USA > California > The Spanish Pioneers And The California Missions > Part 6
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It is a long way back to those days. Henry VIII. was then king of England, and sixteen rulers have since occupied that throne. Elizabeth, the Virgin Queen, was not born when Vaca started on his ap- palling journey, and did not begin to reign until
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twenty years after he had ended it. It was fifty years before the birth of Captain John Smith, the founder of Virginia ; a generation before the birth of Shakspere, and two and a half generations before Milton. Henry Hudson, the famous explorer for whom one of our chief rivers is named, was not yet born. Columbus himself had been dead less than twenty-five years, and the conqueror of Mexico had seventeen yet to live. It was sixty years before the world had heard of such a thing as a newspaper, and the best geographers still thought it possible to sail through America to Asia. There was not a white man in North America above the middle of Mexico ; nor had one gone two hundred miles inland in this continental wilderness, of which the world knew almost less than we know now of the moon.
The name of Cabeza de Vaca may seem to us a curious one. It means "Head of a Cow." But this quaint family name was an honorable one in Spain, and had a brave winning : it was earned at the battle of Naves de Tolosa in the thirteenth cen- tury, one of the decisive engagements of all those centuries of war with the Moors. Alvar's grand- father was also a man of some note, being the con- queror of the Canary Islands.
Alvar was born in Xeres1 de la Frontera, Spain, toward the last of the fifteenth century. Of his early life we know little, except that he had already won some consideration when in 1527, a mature man, he came to the New World. In that year we
1 Pronounced Hay-ress.
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find him sailing from Spain as treasurer and sheriff of the expedition of six hundred men with which Panfilo de Narvaez intended to conquer and colo- nize the Flowery Land, discovered a decade before by Ponce de Leon.
They reached Santo Domingo, and thence sailed to Cuba. On Good Friday, 1528, ten months after leaving Spain, they reached Florida, and landed at what is now named Tampa Bay. Taking formal pos- session of the country for Spain, they set out to explore and conquer the wilderness. At Santo Do- mingo shipwreck and desertion had already cost them heavily, and of the original six hundred men there were but three hundred and forty-five left. No sooner had they reached Florida than the most fearful misfortunes began, and with every day grew worse. Food there was almost none; hostile Indi- ans beset them on every hand; and the countless rivers, lakes, and swamps made progress difficult and dangerous. The little army was fast thinning out under war and starvation, and plots were rife among the survivors. They were so enfeebled that they could not even get back to their vessels. Strug- gling through at last to the nearest point on the coast, far west of Tampa Bay, they decided that their only hope was to build boats and try to coast to the Spanish settlements in Mexico. Five rude boats were made with great toil; and the poor wretches turned westward along the coast of the Gulf. Storms scattered the boats, and wrecked one after the other. Scores of the haggard adventurers
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were drowned, Narvaez among them; and scores dashed upon an inhospitable shore perished by ex- posure and starvation. The living were forced to subsist upon the dead. Of the five boats, three had gone down with all on board; of the eighty men who escaped the wreck but fifteen were still alive. All their arms and clothing were at the bottom of the Gulf.
The survivors were now on Mal Hado, "the Isle of Misfortune." We know no more of its location than that it was west of the mouth of the Mississippi. Their boats had crossed that mighty current where it plunges out into the Gulf, and theirs were the first European eyes to see even this much of the Father of Waters. The Indians of the island, who had no better larder than roots, berries, and fish, treated their unfortunate guests as generously as was in their power ; and Vaca has written gratefully of them.
In the spring his thirteen surviving companions determined to escape. Vaca was too sick to walk, and they abandoned him to his fate. Two other sick men, Oviedo and Alaniz, were also left behind ; and the latter soon perished. It was a pitiable plight in which Vaca now found himself. A naked skele- ton, scarce able to move, deserted by his friends and at the mercy of savages, it is small wonder that, as he tells us, his heart sank within him. But he was one of the men who never "let go." A constant soul held up the poor, worn body; and as the weather grew less rigorous, Vaca slowly recovered from his sickness.
