Spaniard Survives Eight Years In Texas Wilderness

After wandering for eight years in the dangerous domain yet to be named Texas, Cabeza de Vaca reported in person to the Spanish viceroy in Mexico City on July 25, 1536.

A decorated defender of the Spanish empire, Al Nunez Cabeza de Vaca was rewarded in 1527 with an all-expenses-paid trip to the New World. But no sooner had the expedition made landfall on the coast of Florida than he wished he had stayed home.

Sending the ships on ahead, the reckless commander led the rest of his men into the unmapped everglades. When their comrades were a no-show at the rendezvous, the impatient fleet weighed anchor.

Preferring to take their chances at sea rather than face certain death on dry land, the stranded soldiers cast off in a fragile flotilla of handmade boats. All but two of the crude craft vanished beneath the waves, and the remaining pair washed ashore on a desolate strip of sand off the Texas mainland.

Even though the ferocious Karankawas seemed friendly enough at first, the sunburned Spaniards chose to play it safe and put back to sea. But the crashing surf swamped their small boats and ensured an indefinite stay on Galveston Island.

While four intrepid souls headed inland, the first Europeans to set foot on Texas soil, the other 80 or so conquistadors dug in for the winter. Ravaged by disease and driven by hunger to feed on the dead, only 15 survived until spring. Warm weather revived their wanderlust, and those that could walk fled the deathtrap they called Malhado, the Isle of Misfortune.

Too weak to travel, Cabeza de Vaca and two more sickly Spaniards were left to the not-so-tender mercy of the local Indians. Having lost many tribesmen to the same epidemic that claimed the lives of the white strangers, the Karankawas blamed the calamity on the uninvited visitors. However, instead of executing the trio, the aborigines drafted them as medicine men.

When Cabeza and his terrified companions turned down the offer, the Indians simply starved them into submission. If they wanted to eat, they had to play doctor.

Depending upon folk remedies and the power of prayer, the Spaniards reluctantly treated the stricken Indians. The miraculous recovery of several patients surprised no one more than the nervous amateur physicians.

Cabeza regained his own health about the time the unpredictable Karankawas picked him to be the tribal slave. Constant labor and physical abuse eventually convinced him he had nothing lose by making a break for freedom, and he successfully escaped into the interior.

For six years, Cabeza subsisted as a combination trader and healer never knowing whether the next day might be his last. According to legend, his medical skill improved to the point that he actually performed the first surgery in Texas history by removing an arrowhead from the chest of a wounded warrior.

Loyalty kept Cabeza in the hazardous vicinity of Malhado. Once a year he risked his neck by returning to the island to beg the last Spaniard to go to Mexico with him. The fainthearted friend finally agreed in 1532