A Land So Strange

Stirrups, spurs, and crossbows—they all burned as well. In an extraordinary step, the men threw them into a hot fire and attempted to recast the hot clumps of metal into tools, mainly axes and saws. To produce enough heat to melt the metal, someone had devised a crude forge by jury-rigging a bellows out of deer hides; the pipes that drove the air out of the bellows were fashioned from hollowed-out logs.

The process of melting the weapons would have been enormously difficult, but there was no other choice: the men were desperate to leave Florida. By eating their animals and melting their weapons they were putting in place an extraordinary plan. They intended to construct five makeshift rafts to glide over the oyster reefs and sandbars and out into the Gulf of Mexico. Once in the open sea, they would either be spotted by the ships or they could sail to Pánuco, which they hoped and prayed would not be too far.

It had not been easy to agree on this bold scheme. Narváez had already faced a full-scale insurrection. Sometime after arriving at the Bay of Horses, the horsemen had secretly agreed to strike out on their own. They realized that they stood a much better chance of survival if they could just push ahead without being held back by the sick and the dying. Among the conspirators, however, there were “many hidalgos and men of good breeding,” and they could not carry out their plans without first informing Narváez and other royal officials. As Cabeza de Vaca explains, the faction loyal to Narváez made the conspirators understand that they would be committing a grave crime by “abandoning their captain and those who were sick and without strength, and above all else removing themselves from the service of Your Majesty.” Ultimately, the horsemen agreed to stay with their less-fortunate companions.²

The raft-building plan at the Bay of Horses was based on this pledge of unity. By killing the horses, all the men would be on the same footing and none would be able to abandon the group. This plan had one immediate reward: access to a steady supply of meat for some weeks. But it also amounted to a formidable gamble. The Spaniards were trading their most effective weapons against the Indians—horses and firearms—for five improvised vessels that might or might not be capable of carrying them to safety.

Horses and firearms had conferred upon sixteenth-century Spaniards an overwhelming superiority over the peoples of the New World, something the conquistadors never forgot. When Narváez and his men disembarked in Florida, they had no idea how many Indians they would encounter or whether these natives harbored hostile or friendly intentions. In spite of this uncertainty, Narváez was confident that his men would prevail in just about any confrontation because of their firearms and animals. Indeed, superior weapons had enabled Spanish expedition leaders to vanquish large numbers of indigenous opponents. When Hernán Cortés first reached the coast of Mexico, he had his ships grounded to prevent his men from going back and would go on to bring down Mexico-Tenochtitlán, a city of 250,000 inhabitants, with a little more than 1,000 soldiers. Similarly, in 1536- 1537, Francisco Pizarro and some 180 Spaniards held off perhaps 100,000 indigenous attackers for more than a year in the heart of the Inca Empire. Thousands of Indians perished, but only one Spaniard died, a man who had failed to wear his helmet.³

Protected by their breastplates, fierce animals, and lethal weapons, conquistadors learned early on that they did not need to negotiate with the natives—in most cases, they could simply impose their will. Nor did Spaniards have to make an effort to understand the social world of the natives or, for that matter, conceive of them as anything other than potential subjects, captives, porters, guides, or slaves. Thus far, Narváez’s men had run roughshod over the natives of Florida. Expedition members had taken the Indians’ food and occupied their houses with little concern for effective retaliation. Technology underpinned a sense of supreme confidence and superiority.

However, such feelings began to ebb at the Bay of Horses. As the men killed their horses and melted down their crossbows, they must have been keenly aware that they were giving up their military advantages over the North American natives. From now on, they would have to face the New World fully exposed to its perils. Surviving because of superior military technology was one thing. It would be quite another to do so by wits alone.