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For nearly six years he lived an incomparably lonely life, bandied about from tribe to tribe of Indians, sometimes as a slave, and sometimes only a despised outcast. Oviedo fled from some danger, and he was never heard of afterward; Vaca faced it, and lived. That his sufferings were almost be- yond endurance cannot be doubted. Even when he was not the victim of brutal treatment, he was the worthless encumbrance, the useless interloper, among poor savages who lived the most miserable and precarious lives. That they did not kill him speaks well for their humane kindness.
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 to- gether. It was not until September, 1534 (nearly seven years later), that Dorantes, Castillo, Estévan- ico, and Vaca were reunited; and the spot where they found this happiness was somewhere in eastern Texas, west of the Sabine River.
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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 signi- ficance, he had stumbled upon the very strange and interesting clew which was to save them all. With- out 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 examin- ing 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 super- stitions of his race. But the Spaniards, of course, could not yet understand.
Presently the savages removed to the mainland.
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They were always in abject poverty, and many of them perished from starvation and from the ex- posures 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 mas- ters 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
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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 not 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 expedi- tions 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
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"QUEEN OF THE MISSIONS," SANTA BARBARA Before the earthquake of 1925, but conscientiously restored to about this status.
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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 pos- sessed;" and their idea of doctoring is not so much to cure disease, as to exorcise the bad spirits which cause it.
This is done by a sleight-of-hand rigmarole, even to this day. The medicine-man would suck the sore spot, and pretend thus to extract a stone or thorn which was supposed to have been the cause of trouble ; and the patient was " cured." Cabeza de Vaca began to "practise medicine " after the Indian fashion. He says himself, " I have tried these things, and they were very successful."
When the four wanderers at last came together after their long separation, - in which all had suf- fered untold horrors, - Vaca had then, though still indefinitely, the key of hope. Their first plan was to escape from their present captors. It took ten months to effect it, and meantime their distress was great, as it had been constantly for so many years. At times they lived on a daily ration of two hand- fuls of wild peas and a little water. Vaca relates what a godsend it seemed when he was allowed to scrape hides for the Indians ; he carefully saved the scrapings, which served him as food for days. They had no clothing, and there was no shelter ; and con- stant exposure to heat and cold and the myriad
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thorns of that country caused them to "shed their skin like snakes."
At last, in August, 1535, the four sufferers es- caped to a tribe called the Avavares. But now a new career began to open to them. That his com. panions might not be as useless as he had been, Cabeza de Vaca had instructed them in the " arts " of Indian medicine-men ; and all four began to put their new and strange profession into practice. To the ordinary Indian charms and incantations these humble Christians added fervent prayers to the true God. It was a sort of sixteenth-century " faith- cure ; " and naturally enough, among such supersti- tious patients it was very effective. Their multitu- dinous cures the amateur but sincere doctors, with touching humility, attributed entirely to God; but what great results these might have upon their own fortunes now began to dawn upon them. From wandering, naked, starving, despised beggars, and slaves to brutal savages, they suddenly became per- sonages of note, - still paupers and sufferers, as were all their patients, but paupers of mighty power. There is no fairy tale more romantic than the career thenceforth of these poor, brave men walking pain- fully across a continent as masters and benefactors of all that host of wild people.
Trudging on from tribe to tribe, painfully and slowly the white medicine-men crossed Texas and came close to our present New Mexico. It has long been reiterated by the closet historians that they entered New Mexico, and got even as far north as
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where Santa Fe now is. But modern scientific research has absolutely proved that they went on from Texas through Chihuahua and Sonora, and never saw an inch of New Mexico.
With each new tribe the Spaniards paused awhile to heal the sick. Everywhere they were treated with the greatest kindness their poor hosts could give, and with religious awe. Their progress is a very valuable object-lesson, showing just how some Indian myths are formed : first, the successful medi- cine-man, who at his death or departure is remem- bered as a hero, then as a demigod, then as divinity.
