Book finished: Adventures in the Unknown Interior of America
Translated and Annotated by Cyclone Covey
5/2/2017
A highly summarised narrative, at only about 120 pages, "THIS SIXTEENTH-CENTURY odyssey of Cabeza de Vaca's is one of the great true epics of history. It is the semi-official report to the king of Spain by the ranking surviving officer of a royal expedition to conquer Florida which fantastically miscarried.
Four out of a land-force of 300 men--by wits, stamina and luck--found their way back to civilization after eight harrowing years and roughly 6,000 miles over mostly unknown reaches of North America. They were the first Europeans to see and live to report the interior of Florida, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and northernmost Mexico; the 'possum and the buffalo; the Mississippi and the Pecos; pine-nut mash and mesquite-bean flour; and a long string of Indian Stone Age tribes. What these wanderers merely heard and surmised had just as great an effect on subsequent events as what they learned at first hand." [From the translator's preface.] I was surprised how matter-of-fact were Cabeza de Vaca's descriptions of the often miserable and terrifying situations related in this account. Occasionally he greatly compresses his account, as in Chapter 24, My Years as a Wandering Merchant, where he covers six years in one short chapter of only 981 words! His descriptions of the Native American peoples' social customs, diet, way of life and beliefs were very interesting to me, and apparently they are still consulted by anthropological researchers and historians as valuable accounts. Most striking to me were his descriptions of the strange (to Western eyes) combination of ruthless cruelty and extreme generosity exhibited both to him and amongst individuals and peoples. Two examples: - |
"They cast away their daughters at birth; the dogs eat them. They say they do this because all the nations of the region are their enemies, with whom they war ceaselessly; and that if they were to marry off their daughters, the daughters would multiply their enemies until the latter overcame and enslaved the Mariames, who thus preferred to annihilate all daughters than risk their reproduction of a single enemy. We asked why they did not themselves marry these girls. They said that marrying relatives would be a disgusting thing; it was far better to kill them than give them to either kin or foe."
Yet of other people he relates: -
"The people are generous to each other with what little they have. There is no chief. All belonging to the same lineage keep together. They speak two languages: Capoque and Han.
They have a strange custom when acquaintances [distantly separated?] meet or occasionally visit, of weeping for half an hour before they speak. This over, the one who is visited rises and gives his visitor all he has. The latter accepts it and, after a while, carries it away, often without a word."
Yet of other people he relates: -
"The people are generous to each other with what little they have. There is no chief. All belonging to the same lineage keep together. They speak two languages: Capoque and Han.
They have a strange custom when acquaintances [distantly separated?] meet or occasionally visit, of weeping for half an hour before they speak. This over, the one who is visited rises and gives his visitor all he has. The latter accepts it and, after a while, carries it away, often without a word."
Cabeza de Vaca himself comes across as a determined and stoic man, who also held opinions of the native peoples which differ markedly from the clichéed "cruel Spanish conquistador" image. He manages, without overt criticism, to express a point of view markedly different from that of the first Spanish he manages to find, near the end of his journey: -
"We hastened through a vast territory, which we found vacant, the inhabitants having fled to the mountains in fear of Christians. With heavy hearts we looked out over the lavishly watered, fertile, and beautiful land, now abandoned and burned and the people thin and weak, scattering or hiding in fright. Not having planted, they were reduced to eating roots and bark; and we shared their famine the whole way. Those who did receive us could provide hardly anything. They themselves looked as if they would willingly die. They brought us blankets they had concealed from the other Christians and told us how the latter had come through razing the towns and carrying off half the men and all the women and boys; those who had escaped were wandering about as fugitives. We found the survivors too alarmed to stay anywhere very long, unable or unwilling to till, preferring death to a repetition of their recent horror. While they seemed delighted with our company, we grew apprehensive that the Indians resisting farther on at the frontier would avenge themselves on us.
When we got there, however, they received us with the same awe and respect the others had--even more, which amazed us. Clearly, to bring all these people to Christianity and subjection to Your Imperial Majesty, they must be won by kindness, the only certain way."
When we got there, however, they received us with the same awe and respect the others had--even more, which amazed us. Clearly, to bring all these people to Christianity and subjection to Your Imperial Majesty, they must be won by kindness, the only certain way."