IN THE LATE summer of 1528, the beach area overlooking the Bay of Horses must have resembled a chaotic campground. Some of the men operated the forge, while others cut down trees, and yet others went on raiding expeditions to get maize. The men had occasion to prove their enormous self-reliance and astonishing ingenuity. Not for nothing had they signed up to establish European settlements in the New World. Among them there were artisans, craftsmen, and talented builders, and their collective skills were being put to the test. Even if they had had all the necessary tools and materials, manufacturing five large, seaworthy rafts would have been a challenge. But the stranded explorers had to build their vessels from whatever items they had happened to carry with them or could procure in the marshes of Florida. Moreover, the men at the Bay of Horses possessed only the most rudimentary knowledge of shipbuilding; all of the men with shipboard experience had stayed behind with the maritime contingent. It was probably a Portuguese carpenter named Álvaro Fernández who led the construction effort. The expedition’s last hope of survival rested on his shoulders.⁴

The first challenge was to design a raft that would actually float when fully loaded. Even though some of the men had perished in Indian attacks and many more had succumbed to illness, there were still 250 expeditioners alive out of the 300 who had started out from Tampa Bay. Each of the five rafts would have to carry 50 men, enough water for them, a heap of corn, trinkets, clothing, and the few remaining weapons. Assuming that each passenger weighed 150 pounds on average and allowing for a modest cargo of 1.5 tons per vessel, it turns out that each raft would need to transport a minimum of 5 tons.

To bear such loads, modern rafts are often made out of extremely buoyant materials such as Styrofoam or polyurethane. They are also designed with air compartments or inner tubes for additional flotation. The raft builders at the Bay of Horses could not even begin to dream of such conveniences. They had to depend solely on the upward lift provided by the wood itself. Therefore, choosing the right kind of tree was crucial, as different kinds of wood provide varying levels of flotation. Some hardwoods, such as teakwood and ebony, are actually so dense that they sink in water. Narváez and his men may have considered using the hardwood trees that grow in the Apalachee-Apalachicola area, such as gums, oaks, and willows. Such woods would have floated, but they would have been very difficult to cut and drag to the water’s edge, and because of their high density they would have been unable to carry much freight. Far more viable was the abundant supply of conifers, such as cypresses, pines, and cedars, that grow in the region. Any of these species would have yielded timber of an intermediate density quite suitable for raft building.⁵

Chopping down the wood for the rafts was a truly gargantuan undertaking. According to Cabeza de Vaca, each raft was 22 elbows in length—perhaps 33 feet. In another passage he reveals that the rafts floated one xeme (from the thumb to the outstretched index finger), or about 7 inches above the water, when fully loaded. Assuming that each raft was made of wood of an intermediate density such as pine or cedar, that it measured 33 feet per side, and that the raft protruded 7 inches above the waterline when loaded with 5 tons, it can be deduced by Archimedes’s principle that each raft must have weighed a little over 15 tons. We don’t know the particulars of the design. But it can best be visualized as a large platform made up of twenty-nine logs lashed together, each of them measuring somewhat more than a foot in diameter and 33 feet in length. To build five such rafts, the famished trekkers would have had to cut down about 150 mature pine trees or the equivalent amount in other species. Selecting the most appropriate trees, clearing the area around them, delivering hundreds of ax blows to each trunk, and running away from the falling giants must have been hard enough. And yet felling the trees was merely the beginning of the process. They still had to remove all the limbs, cut the trunks to the desired length, and drag the logs to the launching area. Even with properly manufactured tools, these tasks would have been overwhelming. Narváez’s men had to do all this with crude axes and saws, racing against time as they consumed their last few horses. In order to ensure that all the members of the expedition shared in this brutal and exhausting labor, the leaders proclaimed that only those who worked would have access to horse meat.⁶

These were the working materials available to Narváez and his men. In the Florida panhandle the pine flatwoods reach right up to the water’s edge, thus facilitating the task of hauling the wood. Below the pines there is an understory of palmettos still quite characteristic. This picture was taken by the author at the St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge south of present-day Tallahassee.

Once the logs had been gathered at the water’s edge, the raft builders needed to devise a system to fasten them together firmly. But the group had no rope with them, so they had to make it themselves. They improvised once again by using the tough hair of the dead horses. Some members of the expedition must have spent countless hours gathering all the tails and manes of the dead horses, braiding the strands together into short sections of rope, and then tying the sections to one another. Even with thirty horses or so, rope must have been at a premium since it was needed not only for lashing logs but also for rigging the sails.

