[1] From Mr. Thwaites’ “Rocky Mountain Explorations.”  By permission of the publishers, D. Appleton & Co.  Copyright 1904.  Cabeza de Vaca was born at Jeraz de la Frontera, in Spain, about 1490, and died at Seville some time after 1560.  In 1528 he was made treasurer of an expedition under Narvaez to Florida.  From Florida he sailed westward with Narvaez and off the coast of Lousiana was shipwrecked.  A combat with Indians ensued from which De Vaca and three others escaped with their lives.  After spending six years with the Indians as captives, he reached Mexico in 1536, meanwhile making the journey here described.  He returned to Spain in 1537, and in 1540 was made Governor of Paraguay, which he explored in 1543.  In the following year he was deposed and imprisoned by Spanish colonists in Paraguay for alleged arbitrary conduct and sent to Spain, where he was sentenced to be banished to Oran in Africa, but was subsequently recalled and made judge of the Supreme Court of Seville.

CABEZA DE VACA’S JOURNEY TO THE SOUTHWEST

(1535-1536)

DE VACA’S OWN ACCOUNT[1]

Castillo returned at the end of three days to the spot where he had left us, and brought five or six of the people.  He told us he had found fixt dwellings of civilization, that the inhabitants lived on beans and pumpkins, and that he had seen maize.  This news the most of anything delighted us, and for it we gave infinite thanks to our Lord.  Castillo told us the negro was coming with all the population to wait for us in the road not far off.  Accordingly we left, and, having traveled a league and a half, we met the negro and the people coming to receive us.  They gave us beans, many pumpkins, calabashes, blankets of cowhide and other things.  As this people and those who came with us were enemies, and spoke not each other’s language, we discharged the latter, giving them what we received, and departed with the others.  Six leagues from there, as the night set in, we arrived at the houses, where great festivities were made over us.  We remained one day, and the next set out with these Indians.  They took us to the settled habitations of others, who lived upon the same food.  From that place onward was another usage.  Those who knew of our approach did not come out to receive us on the road as the others had done, but we found them in their houses, and they had made others for our reception.  They were all seated with their faces turned to the wall, their heads down, the hair brought before their eyes, and their property placed in a heap in the middle of the house.  From this place they began to give us many blankets of skin; and they had nothing they did not bestow.  They have the finest persons of any people we saw, of the greatest activity and strength, who best understood us and intelligently answered our inquiries.  We called them the Cow nation, because most of the cattle[2] killed are slaughtered in their neighborhood, and along up that river for over fifty leagues they destroy great numbers.