Below: -The expedition route, by sea to Florida, by land in Florida, by sea to Galveston area,
and thenceforth Cabeza de Vaca's route with a few companions.
and thenceforth Cabeza de Vaca's route with a few companions.
By Lencer [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], via Wikimedia Commons
There is also much to be impressed by in the resourcefulness of the group as a whole in the earlier times when the expedition is stll largely intact. The expedition leader unwisely (and against Cabeza de Vaca's advice) sent the ships ahead Eastward to a harbour believed to be 30 miles distant, but in actuality 1800 miles away. The land-based contingent set out inland along the coast toward the same harbour. After days spent harassed by the Indians, short of food, with one third ill, they "...finally concluded to undertake the formidable project of constructing vessels to float away in."
"This appeared impossible, since none of us knew how to build ships, and we had no tools, iron, forge, oakum, pitch, or rigging, or any of the indispensable items, or anybody to instruct us. Worse still, we had no food to sustain workers. ...next day one of our men should come saying he could make wooden pipes and deerskin bellows. Having reached that point where any hope of relief is seized upon, we bade him commence. We also instigated the making of nails, saws, axes, and other tools we needed out of the stirrups, spurs, crossbows, and other of our equipment containing iron.
For food while the work proceeded, we decided to make four forays into Aute with every man and horse able to go, and to kill one of our horses every third day to divide among the workers and the sick. Our forays went off as planned. In spite of armed resistance, they netted as much as 400 fanegas [about 100 bushels] of corn.
We had stacks of palmettos gathered, and their husks and fibers twisted and otherwise prepared as a substitute for oakum. A Greek, Don Teodoro, made pitch from certain pine resins. Even though we had only one carpenter, work proceeded so rapidly from August 4, when it began, that by September 20 five barges, each 22 elbow-lengths [30 to 32 feet long], caulked with palmetto oakum and tarred with pine-pitch, were finished.
From palmetto husks, also horse tails and manes, we braided ropes and rigging; from our shirts we made sails; and from junipers, oars. Such was the country our sins had cast us in that only the most persistent search turned up stones large enough for ballast and anchors. Before this, we had not seen a stone in the whole region. We flayed the horses' legs, tanned the skin, and made leather water-bottles."
For food while the work proceeded, we decided to make four forays into Aute with every man and horse able to go, and to kill one of our horses every third day to divide among the workers and the sick. Our forays went off as planned. In spite of armed resistance, they netted as much as 400 fanegas [about 100 bushels] of corn.
We had stacks of palmettos gathered, and their husks and fibers twisted and otherwise prepared as a substitute for oakum. A Greek, Don Teodoro, made pitch from certain pine resins. Even though we had only one carpenter, work proceeded so rapidly from August 4, when it began, that by September 20 five barges, each 22 elbow-lengths [30 to 32 feet long], caulked with palmetto oakum and tarred with pine-pitch, were finished.
From palmetto husks, also horse tails and manes, we braided ropes and rigging; from our shirts we made sails; and from junipers, oars. Such was the country our sins had cast us in that only the most persistent search turned up stones large enough for ballast and anchors. Before this, we had not seen a stone in the whole region. We flayed the horses' legs, tanned the skin, and made leather water-bottles."
It is interesting to speculate whether a similar party of today could muster such skills.
The experience of reading such an old document is made easier by this translation, which uses straightforward modern language, rather than attempting to make the the language sound as archaic as the original.
I found this an engrossing and interesting account, far from a dry historical document. Cabeza de Vaca's straightforwardness does not diminish the reader's understanding of the severity of his trials and tribulations, and his frequent breaks into chapters describing the landscape, peoples, their food-gathering, hunting techniques, social customs, war ettiquette etc., keep the reader's interest up.
I found this an engrossing and interesting account, far from a dry historical document. Cabeza de Vaca's straightforwardness does not diminish the reader's understanding of the severity of his trials and tribulations, and his frequent breaks into chapters describing the landscape, peoples, their food-gathering, hunting techniques, social customs, war ettiquette etc., keep the reader's interest up.
Read as an e-book downloaded for free from Manybooks.net, on my Kobo Touch e-reader.