To a group of landlubbers—for most of the men, the voyage across the Atlantic was probably their first shipboard experience—it must have been alarming to realize that an undulating carpet of logs would be the only thing between themselves and the swallowing sea. The water would be visible through the gaps between the logs. The expedition members—many of whom could not swim—were so troubled by this prospect that they set out to fill the gaps. They gathered a great quantity of palmetto leaves, mashing them into a fibrous paste that was used as oakum to wedge between the logs. A Greek Christian named Doroteo Teodoro took this procedure one step further by collecting “a certain pitch extracted from some pine trees” to use as caulking. Of course, sealing the bottom of a raft contributes nothing to its seaworthiness—if anything, these materials added more weight. But for some of the men, at least, it must have been reassuring.⁷

A more relevant problem was how to make these 15-ton platforms navigate without spinning capriciously and drifting out of control. Narváez’s men carved oars out of cypress wood and resigned themselves to doing a lot of rowing. But they also hoped to marshal the power of the wind to make their way out of Florida. Masts rose out of the wooden platform, flying square sails. They must have been attached to the masts and spars in such a way that they could be trimmed and adjusted. Made of shirts sewn together, those sails must have been a wonder to behold.⁸

Lastly, the resourceful men at the Bay of Horses turned to matters of provisions. With no way of preserving horse meat or shellfish, they would have to depend largely on corn and perhaps some beans and squash that had been raided from nearby Indian communities. At departure, each raft must have carried a considerable amount of corn. Even so, the men probably intended to mount additional food raids along the way.⁹

Carrying an adequate supply of fresh water posed the greatest challenge for the men at the Bay of Horses. In our age of plastic bottles, it is easy to forget how hard it is to make waterproof containers. Making pots out of clay would have been the simplest solution: such containers could have been made impermeable by baking them with fire. Historically, most agricultural societies around the world, including the native people of Apalachee, have stumbled upon this same basic solution, but it seems to have eluded the expedition members. Perhaps they found no suitable clay by the sandy coast. Instead, Narváez’s men tried a different approach. They stripped the legs of the horses and cured the hides to make leather water bags.¹⁰

After five or six weeks of hard work, the rafts were ready, and only one horse remained alive. The men slaughtered it and devoured what they knew would be the last meat they would taste for quite some time. Then, after dragging the rafts into the water and loading them up, fifty men piled onto each one. There was so little space on board that the men could hardly move. More alarmingly, the passengers found themselves floating barely a few inches above the waterline; the waves would wash over the men as they traveled.

Narváez commanded the “lead raft.” He was sailing with his inner circle and some of the strongest and healthiest men. A second raft was given to Royal Comptroller Alonso Enríquez and Fray Juan Suárez. It would carry the religious personnel. The third and fourth rafts were entrusted to two pairs of captains. One was assigned to Captains Téllez and Peñaloza, and the other one to Captains Alonso del Castillo and Andrés Dorantes. Presumably these four captains would be sailing with their respective companies. The Castillo-Dorantes raft must have included Estebanico, the African slave. The fifth and final raft was to be jointly commanded by Cabeza de Vaca and the Royal Inspector Alonso de Solís.

FOR THE FIRST seven days of their voyage, the Spaniards were forced to negotiate a labyrinthine series of inlets and sandbars before reaching the open sea. During this time, the water was never more than waist deep. At the end of this initial passage, the men arrived at an island (possibly present-day St. Vincent Island) that was so close to the continent that the two landmasses formed a strait. Beyond it lay the Gulf of Mexico. As the fleet neared the island, Cabeza de Vaca’s raft drifted ahead, “and from it we saw five canoes of Indians approaching, which they abandoned and left in our hands, seeing that we were headed for them.” The Spaniards immediately appropriated the abandoned canoes; they used them as timber to add gunwales to the rafts. The rafts now had two spans of freeboard, and at least some of the water would be kept out.¹²

