Theory in Action, Vol. 7, No.

3, July (© 2014)
DOI:10.3798/tia.1937-0237.14020

The Spiritual Evolution of Cabeza de Vaca in Shipwrecks

Ali Shehzad Zaidi1

This article examines the refashioning of the self that took place
during the eight-year journey of Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca
and his companions through North America. These four
survivors of a Spanish expedition adopted shamanic practices
that endeared them to indigenous communities residing in the
southwestern region of North America. Through the alchemy of
suffering, Cabeza de Vaca underwent a spiritual transformation
that heralded a new American identity. His plea for justice for
the indigenous peoples of the Americas makes him a historical
figure worthy of remembrance and commemoration. [Article
copies available for a fee from The Transformative Studies
Institute. E-mail address: journal@transformativestudies.org
Website: http://www.transformativestudies.org ©2014 by The
Transformative Studies Institute. All rights reserved.]

KEYWORDS: Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, Florida, identity,

Spanish explorers, Pánfilo de Nárvaez

Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca (1507-59) served as the king’s

representative and treasurer for an expedition that explored Florida under
a mandate from the Spanish Crown. In his report to the Spanish king
Carlos V, first published in 1542 as La relación (The Narrative) and
again in 1555 as Naufragios (Shipwrecks), by which title it subsequently
became known, Cabeza de Vaca describes the arduous eight-year
odyssey (1528-36) from Florida through northern Mexico which
culminated in his spiritual transformation.
Before joining the Florida expedition led by Pánfilo de Narváez,
Cabeza de Vaca had been a Spanish soldier who had fought several

1
Ali Shehzad Zaidi, Ph.D., is Associate Professor at the State University of New York.
Address correspondence to: Ali Shehzad Zaidi; e-mail: azaidi@transformativestudies.org.

1937-0229 ©2014 Transformative Studies Institute

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Ali Shehzad Zaidi

battles in Europe. Like many other Spaniards of his time, Cabeza de

Vaca hoped to find wealth in the Americas. The expedition first sailed
from southern Spain to Santo Domingo, where 140 men deserted,
perhaps discontented with Narváez, who had recently been appointed
governor of the region that now comprises southern United States and
northern Mexico (Krieger 21). For the expedition members, the first ill
omen was the hurricane that destroyed part of the fleet near Cuba
(Reséndez 67). Narváez was confident nonetheless that the expedition
would explore the Florida coast, as he had engaged a pilot who claimed
to know it well.
The pilot’s presumption and Narváez’s credulity soon became
apparent as the expedition drifted along. The Spaniards could not
communicate with the indigenous people that the Spaniards encountered
after disembarking on the Florida coast. Cabeza de Vaca noted that
“although they spoke to us, as we had no interpreters we did not
understand them; but they made many gestures and threats, and it seemed
as if they beckoned to us to leave the country (10-11). [“aunque no nos
hablaron, como nosotros no teníamos lengua, no los entendíamos; mas
hacíanos muchas señas y amenazas, y nos paresció que nos decían que
nos fuésemos de la tierra” (Naufragios 20)]. In spite of this inauspicious
beginning, Narváez remained undaunted, believing perhaps that the
natives would be as easy to subjugate as those in what is now Jamaica
and Cuba.2
Cabeza de Vaca distrusted Narváez from the outset, as he could not
comprehend that European mercantile notions of value meant nothing to
indigenous peoples, or that the linguistic and cultural ignorance of the
Spaniards might prove fatal. Thus began a distancing process that
culminated in Cabeza de Vaca’s new American identity. Cabeza de Vaca
may have been predisposed to assume such an identity, as he was
relatively free from prejudice. He had married a woman whose family
had recently converted to Catholicism and as such were subject to
discrimination in Spanish society (Reséndez 50).3
After sending the pilot to search for a port, Narváez decided to
abandon the ships and head inland on foot. Cabeza de Vaca opposed his
folly:

2
Narváez’s military legacy during the conquest of Cuba includes massacres of Taino and
Ciboney peoples. The Dominican friar Bartolomé de las Casas witnessed the slaughter of
five hundred people by Narváez’s soldiers in Caonao alone (Fernández 41).
3
Alonso del Castillo, a surviving companion of Cabeza de Vaca, also may have been a
converso, or new Christian (Schneider 29). Unlike orthodox Spanish Catholics, Castillo
may have been more open to indigenous cultural practices.
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I replied that it seemed to me in no manner advisable to forsake the

