The Spanish Pioneers

by Charles Fletcher Lummis

The thirteen who escaped had fared even worse. They had fallen into cruel hands, and all had been slain except three, who were reserved for the harder fate of slaves. These three were Andrés Dorantes, a native of Bejar; Alonzo del Castillo Maldonado, a native of Salamanca; and the negro Estévanico, who was born in Azamor, Africa. These three and Vaca were all that were now left of the gallant four hundred and fifty men (among whom we do not count the deserters at Santo Domingo) who had sailed with such high hopes from Spain, in 1527, to conquer a corner of the New World,—four naked, tortured, shivering shadows; and even they were separated, though they occasionally heard vaguely of one another, and made vain attempts to come together. It was not until September, 1534 (nearly seven years later), that Dorantes, Castillo, Estévanico, and Vaca were reunited; and the spot where they found this happiness was somewhere in eastern Texas, west of the Sabine River.

But Vaca's six years of loneliness and suffering unspeakable had not been in vain,—for he had acquired, unknowingly, the key to safety; and amid all those horrors, and without dreaming of its significance, he had stumbled upon the very strange and interesting clew which was to save them all. Without it, all four would have perished in the wilderness, and the world would never have known their end.

While they were still on the Isle of Misfortune, a proposition had been made which seemed the height of the ridiculous. "In that isle," says Vaca, "they wished to make us doctors, without examining us or asking our titles; for they themselves cure sickness by blowing upon the sick one. With that blowing, and with their hands, they remove from him the disease; and they bade us do the same, so as to be of some use to them. We laughed at this, saying that they were making fun, and that we knew not how to heal; and for that they took away our food, till we should do that which they said. And seeing our stubbornness, an Indian said to me that I did not understand; for that it did no good for one to know how, because the very stones and other things of the field have power to heal,... and that we, who were men, must certainly have greater power."

This was a characteristic thing which the old Indian said, and a key to the remarkable superstitions of his race. But the Spaniards, of course, could not yet understand.

Presently the savages removed to the mainland. They were always in abject poverty, and many of them perished from starvation and from the exposures incident to their wretched existence. For three months in the year they had "nothing but shell-fish and very bad water;" and at other times only poor berries and the like; and their year was a series of wanderings hither and thither in quest of these scant and unsatisfactory foods.

It was an important fact that Vaca was utterly useless to the Indians. He could not serve them as a warrior; for in his wasted condition the bow was more than he could master. As a hunter he was equally unavailable; for, as he himself says, "it was impossible for him to trail animals." Assistance in carrying water or fuel or anything of the sort was impossible; for he was a man, and his Indian masters could not let a man do woman's work. So, among these starveling nomads, this man who could not help but must be fed was a real burden; and the only wonder is that they did not kill him.

Under these circumstances, Vaca began to wander about. His indifferent captors paid little attention to his movements, and by degrees he got to making long trips north, and up and down the coast. In time he began to see a chance for trading, in which the Indians encouraged him, glad to find their "white elephant" of some use at last. From the northern tribes he brought down skins and almagre (the red clay so indispensable to the savages for face-paint), flakes of flint to make arrow-heads, hard reeds for the shafts, and tassels of deer-hair dyed red. These things he readily exchanged among the coast tribes for shells and shell-beads, and the like,—which, in turn, were in demand among his northern customers.

On account of their constant wars, the Indians could net venture outside their own range; so this safe go-between trader was a convenience which they encouraged. So far as he was concerned, though the life was still one of great suffering, he was constantly gaining knowledge which would be useful to him in his never-forgotten plan of getting back to the world. These lonely trading expeditions of his covered thousands of miles on foot through the trackless wildernesses; and through them his aggregate wanderings were much greater than those of either of his fellow-prisoners.

It was during these long and awful tramps that Cabeza de Vaca had one particularly interesting experience. He was the first European who saw the great American bison, the buffalo, which has become practically extinct in the last decade, but once roamed the plains in vast hordes,—and first by many years. He saw them and ate their meat in the Red River country of Texas, and has left us a description of the "hunchback cows." None of his companions ever saw one, for in their subsequent journey together the four Spaniards passed south of the buffalo-country.

Meanwhile, as I have noted, the forlorn and naked trader had had the duties of a doctor forced upon him. He did not understand what this involuntary profession might do for him,—he was simply pushed into it at first, and followed it not from choice, but to keep from having trouble. He was "good for nothing but to be a medicine-man." He had learned the peculiar treatment of the aboriginal wizards, though not their fundamental ideas. The Indians still look upon sickness as a "being possessed;" and their idea of doctoring is not so much to cure disease, as to exorcise the bad spirits which cause it.