From The Coleman Chronicle and Democrat Voice, May 18, 1993
Cabeza de Vaca
By Roxy Gordon
In 1528, a man named Navarez set out to find his fortune. His fellow conquistador, Cortes, had found fortune in Mexico and he'd put Navarez in prison as a traitor. Navarez looked north and took an expedition. His treasurer, Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, warned him against the expedition and a Moorish fortune teller forecast dire disaster. Such came to pass. Eight sick and ruined Spaniards wrecked on Galveston Bay. Navarez stayed that night on his ship and was blown out to sea to never be seen again. The rest of the Spaniards were taken slaves by the Karankawa. After five years, only four were left. One was Cabeza de Vaca.
Something strange happened to Cabeza de Vaca. Somehow in the coastal humid night, somehow in the long sweltering days, he ceased to be that man he'd been. Nearly naked, sunburned, forever peeling skin, eating lizards, rats and snakes, praying for despair, Cabeza de Vaca ceased to be the man he'd been. On moonlit beaches and in brush shelters, he prayed to his God and likely to that of the Indians. And medicine came to him. Slowly, perhaps out of terror, Cabeza de Vaca became a medicine man.
Indians watched. They saw the power. They asked for help. He lay his hands on dying Indians. A number of those Indians lived. He was no longer a Spaniard. He was now a man unsure who he might be. He decided to walk west.
Perhaps no other man ever took such a walk. He may have walked through Coleman County. Adolf Bandelier has him walking that far north, north of the Colorado River. Most place him south. Wherever he walked, as many as three or four thousand followers may have walked with him and his three surviving companions. They walked west for three years. They walked through the Coahuiltecans and Jumanos in Texas. The word of their coming went before them. They were welcomed where they went. Cabeza de Vaca still did his healing. They walked through the pueblos of New Mexico and through the Colorado River tribes of Arizona and Califorma. They reached a Spanish outpost near the Gulf of California on May 18, 1536.
Cabeza de Vaca was taken to Mexico City, the word of his coming going ahead not unlike the work had gone before. But unlike Indians, the Spanish did not care for what they heard. In a time of inquisition, a time to burn heretics, the Spanish did not care to hear stories of a sunburned man who found powers in his hands. They suspected the devil. They were good, in those days, at finding devils. Cabeza de Vaca wrote his report, shut his mouth and went back to Spain.
I can imagine his long dark Spanish nights later. I can imagine how he remembered the living sea coast winds, how he remembered the living desert nights. They say his Spanish relatives and few remaining friends found Cabeza de Vaca strange.
I sit outside at my Coleman County hilltop house, I sit and look south over the valley where Indians once killed elephants and killed little horses and camels, killed them to eat. I can see blue Brady Gap. I think of the Spaniard Cabeza de Vaca. I think of the journey he took on foot and in his mind.
I sit and look in raging, forever blowing south wind. I sit at night with no light to sound and rush of forever wind. I think of Cabeza de Vaca. I think it is not man who designs his place. It is place that designs human beings. It doesn't matter if people walked across the Bering Strait from Asia, or walked first west from the Americas. (There are those, mostly Indians, who will say mankind originated here, not in Africa.) It doesn't matter if people came on Viking ships or Spanish ships or English, or came in reed boats across the South Pacific. All the human beings who exist on these American continents might well yet become Indians.
Perhaps the spirits of this place will make them Indian. Let spirits of other places stay where they belong. This is not the Mediterranean, not the Middle East. This is not Europe.
This is not Asia.
I cannot sit at my hilltop house and see spirits of those worlds. I sit here in raging wind of scorching summer afternoon, in raging wind of full moon night and raging wind of moonless night. I sit in wind of freezing winter. I see only the ancient spirits of this place of ancient spirits. I have no doubt the strange man, Cabeza de Vaca, saw them, too.
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Cabeza de Vaca © 2003, by The Estate of Roxy Gordon. All rights reserved.