ships until they were in a safe port, held and occupied by us. I told
him to consider that the pilots were at a loss, disagreeing among
themselves, undecided as to what course to pursue. Moreover, the
horses would not be with us in case we needed them, and,
furthermore, we had no interpreter to make ourselves understood by
the natives; hence we could have no parley with them. Neither did
we know what to expect from the land we were entering, having no
knowledge of what it was, what it might contain and by what kind
of people it was inhabited, nor in what part of it we were; finally,
that we had not the supplies required for penetrating into an
unknown country. (13-14)
[Yo respondía que me parescía que por ninguna manera debía dejar
los navíos sin que primero quedasen en puerto seguro y poblado, y
que mirasen que los pilotos no andaban ciertos, ni se afirmaban en
una misma cosa, ni sabían a qué parte estaban; y que allende de
esto, los caballos no estaban para que en ninguna necesidad que se
ofreciese nos pudiésemos aprovechar de ellos; y que sobre todo
esto, íbamos mudos y sin lengua, por donde mal nos podíamos
entender con los indios, ni saber lo que de la tierra queríamos, y que
entrábamos por tierra de que ninguna relación teníamos, ni
sabíamos de qué suerte era, ni lo que en ella había, ni de qué gente
estaba poblada, ni a qué parte de ella estábamos y que sobre todo
esto, no teníamos bastimentos para entrar adonde no sabíamos.]
(Naufragios 21)

Narváez ignored the advice of Cabeza de Vaca who, as the king’s

representative, was in a sense the conscience of the expedition. Forced to
obey a whimsical and cruel commander and sensing the potential for
tragedy, Cabeza de Vaca registered a protest with the scribe of the
expedition, thereby incurring Narváez’s wrath.
Cabeza de Vaca decided to accompany the expedition rather than stay
behind with the ships, but Narváez saw him as an encumbrance. After
failing to persuade him to search for a harbor by boat, Narváez sent
Cabeza de Vaca to look for one on foot. A few objects of gold had been
found in an Indian village, and Narváez was certain that more gold lay
nearby. The Indians were anxious to be rid of the Spaniards and directed
them north to a region called Apalache (Howard 6). The Spaniards were
soon reduced to extreme exhaustion, hunger, and despair in an
inhospitable land.

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Ali Shehzad Zaidi

Several noblemen wanted to desert Narváez, but Cabeza de Vaca

dissuaded them. Although he despised Narváez, Cabeza de Vaca
believed that the men had to remain steadfast and united. Harassed by
Indians, enfeebled by sickness, and unable to find food and shelter, the
men underwent social decomposition. They soon realized that the pursuit
of gold was useless, and that they lost their best means of mobility when
they abandoned ship. They could no longer contact those who had stayed
onboard. Deprived of tools, the men painstakingly built large boats able
to carry fifty men. During the period of construction, the last horses were
slaughtered for food.
Cabeza de Vaca witnessed many men die of thirst and exposure at sea.
The sick men were placed in his boat while Narváez kept the strongest
men to row his own. The final disillusion came when, unable to keep up
with the governor’s boat, he asked Narváez for help:

But as the Governor had with him the healthiest and strongest men,
in no way could we follow or keep up with him. Seeing this, I asked
him to give me a rope from his barge to be able to follow, but he
answered that it was no small effort on their part alone to reach the
shore on that night. I told him that since it was barely possible for us
to follow and do what he had ordained, he should tell me what he
commanded me to do. He answered that this was no time for orders;
that each one should do the best he could to save himself; that he
intended to do it that way, and with this he went on with his craft.
(42)
[‘Mas como el gobernador llevaba la más sana y recia gente que
entre toda había, en ninguna manera lo podimos seguir ni tener con
ella. Yo, como vi esto, pedíle que, para poderle seguir, me diese un
cabo de su barca, y él me respondió que no harían ellos poco si
solos aquella noche pudiesen llegar a tierra. Yo le dije que, pues vía
la poca posibilidad que en nosotros había para poder seguirle y
hacer lo que había mandado, que me dijese qué era lo que mandaba
que yo hiciese. Él me respondió que ya no era tiempo de mandar
unos a otros; que cada uno hiciese lo mejor le pareciese que era para
salvar la vida; que él ansí lo entendía de hacer, y diciendo esto, se
alargó con su barca] (Naufragios 40).

With Narváez gone, Cabeza de Vaca realized that he and his companions
would have to fend for themselves. In the shadow of death and
abandonment, a new resourcefulness was born.

