San Marcos (St. Marks), and had about 200 people living there.
The other one was San Juan de Guacara with about 20 people...
The Apalachean language
appears to have been related to Choctaw.
In Choctaw, Apelachi means helper or ally, and Apelichi
means the place in which to rule, preside, or govern.
The second, Apelichi, appears to reflect the situation
as the Spaniards found it, as Elvas (Portuguese traveling with De Soto)
reported that Anahayca Apalache was "where the lord of all that
country and province resided"...
Swanton, a historian back in 1922, claimed Apalachee means "on the other side" in
Hichiti. This may be the true meaning,
and the Apalachee may have just coincidentally been the dominant
tribe in the region at that particular time. The largest geographic
feature preserving the name of this tribe is the Appalachian Mountains.
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