The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 91, July 1987 - April, 1988 Page: 130
619 p. : ill. (some col.), maps (some col.), ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Southwestern Historical Quarterly
of the journey was to ignore the Oviedo account, or to disregard parts
of both narratives and to send Cabeza de Vaca "where the route inter-
preter wanted him to go, not where . . . [he] plainly indicates that he
went."5
The two narratives, both of which were written from memory rather
than field notes, deserve attention for several reasons. First, they are
primary documents on the Indians of South Texas, for Cabeza de Vaca
lived with natives of the region and survived to write about them. No
other Spaniard was able to do this. He was also the only Spaniard to
record the names of Indians in the area and to locate them relative to
each other. His accounts of the Mariames and Avavares, with whom he
lived for about eighteen months and eight months, respectively, make
them the best described Indians of southern Texas. In the words of
T. N. Campbell and T. J. Campbell, "his cultural information quan-
titatively exceeds that of all his successors combined."" Second, Cabeza
de Vaca, Dorantes, Castillo, and Estevanico were the first non-Indians
to set foot on the soil of the Lone Star State and the first to cross the
North American continent. As noted above, if it can be determined
where they went and what they saw, their experiences can also supply
valuable data on early Texas landforms, flora, and fauna. There are,
for example, gross landscape features described in the narratives that
ought to be identifiable. The initial landing was on an island off the
Texas coast whose dimensions and location relative to another island
and four successive streams were given; inlets (ancones) along the coast
toward Pinuco were described; a river of nuts and extensive stands of
prickly pear cactus were mentioned; a large stream comparable in
width to the Guadalquivir River had to be crossed; and mountains near
the coast that ran from the direction of the "North Sea" were observed
soon after the river was forded.7 In reconstructing the most likely route
on the basis of these narratives, one should be sensitive to the com-
patibility of biotic, ethnographic, and physiographic information. Not
1528-1536, as Related by Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdes (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern
Illinois University, 1974). A brief, fragmentary document published in Coleccz6n de documents
znidstos, relatevos al descubrlmzento, conquzsta y organzzaczdn de las antzguas posessones espaiola s en
Amirca y Oceania sacados de los Archzvo del Resno, y muy especzalmente del de Indas (1864-1884;
reprint, 42 vols., Vaduz: Kraus Reprint, 1964-1966), XIV, 265-279, contains no Information
that is useful to route interpretation.
5T. N. Campbell and T. J. Campbell, Historic Indian Groups of the Choke Canyon Reservoir and
Surrounding Area, Southern Texas (San Antonio: Center for Archaeological Research, University
of Texas at San Antonio, 1981), 4.
SIbid., 64, 65 (quotation).
7In Spanish nomenclature, "North Sea" referred to the Atlantic Ocean and embraced the
Gulf of Mexico. Robert S. Weddle, Spanish Sea: The Gulf of Mexico in North American Discovery,
1500-1685 (College Station, Tex.: Texas A&M University Press, 1985), 201-202.130
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 91, July 1987 - April, 1988, periodical, 1987/1988; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101211/m1/170/: accessed April 28, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.