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When they reached shore, Cabeza de Vaca and a few famished

survivors were at the mercy of natives who themselves went hungry
during the winter when it was no longer possible to fish. Many
expedition members died of cold and hunger while the survivors were
dispersed among various indigenous tribes and families. The Spaniards
had become vulnerable and helpless beings, far from the conquerors that
they had once aspired to be.
The traumatic lesson in humility and survival undermined their self-
image and helped to forge a new social ethic. After years of hard labor,
Cabeza de Vaca was freed from privation when he became a trader. His
stature grew among the various tribes to which he brought necessary
goods, and he enjoyed privileged status as an outsider. Cabeza de Vaca
was eventually reunited with three expedition survivors: two Spaniards,
Alonso del Castillo and Andrés Dorantes, and Esteban, a Moroccan slave
owned by Dorantes. Together, they set out to rejoin their compatriots in
Panuco, a Spanish colony in what is now northeastern Mexico.
Indian tribes acclaimed Cabeza de Vaca and his companions as holy
men and messengers from the Great Beyond, calling them “children of
the sun” because they had emerged from the east (Reséndez 176).
Despite their initial reluctance, Cabeza de Vaca and Castillo, the son of a
physician, learned how to cauterize wounds and perform basic surgery as
well as to imitate the practices of indigenous shamans (Reséndez 173).
The art of healing enabled Cabeza de Vaca and his companions to
survive and attract a large following.
In summer 1535, the four men reached a major trading route and
decided to veer northwest away from Panuco (Reséndez 184-45). The
men learned several indigenous languages, each of which constituted a
new way of seeing the world. They were revered by their indigenous
hosts whose epic prodigality Cabeza de Vaca describes: “[W]e travelled
among so many different tribes and languages that nobody’s memory can
recall them all, and always they robbed each other; but those who lost
and those who gained were equally content” (116). After giving away
their possessions, the indigenous hosts would accompany Cabeza de
Vaca and his companions to neighboring communities where they, in
turn, were offered gifts as honored guests.
Esteban would mediate between the Spaniards and indigenous peoples.
At the same time, according to Cassander L. Smith, Cabeza de Vaca
“marginalizes Esteban’s participation in the healing rituals” while
repeatedly referring to Esteban as “a black man,” thereby evoking his
cultural and class difference (281). It should, nonetheless, be borne in
mind that Cabeza de Vaca’s narrative is a public utterance addressed to

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the Spanish king, not a private meditation. Prudence would dictate that
Cabeza de Vaca not give a slave more dignity and resourcefulness than
would appear seemly to the Spanish crown, upon whose patronage and
largess he depended.4
Tzvetan Todorov maintains that Cabeza de Vaca retained his European
identity even as he assimilated native customs, pointing out that his
continental trek was motivated by a longing to return home and that he
wanted to convert the Indians to Christianity albeit through love rather
than by the sword, much in the compassionate tradition of Las Casas
(207, 209). Whether conversion was by the sword or through example,
the result was the supplanting of belief systems with an exclusive one
that extinguished cosmogonies and cultural identities. Kindness and
compassion too can play a part in eradicating collective memories.
Toward the end of his narrative it becomes apparent that Cabeza de
Vaca had fused native spiritual traditions with his own fervent
Catholicism (Reséndez 167-68). Before encountering the Spanish
soldiers, Cabeza de Vaca witnessed indigenous peoples in what is now
northwestern Mexico starve after fleeing their homes to avoid being
taken as slaves by the Spanish soldiers. When he finally met his
compatriots, Cabeza de Vaca felt estranged from them. His Indian
companions compared the behavior of the Spanish soldiers to that of
Cabeza de Vaca and his companions:

The Indians gave all that talk of theirs little attention. They parleyed
among themselves, saying that the Christians lied, for we had come
from sunrise, while the others came from where the sun sets; that we
cured the sick, while the others killed those who were healthy; that
we went naked and shoeless, whereas the others wore clothes and
went on horseback and with lances. Also, that we asked for nothing,
but gave away all we were presented with, meanwhile the others

4
The reader must go beyond Shipwrecks in order to make inferences and conjectures
about it, for as Yuri M. Lotman explains,

The historian is condemned to deal with texts. The text stands between the event
‘as it happened’ and the historian, so that the scientific situation is radically altered.
A text is always created by someone and for some purpose and events are presented
in the text in an encoded form. The historian then has to act as decoder, and the fact
is not a point of departure but the end-result of many labours. The historian creates
facts by extracting non-textual reality from the text, and an event from a story about
it (217-18).