Once in the open sea, the improvised flotilla sailed west for a month. The rafts were making headway, perhaps faring better than anyone had expected, and for the first time since the beginning of the expedition, things appeared to be going well. The rafts hugged the coast, entering inlets and bays that were dangerously shallow. Sometimes they would run into Indian fishermen whom Cabeza de Vaca describes as “poor and wretched.”¹⁴

After one month of uneventful sailing, the problems returned. The rations started to dwindle, but the raftsmen were especially tormented by their lack of fresh water. The water bags that the castaways had fashioned out of horse legs had rotted completely and were unable to hold the precious liquid. As the men floated on open rafts, exposed to the sun’s full heat and drying power, they must have regretted a thousand times their decision to carry their water in hides.

Finding fresh drinking water soon became the Spaniards’ overriding concern. They steered the rafts close to the coast in hopes of spotting a stream or a lake, but to no avail. Then they saw a small island that seemed empty and decided to go there. It seemed like a prudent course of action. The men anchored their rafts and reached the island just in time because a storm overtook the castaways there. The storm was so powerful that it prevented the men from leaving the island. Within the first day ashore, the expeditioners finished what little water they still had. The men must have fanned out scouting for even the most miserly brook or the muddiest spring. But the island was bone dry, and the storm, which must have carried little rain, gave no sign of abating.¹⁵

As dehydration overtook them, Narváez and his men must have progressed from dryness in the mouth and a mild sense of discomfort to more dangerous symptoms: lightheadedness, inability to sweat, shrinking of the skin, and an irrepressible urge to drink a liquid of any kind. Not surprisingly, after five days they made the worst possible choice: they succumbed to the urge to drink water from the sea. “And some were so careless in doing so,” says Cabeza de Vaca, “that suddenly five men died on us.” Saltwater actually accelerates the dehydration process; the ingested sodium binds with any surrounding water molecules, forcing the cells to give up their moisture. A sudden jolt of salt can induce seizures and brain damage. Cabeza de Vaca glosses over those dark moments: “I do not think there is need to tell in detail the miseries and hardships in which we found ourselves, since considering the place where we were and the little hope we had of survival, each one can imagine a great deal of what would happen there.”¹⁶

That entire day in late October or early November 1528, as the men attempted to cross the open water to the continent, their rafts were buried by the waves only to reemerge instants later. In some respects the travelers were better able to withstand the storm on rafts than they would have been in regular boats, for no amount of water thrown aboveboard would have sunk them. Their main concern was the physical integrity of the vessels. The raft crews, weakened by the effects of severe dehydration, must have been barely able to steer. They were saved by a miraculous apparition. At sunset the rafts finally rounded a part of the coast that entered far into the sea, and the men found great calm and refuge on the other side. Many canoes came to meet the voyagers. “And the Indians who came in the canoes,” Cabeza de Vaca recalls, “spoke to us and without wanting to wait for us, turned back. They were large people and well proportioned, and they did not carry bows or arrows.”¹⁸

The battered fleet followed the canoes until they reached some houses by the shore. Amazingly, the Indians greeted them with cooked fish and many pots of water. The castaways must have been unable to believe their good fortune. The chief of this settlement warmly invited Narváez into his house. In exchange, the Spaniards gave out some of the maize that they still possessed, as well as some beads and bells.

