The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 22, July 1918 - April, 1919 Page: 205

THE
SOUTHWESTERN HISTORICAL
QUARTERLY
VOL. XXII JANUARY, 1919 No 3.
The publication committee and the editors disclaim responsibility for views expressed by
contributors to THE QUARTERLY
THE FIRST EUROPEANS IN TEXAS, 1528-1536
II
tARBERT DAVENPORT AND JOSEPH K. WELLS
8. Journey to the Land of Tunas
It is now necessary to consider the adventures of Dorantes,
Castillo, and the negro, during the years when they resided
among the Indians who wintered near the River of Nuts, before
Cabeza de Vaca came to join them.
"When summer comes, in the end of May . . . when the
floods in the rivers subside," says Oviedo,7" "it was the custom
of these Indians
To begin to go to eat tunas, which fruit is in these lands in
abundance, and they go more than forty leagues forward toward
Pnuco to eat them. . . This is the best food they have
in all the year, and these bear for a month and a half or two
months, and they eat this fruit, and march and kill some deer
at the same time . . . and in this manner; they take the
road by the coast, and run a wing into the land, and as most
of the year this land is deserted and without people there are
many deer, and they round them up and drive them into the sea,
and hold them there . . . until they are drowned. .
With this exercise they pass forward on their road to where they
depart from the salt water and enter into the interior, eating
their tunas which continue for fifty or sixty days. . . . There
among the tunas Castillo, the negro and Andres Dorantes came
back together again, and concerted plans to leave, but since the
50Oviedo, III, p. 601.