In the Mexican States they first found agricultural Indians, who dwelt in houses of sod and boughs, and had beans and pumpkins. These were the Jovas, a branch of the Pimas. Of the scores of tribes they had passed through in our present Southern States not one has been fully identified. They were poor, wandering creatures, and long ago disappeared from the earth. But in the Sierra Madre of Mexico they found superior Indians, whom we can recognize still. Here they found the men unclad, but the women "very honest in their dress," - with cotton tunics of their own weaving, with half-sleeves, and a skirt to the knee ; and over it a skirt of dressed deerskin reaching to the ground, and fastened in front with straps. They washed their clothing with a soapy root, - the amole, now similarly used by Indians and Mexicans throughout the Southwest. These people gave Cabeza de Vaca some turquoise, and five arrow- heads each chipped from a single emerald.
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In this village in southwestern Sonora the Span- iards stayed three days, living on split deer-hearts ; whence they named it the "Town of Hearts."
A day's march beyond they met an Indian wear- ing upon his necklace the buckle of a sword-belt and a horseshoe nail; and their hearts beat high at this first sign, in all their eight years' wandering, of the nearness of Europeans. The Indian told them that men with beards like their own had come from the sky and made war upon his people.
The Spaniards were now entering Sinaloa, and found themselves in a fertile land of flowing streams. The Indians were in mortal fear; for two brutes of a class who were very rare among the Spanish con- querors (they were, I am glad to say, punished for their violation of the strict laws of Spain) were then trying to catch slaves. The soldiers had just left ; but Cabeza de Vaca and Estévanico, with eleven Indians, hurried forward on their trail, and next day overtook four Spaniards, who led them to their rascally captain, Diego de Alcaraz. It was long before that officer could believe the wondrous story told by the naked, torn, shaggy, wild man; but at last his coldness was thawed, and he gave a certifi- cate of the date and of the condition in which Vaca had come to him, and then sent back for Dorantes and Castillo. Five days later these arrived, accom- panied by several hundred Indians.
Alcaraz and his partner in crime, Cebreros, wished to enslave these aborigines; but Cabeza de Vaca, regardless of his own danger in taking such a stand,
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indignantly opposed the infamous plan, and finally forced the villains to abandon it. The Indians were saved ; and in all their joy at getting back to the world, the Spanish wanderers parted with sincere regret from these simple-hearted friends. After a few days' hard travel they reached the post of Culi- acan about the first of May, 1536, where they were warmly welcomed by the ill-fated hero Melchior Diaz. He led one of the earliest expeditions ( in 1539) to the unknown north; and in 1540, on a second expedition across part of Arizona and into California, was accidentally killed.
After a short rest the wanderers left for Compos- tela, then the chief town of the province of New Galicia, - itself a small journey of three hundred miles through a land swarming with hostile savages. At last they reached the City of Mexico in safety, and were received with great honor. But it was long before they could accustom themselves to eat- ing the food and wearing the clothing of civilized people.
The negro remained in Mexico. On the 10th of April, 1537, Cabeza de Vaca, Castillo, and Dorantes sailed for Spain, arriving in August. The chief hero never came back to North America, but we hear of Dorantes as being there in the following year. Their report of what they saw, and of the stranger coun- tries to the north of which they had heard, had already set on foot the remarkable expeditions which resulted in the discovery of Arizona, New Mexico, our Indian Territory, Kansas, and Colorado, and
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brought about the building of the first European towns in the inland area of the United States. Estévanico was engaged with Fray Marcos in the discovery of New Mexico, and was slain by the Indians.
Cabeza de Vaca, as a reward for his then unpar- alleled walk of much more than ten thousand miles in the unknown land, was made governor of Para- guay in 1540. He was not qualified for the place, and returned to Spain in disgrace. That he was not to blame, however, but was rather the victim of circum- stances, is indicated by the fact that he was restored to favor and received a pension of two thousand ducats. He died in Seville at a good old age.
