they looking for food and people come, the
mother does not move until her little ones
are in the pouch again.The people of Apalache received the
Spanish with suspicion that turned to fury
when the intruders took one of their chiefs
hostage. The Apalachee left the Spanish in
possession of a town, but attacked repeat-
edly. Three weeks of barrages of arrows from
hostile Indians and information from friend-
lier Indians who informed him that the sur-
rounding countryside was poor and desolate
convinced Narváez to abandon his mission
and march toward the coast in hope of find-
ing his ships.
ESCAPE BY SEA
When Narváez reached the sea near the
Apalachee town of Aute, southeast of today’s
Panama City, Florida, he realized that separat-
ing from his fleet had been a blunder. The
starving Spaniards stayed alive by butchering
their horses and raiding Indian villages, whose
inhabitants retaliated fiercely. “With death as
our only prospect,” Cabeza de Vaca recalled,
the Spaniards decided to flee by sea. Stirrups,
spurs, and other iron objects were melted to
make nails and tools necessary for shipbuild-
ing. The conquistadores’ lack of experience in
constructing boats showed in their escape
barges. When 250 men crowded aboard theCabeza de Vaca’s Epic Journey B 83
Most of the members of Pánfilo de Narváez’s 1528 expedition to present-day Florida and in the Gulf of
Mexico did not survive the journey, including Narváez himself. In this mid-19th-century illustration, a wolf
devours the remains of the party.(Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [LC-USZ62-104371])