Adventures in The Unknown...

​Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca was a Spanish explorer who survived the doomed Narváez expedition to Florida in 1527 and spent the next eight years crossing the North American continent on foot before finding Spanish colonies in Mexico and eventually returning to Spain. His is the first recorded account of the flora and fauna, as well as the native tribes in what would eventually become Texas. The unvarnished and straightforward account detailing the daily lives of the inhabitants and their cyclic struggle to survive provides a clear picture of what settlers to the area would encounter three hundred years later. He was held as a slave, promoted as a faith healer, and forced to suffer hunger and physical hardships beyond imagination. His account supersedes the concept of a “noble savage” and instead describes the brutal reality that life in primitive societies was “nasty, brutish, and short”. There are many accounts and translations of the explorer’s first-hand account, but this 1961 edition translated by Cyclone Covey, includes helpful historical context from research that has traced much of the actual route he and his four companions took on their six-thousand-mile trek. Anyone with even a passing interest in Texas history would do well to start with this slim volume recounting Cabeza de Vaca’s epic journey.

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