But the cordial relationship quickly went sour. That night, the hosts attacked their guests, assaulting the sick men who were lying on the shore. They succeeded in killing three expedition members. The Indians also attempted to break into the chief’s house where Narváez was sleeping, and the Governor sustained a rock wound but was not taken. Cabeza de Vaca offers no explanation for this assault.¹⁹

The visitors were barely able to retreat to their rafts. In the course of that eventful night, the Indians attacked three times, throwing rocks and other objects. They possessed very few arrows. But even so, they forced the visitors to retreat toward the shore and wounded many of them. Even Cabeza de Vaca suffered a cut in the face. The natives would have continued on the offensive had they not been surprised by a small group of Spaniards who hid behind some bushes and charged the Indians from the rear, disbanding them.²⁰

The next morning a norther began to blow, preventing the castaways from leaving this hostile environment for at least one more day. To keep warm, they made fires. Cabeza de Vaca broke up more than thirty Indian canoes for kindling and firewood. As they waited for the weather to clear up, the Spaniards must have gathered all the clay pots lying around and filled them with water, but even thus provisioned, they would not be able to travel far.²¹

After three or four days at sea, the raftsmen had run out of fresh water once again. They were forced to enter an estuary and risk another confrontation. A canoe came within sight; the Indians aboard fearlessly approached the lead raft. Narváez asked for water. The Indians agreed to bring it to them, but only if they were given the pots to carry it. For the Europeans, it must have been a dramatic predicament. They were desperate for drinking water, but the pots were indispensable too. Losing them would be a serious setback. Negotiations must have dragged on, the tension heightened by the parties’ inability to communicate except through signs. In the end Doroteo Teodoro, the Greek Christian who had collected the pitch at the Bay of Horses, volunteered to go with the Indians in the canoe. He would take along an African slave. In return, the natives consented to leaving two of their own men with the Spaniards.

That night, the Indians returned. The pots were still empty, and there was no sign of the Christians. From afar, the natives encouraged the men they had left with the Spaniards to throw themselves into the water. The Spaniards held the men to prevent them from escaping, and the Indians in the canoe quickly turned and rowed away. The parched Spaniards, now without their pots, remained on the rafts, brooding over the fate of the Greek man and the slave.

In the morning several canoes approached the rafts. The Indians were ill-disposed and demanded the release of their two companions. The Governor retorted that he would release the hostages only if they brought back the two Christians they had carried off. The canoes surrounded the rafts and attempted to close off the mouth of the estuary, but the rafts were able to reach the open sea. “And since they refused to return the Christians to us, and for this reason we would not give them the Indian hostages,” Cabeza de Vaca writes, “they began to hurl stones at us with slings and throw spears, feigning to shoot arrows at us, although among all of them we saw no more than three or four bows. Being in this dispute the wind came up, and they turned back and left us.”²²

The next day the castaways found all the fresh water they could ever want. They came upon the delta of a very large river. It entered the gulf like a broad, majestic avenue, carrying so much water that the raft crews were able to drink straight from the sea. They had reached the Mississippi River. Since leaving the Bay of Horses they had navigated perhaps 370 miles. Unfortunately, Pánuco still lay 620 miles away.

Being able to drink water from the safety of the rafts was an unexpected blessing, but crossing the mighty river posed a formidable challenge. Its discharge was so massive that it forced the rafts away from the shore. The problem was compounded by the wind, which was at the time blowing from the land toward the sea, further pushing the makeshift vessels into the open water. The fleet was driven half a league (1.5 miles) away from the land. The raftsmen were powerless to counter these forces. It was imperative that they keep within sight of the continent; if they were pushed into the open water with no bearings to guide them, they would be lost forever. This drama lasted for two more days until the men were able to pull their rafts back in toward the coast.

Along the distant shore, the survivalists saw many spires of smoke but were unable to learn anything else since it was getting dark. The prudent men decided to wait until morning before getting any closer. Even though the water was shallow, they could not anchor the barges properly because they only had stones tied with ropes. That night, the rafts became separated. The wind must have picked up, blowing two of them into the open sea once again.

