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indigenous foods such as pecans and prickly
pear cactus, which the Indians called tuna.
He described, for example, child-rearing
among the Avavares and other Texas tribes:
Children are nursed to the age of twelve
years, when they are old enough to gather
their own food. We asked them why they
reared them thus and they said it was owing
tothe great hunger that was in the land,
since it was common, as we saw, that one
went two or three days without eating, and
sometimes four, and for that reason theynursed the little ones so long to preserve
them from perishing through hunger.Cabeza de Vaca and his companions
depended on many American Indian tribes for
guidance and directions. No maps were used,
which makes it impossible to reconstruct their
journey exactly. Descriptions of the rivers,
mountains, and other terrain they crossed,
however, provide enough clues to fuel several
interpretations. Early scholars place the route
across Texas along the Colorado or Pecos
Rivers, eventually descending southwest to El
Paso before continuing west. Later theories
propose that the wanderers walked south
across the Río Grande, through the present
Mexican border states of Nuevo León,
Coahuila, and Chihuahua, then recrossed the
Río Grande at Ojinaga, and followed the river
northwest toward the El Paso area. The group
next traveled southwest across northern Chi-
huahua, crossed the Sierra Madre Occidental
mountain range, and reached the upper Río
Yaqui. There the wanderers felt for the first time
that their dreams of reaching home might
come true.
One day Castillo noticed a buckle from a
Spanish swordbelt hanging from an Indian’s
neck. The joy the survivors felt upon realizing
that fellow Europeans might be ahead turned
to sorrow, as the countryside through which
they passed became increasingly deserted:
The Indian inhabitants had abandoned their
homes and farmland to avoid being abducted
by Spanish slaving parties. “The sight was one
of infinite pain to us; a land very fertile and
beautiful, abounding in springs and streams,
the villages deserted and burned, the people
thin and weak, all fleeing or in concealment,”
Castillo wrote.
In April 1536 Cabeza de Vaca, Estéban, and
some Indians went in search of Spaniards who
were thought to be nearby. After several days of
searching, they found a Spanish slaving party.Used as both medicine and food, prickly pear cacti
grow in the desert environment of Mexico and the
southwestern United States.(Bureau of Land
Management)(^86) B Discovery of the Americas, 1492–1800
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