The Relación of Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca was first printed at Zamora in 1542, and with slight changes was reprinted, with the first edition of the Comentarios on the Rio de la Plata, at Valladolid, in 1555. The editio princeps was translated into Italian by Ramusio, in the third volume of his Navigationi et Viaggi (Venice, 1556), and this was paraphrased into English by Samuel Purchas in volume IV. of Purchas His Pilgrimes (London, 1613, pt. IV., lib. VIII., cap. 1). The Naufragios (or Relacion) and Comentarios were reprinted at Madrid in 1736, preceded by the Exámen Apologético of Antonio Ardoino, who seemed to feel it his duty to reply to an Austrian monk named Caspar Plautus, who, in 1621, under the name Philoponus, published a treatise in which he maintained that laymen like Cabeza de Vaca should not be permitted to perform miracles. This edition of the narration of Cabeza de Vaca is included in volume I. of Barcia's Historiadores Primitivos de las Indias Occidentales, published at Madrid in 1749. The Naufragios of Alvar Nuñez, from the edition of 1555, appears in volume I. of Vedia's Historiadores Primitivos de Indias (Madrid, ed. 1852). The letter to the Audiencia of Española, "edited" by Oviedo, has already been alluded to. A "Capitulacion que se tomó con Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca," dated Madrid, 18 Marzo, 1540, is found in the Colección de Documentos Inéditos del Archivo de Indias (tomo XXIII., pp. 8-33, 1875). A Relación by Cabeza de Vaca, briefly narrating the story of the expedition until the arrival of its survivors in Espíritu Santo Bay, with his instructions as treasurer, is printed in the Colección de Documentos de Indias, XIV. 265-279 (Madrid, 1870). The most recent Spanish edition of the more famous Relacion reprinted in the following pages forms a part of volume V. of the Colección de Libros y Documentos referentes á la Historia de América (Madrid, 1906), which also contains the Comentarios.
The single French translation was published as volume VII. of Henri Ternaux-Compans's Voyages (Paris, 1837), from the edition of 1555, while the Commentaires form volume VI.
In 1851 a translation of the edition of 1555 into English, by (Thomas) Buckingham Smith, under the title The Narrative of Alvar Nuñez Cabeça de Vaca, was published privately at Washington by George W. Riggs; and shortly after Mr. Smith's death, in 1871, another edition, with many additions, was published in New York under the editorial supervision of John Gilmary Shea and at the expense of Henry C. Murphy. It is this edition of the Narrative that is here reprinted. A paraphrase of the 1851 edition of Smith's translation appears in Henry Kingsley's Tales of Old Travels (London, 1869). The first fourteen chapters of W. W. H. Davis's Spanish Conquest of New Mexico (Doylestown, Pa., 1869) are also a paraphrase of the same work. Chapters XXX.-XXXVI. of the 1871 edition of Smith, somewhat abridged, were printed in an Old South Leaflet (Gen. Ser., No. 39, Boston, 1893). A "Relation of what Befel the Persons who Escaped from the Disasters that Attended the Armament of Captain Pamphilo de Narvaez on the Shores and in the countries of the North," translated and condensed from the letter published by Oviedo, is printed in The Historical Magazine (vol. XII., pp. 141, 204, 267, 347; September-December, 1867). The most recent English edition of the Cabeza de Vaca Relation, translated from the very rare imprint of 1542 by Mrs. Fanny Bandelier, and edited, with an introduction, by her husband Ad. F. Bandelier, was published in New York, in 1905, under the title, The Journey of Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca, as one of the volumes of the "Trail Makers" series.
F. W. Hodge.
[THE NARRATIVE OF CABEZA DE VACA]
Relation that Alvar Nuñez Cabeça de Vaca gave of what befell the armament in the Indies whither Pánfilo de Narváez went for Governor from the year 1527 to the year 1536 [1537] when with three comrades he returned and came to Sevilla.[1]