This enthralling story of survival is the first major narrative of the exploration of North America by Europeans (1528-36). The author of Castaways (Naufragios), Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, was a fortune-seeking nobleman and the treasurer of an expedition to claim for Spain a vast area that includes today's Florida, Louisiana, and Texas. A shipwreck forced him and a handful of men to make the long westward journey on foot to meet up with Hernán Cortés. In order to survive, Cabeza de Vaca joined native peoples along the way, learning their languages and practices and serving them as a slave and later as a physician. When after eight years he finally reached the West, he was not recognized by his compatriots. In his writing Cabeza de Vaca displays great interest in the cultures of the native peoples he encountered on his odyssey. As he forged intimate bonds with some of them, sharing their brutal living conditions and curing their sick, he found himself on a voyage of self-discovery that was to make his reunion with his fellow Spaniards less joyful than expected. Cabeza de Vaca's gripping narrative is a trove of ethnographic information, with descriptions and interpretations of native cultures that make it a powerful precursor to modern anthropology. Frances M. López-Morillas's translation beautifully captures the sixteenth-century original. Based as it is on Enrique Pupo-Walker's definitive critical edition, it promises to become the authoritative English translation.

Castaways (Latin American Literature and Culture)

History

Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, Álvar

Americas

University of California Press

First published in 1555, Cabeza de Vaca's narrative of his South American expeditions is a detailed account of his five years as governor of Spain's province of the Rio de la Plata in South America. Cabeza de Vaca was already a celebrated explorer by the time he went to La Plata, known for his great trek across North America in the 1520s and 1530s and for the Relación he wrote about that journey. His tales of his river and forest explorations in South America show that he had lost none of his early curiosity and drive. He was the great secular champion of the native peoples of the New World and the only Spaniard to explore the coasts and interiors of two continents.
This book is one of the great first-person accounts of the Spanish conquest of the Americas in the sixteenth century. Morrow's new translation makes Cabeza de Vaca's adventures available to a wide English-speaking audience for the first time.

The South American Expeditions, 1540-1545

University of New Mexico Press

Book by Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, Alvar

The Narrative of Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca

Biographies & Memoirs

Travelers & Explorers

The Imprint Society

In 1526 Carlos I of Spain granted Pánfilo de Narváez a license to claim what is now the Gulf Coast of the United States. Pánfilo de Narváez set sail in 1527 to conquer and settle present day Florida. Setting out with a crew of approximately 600 members ultimately only four members would survive the ill-fated expedition. The journey would take these four survivors from Spain to Hispaniola and Cuba and then onto Florida. Sailing through a hurricane and other storms the expedition would finally land near Tampa Bay. Suffering from Indian attacks and the effects of poor food and disease, the crew, of which there was now only eighty, decided to sail from Florida to Mexico. In 1536, the four survivors--Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, Alonso del Castillo Maldonado, Andrés Dorantes de Carranza, and his enslaved Moor Estevanico--finally managed to rejoin Spanish countrymen in present-day Mexico City. Upon returning to Spain Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca would receive considerable notoriety for his published account of the ordeal. This edition is printed on premium acid-free paper.

Chronicle of the Narvaez Expedition

Digireads.com Publishing

This is the astounding story of castaway spaniard conquistador Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca, told by himself, of how the Narvaez expedition was lost at see and how most of the men perished in horrifying manners trying to reach safety. It took Cabeza de Vaca eight years to traverse the continental USA, from Florida to Mexico, in 1536, amidst terrible hardship, suffering and hostilities to be able to reach safety before he could tell this story.

Narrative of a shipwreck by castaway Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca

CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

Álvar NÁÁez Cabeza de Vaca nos cuenta sus aventuras por tierras americanas en, que comienzan en el momento en que se incorpora a la desdichada expediciÁn de PÁnfilo de NarvÁez a Florida en 1527, y que, por azares crueles y dramÁtico9s, concluye con cuatro supervivientes de los seiscientos iniciales. Cae prisionero de la tri

Naufragios y comentarios (Relecturas Viajes) (Spanish Edition)

Espasa

Naufragios (Colección Rutas. Serie Erebus) (Spanish Edition)

Fontamara

Naufragios y comentarios.

FisicalBook

Naufragios y comentarios (Crónicas de América) (Spanish Edition)

Historia 16

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Books by Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, Álvar