Cabeza de Vaca Exploration Timeline

Cabeza de Vaca Exploration Timeline

1527-1535

1535

The four men crossed the Rio Grande into Mexico.

1534

"The Four Ragged Castaways" fled from their captors.

1529

Cabeza's crew dwindled due to sickness on the Isle of Malhado

1532

Cabeza encountered tribes at the Matagorda Bay and endured enslavment along with 3 other men from his crew.

1528

Cabeza and his crew landed near Tamp Bay, Florida

Info

Making Landfall

In June 1527, Cabeza departed Spain with five ships under Emperor Charles V's authorization to settle between Florida and the Río de las Palmas. After wintering in Cuba, they landed near Tampa Bay in April 1528. Narváez then led 300 men and 40 horses ashore, mistakenly believing the Río de las Palmas was nearby. Separated from their ships and low on food, they endured a four-month trek to the Wakulla River, dwindling to fewer than 250 men..

Shipwreck and Sickness

Decimated by sickness on this landfall island, which Cabeza de Vaca named la Isla de Malhado (the Isle of Misfortune), by spring 1529 only thirteen Spaniards and an African slave remained alive, as well as Cabeza de Vaca who had ventured to the mainland where he, too, became seriously ill during the winter. Believing Cabeza de Vaca dead, because he had been absent for so long, twelve of the fourteen survivors on Malhado headed down the coast toward Mexico when the weather warmed.

Cabeza de Vaca, Álvar Núñez (ca. 1490–ca. 1559).Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, an early explorer and first historian of Texas, was born in Jerez de la Frontera, an Andalusian province in the south of Spain near Cádiz. The precise year of Cabeza de Vaca’s birth cannot be determined, but it was within the “birth window” of 1487–92.

Cabeza taken captive

Cabeza de Vaca was taken captive by native tribes. He endured a total of eighteen months of enslavement.

Cabeza was famous among the native tribes as a "Patron Saint" for his remarkably successful surgery performed on a Native American.