When morning came, all Cabeza de Vaca could see was two rafts on the horizon. His oarsmen rowed in the direction of the closest one, which turned out to be Narváez’s. When the two vessels came within shouting distance, the Governor asked the Royal Treasurer his opinion about what should be done. Cabeza de Vaca suggested that they should all try to sail in the direction of the third raft and keep together. Narváez replied that it could not be done “because the raft was very far out to sea and he wished to return to land.” By way of explanation, one of Narváez’s companions added that their main goal was to reach land because if they didn’t, the people aboard would start dying of starvation.²⁴

It was just a matter of time before all the rafts became separated. Cabeza de Vaca’s men tried to follow the Governor, rowing desperately, trying to defy currents and winds to make landfall, but the crew was exhausted. For three days they had been subjected to a daily ration that consisted of one handful of raw corn. In contrast, Narváez’s craft was somewhat lighter and carried the strongest and healthiest men, so it naturally kept running ahead. Unable to keep up the pace, Cabeza de Vaca finally asked the Governor to throw him a line. He refused, saying that the men on his raft were determined to reach land that very night and could not spare their effort or time helping those on the other rafts. After hearing that, Cabeza de Vaca answered that he didn’t think they would be able to keep up with the Governor’s raft and asked Narváez to tell him his orders. The reply was decisive. Narváez said that “it was no longer time for some men to rule over others, but that each one should do whatever seemed best to save his life.” Bent on saving himself, Narváez had abandoned his command over the other four rafts. Each vessel would have to fend for itself.²⁵

Cabeza de Vaca ordered his men to sail toward the third raft which, amazingly, was still visible. This vessel was the one commanded by Captains Téllez and Peñaloza. The two crews traveled together for four more days. They must have carried some fresh water with them; their provisions, however, were nearly exhausted. The rations had to be cut to only half a handful of raw maize per day. By this point, the men had almost certainly lost the strength to row. Their only hope of survival was pinned on the capricious wind, and yet the elements did not cooperate. A sudden storm caught up with the two rafts, separating them and threatening to break them apart.

Somehow Cabeza de Vaca’s raft made it through another day. Tormented by extreme hunger and drenched from the splashing of the waves, the men were all on the brink of death. Even the usually reserved Cabeza de Vaca paints a dismal picture: “The people began to faint in such a manner that when the sun set all those who came in my raft were fallen on top of one another in it, so close to death that few were conscious.” Only the helmsman and Cabeza de Vaca took turns steering the raft. But the helmsman too began to falter. “Two hours into the night,” Cabeza de Vaca says, “the helmsman told me that I should take charge of the raft, because he was in such condition that he thought he would die that very night.” Cabeza the Vaca grabbed the tiller for some hours and after midnight went to check on the helmsman to see if he had died. To his surprise, he was feeling better and offered to steer until daybreak.²⁶

Near dawn, Cabeza de Vaca heard the surf. The helmsman believed that land was near. The two men mustered enough energy to cast a lead line in the dark. The bottom was not more than seven fathoms deep. As dawn rose, they saw land not more than 3 miles away. Cabeza de Vaca picked up an oar and began to row. Most of the men remained lying while a handful rowed frantically toward salvation. In their desperation, the conscious men must have sailed past the wave break. By the time they tried to stop the raft, it must have been too late to save the raft from breaking apart on the beach. A large wave tossed the makeshift vessel squarely onto the sand, waking the sleeping men on impact. As Cabeza de Vaca recounts, “They began to leave the raft half walking, half crawling. And as they came on land to some bluffs, we made a fire and toasted some of the maize that we carried. And we found rainwater, and with the heat of the fire the men revived and began to regain strength.” The Royal Treasurer and his men had reached an island off of what is now Texas.²⁷

MIRACULOUSLY, ALL FIVE rafts reached different parts of that same coast. The raft that sailed the farthest was the one led by Captains Téllez and Peñaloza. When Cabeza de Vaca last saw this vessel somewhere west of the Mississippi River, its crew had consumed nearly all its food and was headed into a storm. They must have been unable to land for several days, drifting in the high seas and facing the very real prospect of starvation. When these men finally reached Texas, perhaps as far south as present-day Mustang or Padre Islands, they must have been a sorry lot. Quite possibly, some of them had already died. It is hard to imagine how this raft crew was able to navigate some 155 miles more than Cabeza de Vaca’s; perhaps they had resorted to cannibalism to stay alive. Yet they would not perish from starvation, at least not all of them. Upon reaching land, an Indian tribe known as the Camones descended on the famished crew. The castaways “were so skinny that even though they were being killed they could not defend themselves.” Not a single man survived the attack. The Camones took all the Spaniards’ objects, eventually selling them to other groups. The raft remained on the spot where it landed. It lay at the shore as a final testimony of the tenacity of its crew, who had sailed 750 miles since leaving the Bay of Horses.²⁸