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seemed to have no other aim than to steal what they could, and
never gave anything to anybody. (140-141)
[Mas todo esto los indios tenían en muy poco o nada de lo que les
decían; antes unos con otros entre sí platicaban, diciendo que los
cristianos mentían, porque nosotros veníamos de donde salía el sol,
y ellos donde se pone; y que nosotros sanábamos los enfermos, y
ellos mataban los que estaban sanos; y que nosotros veníamos
desnudos y descalzos, y ellos vestidos y en caballos y con lanzas; y
que nosotros no teníamos cobdicia de ninguna cosa, antes todo
cuanto nos daban tornábamos a dar, y con nada nos quedábamos, y
los otros no tenían otro fin sino robar todo cuanto hallaban, y nunca
daban nada a nadie.] (Naufragios 99)

For the Spaniards, white skin color marked cultural identity.

Therefore, the Spanish soldiers who eventually encountered Cabeza de
Vaca were initially baffled by him, for a white man with long hair and
indigenous clothing defied their colonial conception of culture. As
Bhabha points out, colonial discourse depends on “the concept of ‘fixity’
in the ideological construction of otherness” because it implies “an
unchanging order” (94). For the natives, however, what made Cabeza de
Vaca indigenous was his dynamic interaction with their spiritual
traditions.
Cabeza de Vaca relates that he and his companions quarreled with the
Spaniards, because they wanted to make slaves of their Indian
companions. Todorov comments on the cultural confusion that inheres in
this recollection:

Here Cabeza de Vaca’s mental universe seems to vacillate, his

uncertainty as to the referents of his personal pronouns contributing
to the effect; there are no longer two parties, we (the Christians and
they the Indians), but indeed three: the Christians, the Indians, and
“we.” But who is this “we,” external to both worlds, though having
experienced them both from within? (199)

The ambiguity here suggests that in spiritual terms Cabeza de Vaca has
become a mestizo, a mixture of the Spanish and the indigenous. His new
sensibility is the result of what Bhabha calls “the re-creation of self in the
world of travel” (12). Back in the company of Spaniards, Cabeza de
Vaca and his companions felt uncomfortable in fine clothes and preferred
sleeping on the ground instead of in bed.

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Ali Shehzad Zaidi

Cabeza de Vaca’s spiritual evolution is manifest in events subsequent

to those related in Naufragios. When he got a chance to exercise power,
Cabeza de Vaca did so humanely. During his two years as the governor
of Río de Plata and Paraguay (1542-44), Cabeza de Vaca entrusted
Indians to the protection of the clergy; separated mistreated Indians from
cruel masters; declared unlawful the slave trade of captives taken in
tribal warfare; curbed abuses of power and privilege; reduced taxes on
the poor; and forced crown officials to contribute to the treasury.
Consequently, powerful and resentful officials and slavemasters had
Cabeza de Vaca returned to Spain in chains. Many Indians responded by
fleeing into the jungle (Fernández 31-32).
The injustice continued. Over a century after the forced departure of
Cabeza de Vaca, Jesuit priests who tried to protect the Guaraní had their
missions violently confiscated by the Spanish crown. The humane legacy
of Cabeza de Vaca seemed all but forgotten. As recently as 1975,
historian José B. Fernández laments the neglect accorded to Cabeza de
Vaca:

It seems incredible that throughout history, the figure of Alvar

Núñez Cabeza de Vaca has been overshadowed by that of other
lesser capable conquistadores. It is also regrettable that the most
humane and considerate Spanish conquistador has no statue or
monument either in South America, the United States, or even his
native place Jerez de la Frontera. He was the victim of evil men and
because of this reason his remarkable accomplishments have been
forgotten and his name has remained in anonymity. (133)

The decade preceding the 1992 quincentenary commemorations of

Columbus’ arrival in the Americas witnessed an upsurge of interest in
Cabeza de Vaca, resulting in numerous scholarly publications.
Monuments were built in his honor during that time. In 1986, a bronze
sculpture of Cabeza de Vaca, by Pilar Cortella de Rubin, was placed in
Hermann Park in Houston, Texas (“Alvar”, Houston). Five years later, a
monument to Cabeza de Vaca, sculpted by the late Eladio Gil Zambrana,
was finally installed in his native hometown Jerez de la Frontera
(“Alvar”, La Trabajadera).
In the course of his rare first-hand account of the transition to
colonialism in North America, Cabeza de Vaca makes an eloquent plea
to the king on behalf of indigenous peoples reduced to slavery. His
powerful voice resonates centuries later. That Cabeza de Vaca spoke out
against injustice, exploitation, and murder in his official capacity as the

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king’s representative makes him a figure worthy of remembrance and

honor in the tragic history of the colonization of the Americas.

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“Alvar Núnez Cabeza de Vaca.” La Trabajadera, n.d. Web. 29 Nov.
2013.
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