toms of the Karankawa. He also acted for the
first time as a medicine man, a role he was to
play frequently during his journeys. Protesting
that they had no real power to do so, he and
his companions agreed to Indian demands
that they heal the sick. “The way we treated
them was to make over them the sign of the
cross while breathing on them, recite a Pater
Noster and Ave Maria, and pray to God, Our
Lord, as best we could to give them good
health and inspire them to do us some favors.”
To the Spaniards’ surprise, their patients
declared themselves healed.
When it was time for the Karankawa to
leave their seasonal lodges on the coast, they
took all the surviving Spaniards except
Cabeza de Vaca, who was too ill to travel.
After a year of abuse by the Indians who
remained behind, he fled to live inland with
another tribe, the Charruco, who treated him
better. Hebecame a trader, which allowed
him to travel freely for four years among the
warring tribes of east Texas. He learned in his
travels that the scattered survivors of the
Narváez expedition were either near death
from illness or had been killed by inland
tribes. His goods “consisted mainly of pieces
of seashells and cockles, and shells with
which they cut a fruit which is like a bean,
used by them for healing and in their dances
and feasts. These things I carried inland, and
in exchange brought back hides and red
ochre with which they rub and dye their faces
and hair; flint for arrow points, glue and hard
canes wherewith to make them, and tassels
of the hair of deer, which they dye red.”
The freedom of Cabeza’s life as a trader
ended when he was enslaved by a tribe called
the Guevenes, who mistreated him and con-
stantly threatened him with death. During this
period of captivity, however, he was reunited
with three suvivors of the Narváez expedition:
Alonso del Castillo Maldonado, Andrés
Dorantes de Carranza, and Dorantes’s Moor-
ish, or North African, slave Estéban (also
known as Estevan, Estevánico, or Estabanico).MEDICINE MEN
The four were separated from each other for
another year when their Indian captors quar-
reled. When they were reunited a second time,
they escaped together. They began to walk
west, looking for food, with vague hopes of
reaching Mexico. Luckily their reputation as
healers preceded them. As they moved from
tribe to tribe in their journey westward, they
were welcomed as medicine men and fre-
quently asked to performhealing acts. I n one
instance Cabeza de Vaca prayed over a coma-
tose man he was certain was dead and was
shocked when the man later revived. The rep-
utation of the four survivors as faith healers
clung to them throughout the rest of their
journey. “During that time they came for us
from many places and said that verily we were
children of the sun,” Cabeza de Vaca later
wrote. “We never treated anyone that did not
afterwards say he was well, and they had such
confidence in our skill as to believe that none
of them would die as long as we were among
them.”
While their reputation increased the fame
the four survivors enjoyed in their journey, it
also increased the ranks of their Indian guides
and companions, who sometimes numbered
in the hundreds. “We traveled among so many
different tribes and languages that nobody’s
memory can recall them all,” Cabeza de Vaca
would write. Unlike so many Europeans in the
New World who were preoccupied with
searching for wealth, however, Cabeza de
Vaca’s memory about the lifestyles of Native
Americans with whom he traveled was
extraordinary. He noted their ways of cooking,
hunting, marriage, divorce, warfare, andCabeza de Vaca’s Epic Journey B 85