lvar N ez Cabeza de Vaca (c.1490-c.1559) was an early Spanish explorer of the New World and remembered as a protoanthropological author.
A factor in the notorious Narv ez expedition, he was one of four survivors of shipwreck in the Gulf of Mexico, and later enslaved by a native tribe of the upper Gulf coast.
Traveling mostly in this small group, he explored what is now Texas, New Mexico and Arizona on foot from coastal Louisiana to Sinaloa, Mexico over roughly six years.
During his travels Vaca developed sympathies for the indigenous population unusual among the conquistadors. Eventually, after reaching New Spain, he went on to Mexico City and soon returned to Europe, where he wrote about his experiences in a work called La relaci n (the tale). A major motivation for the 1542 publication of this work was Cabeza de Vaca's desire to succeed Narv ez as governor of Florida.
Instead, in 1540 he was appointed governor of La Plata, in what is now Argentina and surroundings. Political intrigue against him caused his arrest and return to Spain in chains, circa 1545. He was eventually exonerated and wrote another book, Comentarios (commentary) about this experience.
External links
Cabeza de Vaca (http://www.bigoid.de/conquista/biographien/cabeza1.htm) The Journey of
Cabeza de Vaca's Journey to the Southwest (http://www.english.swt.edu/CSS/Vacaindex.HTML)
Cabeza de Vaca's La Relaci n (http://www.library.txstate.edu/swwc/cdv/about/index.html) contains hi-res photography of the 1555 edition of la Relaci n.
CabezadeVaca was born into the Spanish nobility in 1490.
Storms, thirst and starvation had reduced the expedition to about eighty survivors when a hurricane dumped CabezadeVaca and his companions on the Gulf Coast near what is now Galveston, Texas.
Appalled by the Spanish treatment of Indians, in 1537 CabezadeVaca returned to Spain to publish an account of his experiences and to urge a more generous policy upon the crown.
CabezadeVaca is remembered by students of American history as the first European to set foot in the interior of what would become the states of Florida, Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona.
CabezadeVaca was born in 1490 in the Spanish town of Jerez de la Frontera, near the port at San Lúcar de Barrameda, from where Magellan sailed in 1519 to become the first man to circumnavigate the globe.
CabezadeVaca's reports of his travels and suffering in strange, new lands had enough popular appeal to be regularly reprinted in Spanish and translated in 1556 into Italian.
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