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T' HE student most familiar with history finds himself constantly astounded by the journeys of the Spanish Pioneers. If they had done nothing else in the New World, their walks alone were enough to earn them fame. Such a number of similar trips over such a wilderness were never heard of elsewhere. To comprehend those rides or tramps of thousands of miles, by tiny bands or single heroes, one must be familiar with the country traversed, and know something of the times when these exploits were performed. The Spanish chroniclers of the day do not dilate upon the difficulties and dangers: it is almost a pity that they had not been vain enough to "make more " of their obstacles. But however curt the narrative may be on these points, the ob- stacles were there and had to be overcome; and to this very day, after three centuries and a half have mitigated that wilderness which covered half a world, have tamed its savages, filled it with convenient stations, crossed it with plain roads, and otherwise removed ninety per cent of its terrors, such journeys as were looked upon as every-day matters by those
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hardy heroes would find few bold enough to under- take them. The only record at all comparable to that Spanish overrunning of the New World was the story of the California Argonauts of '49, who flocked across the great plains in the most remarkable shift- ing of population of which history knows; but even that was petty, so far as area, hardship, danger, and endurance went, beside the travels of the Pioneers. Thousand-mile marches through the deserts, or the still more fatal tropic forests, were too many to be even catalogued. It is one thing to follow a trail, and quite another to penetrate an absolutely track- less wilderness. A big, well-armed wagon-train is one thing, and a little squad on foot or on jaded horses quite another. A journey from a known point to a known point -both in civilization, though the wilderness lies between - is very differ- ent from a journey from somewhere, through the un- known, to nowhere ; whose starting, course, and end are all untrodden and unguessed wilds. I have no desire to disparage the heroism of our Argonauts, - they made a record of which any nation should be proud; but they never had a chance to match the deeds of their brother-heroes of another tongue and another age.
The walk of Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca, the first American traveller, was surpassed by the achieve- ment of the poor and forgotten soldier Andrés Do- campo. Cabeza de Vaca tramped much more than ten thousand miles, but Docampo much over twenty
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thousand, and under as fearful hardships. The ex- plorations of Vaca were far more valuable to the world ; yet neither of them set out with the inten- tion of exploring. But Docampo did make a fear- ful walk voluntarily, and for a heroic purpose, which resulted in his later enormous achievement ; while Vaca's was merely the heroism of a very uncom- mon man in escaping misfortune. Docampo's tramp lasted nine years; and though he left behind no book to relate his experiences, as did Vaca, the skeleton of his story as it remains to us is extremely characteristic and suggestive of the times, and re- counts other heroism than that of the brave soldier.
When Coronado first came to New Mexico in 1540, he brought four missionaries with his little army. Fray Marcos returned soon from Zuñi to Mexico, on account of his physical infirmities. Fray Juan de la Cruz entered earnestly into mis- sion-work among the Pueblos; and when Coro- nado and his whole force abandoned the Territory, he insisted upon remaining behind among his dusky wards at Tiguex (Bernalillo). He was a very old man, and fully expected to give up his life as soon as his countrymen should be gone; and so it was. He was murdered by the Indians about the 25th of November, 1542.
The lay-brother, Fray Luis Descalona, also a very old man, chose for his parish the pueblo of Tshi- quite (Pecos), and remained there after the Span- iards had left the country. He built himself a little hut outside the great fortified town of the savages,
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and there taught those who would listen to him, and tended his little flock of sheep, -the remnants of those Coronado had brought, which were the first that ever entered the present United States. The people came to love him sincerely, - all save the wizards, who hated him for his influence ; and these finally murdered him, and ate the sheep.
Fray Juan de Padilla, the youngest of the four mis- sionaries, and the first martyr on the soil of Kan- sas, was a native of Andalusia, Spain, and a man of great energy both mentally and physically. He himself made no mean record as a foot-traveller, and our professional pedestrians would stand aghast if confronted with the thousands of desert miles this tireless apostle to the Indians plodded in the wild Southwest. He had already held very important positions in Mexico, but gladly gave up his honors to become a poor missionary among the savages of the unknown north. Having walked with Corona- do's force from Mexico across the deserts to the Seven Cities of Cibola, Fray Padilla trudged to Moqui with Pedro de Tobar and his squad of twenty men. Then plodding back to Zuñi, he soon set forth again with Hernando de Alvarado and twenty men, on a tramp of about a thousand miles more. He was in this expedition with the first Europeans that ever saw the lofty town of Acoma, the Rio Grande within what is now New Mexico, and the great pueblo of Pecos.
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