The raft carrying the religious men and commanded by the Royal Comptroller Alonso Enríquez and Fray Juan Suárez made landfall by the mouth of the San Bernard River. Their raft had overturned and must have been beyond repair. The men decided to abandon it and continue on foot toward Spanish-controlled territory. It had been a great loss, for they had arrived at a marshy area traversed by rivers and inlets. The raft would have been tremendously useful; without it, they had to expend precious energy and time building new vessels, quite small in all probability. Even though some men drowned along the way, they doggedly walked south for many miles, surviving on crabs and kelp.²⁹

While marching south toward Pánuco, this group ran into Narváez’s crew, which must have landed in the environs of present-day Matagorda Bay. The reunion of the two parties must have been joyous. Although temporarily separated, the two raft crews had already shared an unbelievable adventure and must have been avid to exchange tales of their ordeals. Above all, doubling their number and seeing familiar faces must have been immensely comforting in the midst of a completely alien land. But the chance encounter also raised troubling questions. Together, the two groups must have numbered eighty, but Narváez’s raft could only carry half as many. Also, there appears to have been some tension between the leaders of the two groups. After all, Narváez had renounced his authority over the other barges in a most public way; the two contingents had acted independently for some time. The Governor now wanted to shore up his control. He felt threatened enough by the Royal Comptroller Alonso Enríquez to revoke his title as lieutenant governor and appoint one of his associates instead.

Narváez’s arrogance proved to be his undoing. Fearful of an Indian attack, he granted himself the privilege of sleeping on his raft while the men camped on the shore. The Governor was accompanied by a minimal crew: a helmsman and a page. In the event of an ambush, these three fortunate men would at least have a chance to escape. In the middle of the night the wind picked up and became so strong that it blew the raft out to sea without anyone realizing what was happening. It must have been a cruel awakening for the three men. From the raft they must have been able to catch a final glimpse of the immense and hostile land that Narváez nominally ruled.³⁰

The vessel carried no food or water, so the three men could not have lasted long. But there must have been some time for reflection. Against all odds, Narváez would not die of an Indian attack or a debilitating illness. Instead, in a supreme final irony, he spent his last hours confined to a small platform floating on the Gulf of Mexico and surrounded by the enormous adelantamiento that he had failed to conquer.

The rest of the men from the two rafts continued their journey to the south under new leadership. But it was already getting too cold. After some more days of painstaking travel, they stopped and decided to spend the winter on this strange coast. Pánuco would have to wait until the spring. The band of survivalists was large enough that it could not be easily attacked. They set up camp in a wooded area with abundant water and firewood and some crabs and shellfish and braced for the harsh weather.³¹

The winter was harrowing. After depleting their meager food supply, these wretched castaways were brought face to face with death. As they struggled to stave off starvation, they resorted to the ultimate solution. The living cut the bodies of the dead into strips, possibly drying the meat in the sun to preserve it from spoilage: “They were people beyond hope and all died that winter of hunger and cold, eating one another.” By March 1, 1529, only one man remained alive. His name was Hernando de Esquivel, a native of Badajoz. An Indian found him still feeding on the body of Sotomayor, the former leader of this most unfortunate group.³²

North of where this drama was unfolding, the last two rafts had also reached dry land. One was Cabeza de Vaca’s. The other was the one led by Captains Andrés Dorantes and Alonso del Castillo. These groups of men had not seen each other since right after crossing the Mississippi River some 300 miles back. Following parallel trajectories, propelled by the same winds and buffeted by the same storms and currents, and by an incredible coincidence, they would come to land on opposite sides of the same island.