The Shipwrecked Men

by Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca

The original disaster narrative, The Shipwrecked Men tells how a confident, well-equipped Spanish expedition to explore the Florida mainland came utterly to grief through arrogance, storms and bad luck, leaving a handful of survivors to stagger to Mexico City some years later.

Genres: Travel, History, Nonfiction, Classics, Memoir, Spanish Literature

160 pages, Mass Market Paperback

Published February 27, 2007

About the author

Spanish colonial administrator Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca explored parts of present-day Florida, Texas, and Mexico and aroused interest in the region with his vivid stories of opportunities.

In the New World, he and three other persons survived the expedition of Pánfilo de Narváez of 1527. During eight years of traveling across the southwest, he traded and encountered and in faith healed various Native American tribes before he reconnected with forces in 1536. After returning in 1537, he wrote an account, first published in 1542 as La Relación ("The Relation", or in more modern terms "The Account"), retitled Naufragios ("Shipwrecks") in later editions. People ably consider and note Cabeza de Vaca as a proto-anthropologist for his detailed accounts of the many tribes of Native Americans.

[Wikipedia]

Reviews

[Daren · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is an excerpt from The Journey of Alvar Nunez Cabeza De Vaca, here as a part of the Penguin Great Journeys series.

This is the tale of a Spanish nautical expedition who became shipwrecked in 1527 in what is now Florida,and the survival of the author (and very few others) who made the overland journey to turn up in Mexico some ten years later.

I guess from a starting point, I didn't really love this book.

1/. I didn't enjoy the writing style (it was published in 1905, so maybe my expectations are too high. The chapter titles are pompous and irritating. Examples "How the Manner of Reception changed", "How we had Churches Built in that Land", "How the Indians Separated Us". Yeah I am not sure, I just find the one sentence summary annoying...
2/. The supposed miracle cures carried out by God because these men prayed for the cure. For me this effects the credibility of the book. This doesn't just happen once, it happens literally tens of times, for tens of Indians... P78 "At the very moment he made the sign of the cross over them and commended them to God,the Indians said that all the pain was gone... As the news spread that same night there came many other sick people for him to cure... we thanked God for his mercy and kindness, which increased daily, and after they were all well they began to dance and celebrate...", P114 "We prayed for God our Lord to assist us and the sick began to get well" So yeah, I am a dis-believing heathen, but I suggest bullshit.
3/. The religious conversion of the ignorant natives does my head in (so, probably my problem I guess, not the authors)...
4/. Repetition. So a ten year story, being stuck with Indians, there is not a lot going on. There is a hell of a lot of leaving one Indian group and walking to the next Indian group, being accepted or not, curing sick people, receiving gifts, discussing the other Indians who live nearby, and then heading off there.

For me the more interesting part of the book is the arrogance and failure of the expedition, the lack of adequate planning and foresight, and the woeful decisions made after the ships are wrecked.

[Alice-Elizabeth (Prolific Reader Alice) · Rating 2 out of 5]

A random and cheap impulse buy from the previous visit to Hay-On-Wye last year. Originally written and published in the 1540s, The Shipwrecked Men is about a voyage to the US at first going wrong with crew members dying and bad weather. However across the many months at sea, there's still a ton of exploration and meeting up with Native American tribes. Sorry to say this a little brutally, but it was a very boring historical insight. It read more like we started at A and ended up at B but then this happened in-between.

[Fadillah · Rating 2 out of 5]

“We traveled over a great part of the country and found it all deserted, since the people had fled to the mountains leaving their houses and fields out of fear for the christians. This filled our hearts with sorrows, seeing the land so fertile and beautiful but abandoned and the places burned down and the people so thin and wan, fleeing and hiding
- ‘How the gave us hearts of deer’ chapter by Cabeza De Vaca (The shipwrecked men)
.
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I dont know where to start after i finished reading it. It was mundane and pretty boring despite only contained 150 pages. I felt the book was too long for a failed expedition in 1527 narrated by Cabeza De Vaca, the spanish explorer. The fact that the man begins his journey abusing , stealing , kidnapping and even justifiying his actions as to say why he did it in the first place from Native Americans already put this book in a bad spotlight (at least for me). NGL, It took me a while to get used to the term ‘Indians’ which were being used by the author to refer ‘the Natives Americans’. The writing style read like a report and it definitely not meant to be literary. The readers was expected to just follow the journey described in it. Since the expedition is under the banner of the Spanish king, we now knew that to why it sounded like a report. Another thing that i find this book disturbing is when he constantly mentioning GOD as to make sense that he got spared from countless death possibility due to starvation, disease and many ambush attack from native americans themself. I get that in a way maybe he wanted to realign the focus away from hopelessness, one usually turned to GOD but after doing so many crimes, i just couldnt see the point. The tone he made on writing how Christians are here to bring enlightenment to these native americans despite the journey itself thrive on the exploitation of non christians. When the author played some sort of doctor to one of the few tribes he has met and described how he managed to cure them while drawing a cross symbol just reeks phony. I just felt pure rage and disgusted when the native americans were considered evil as they didn't want to be converted by de Vaca and his entourage. It showed how entitled and shameless these colonizers and settlers. Eventually, he survived his ordeal and has been living among natives for almost decade. He managed to adapt with their lifestyle and he felt slightly connected to them. Throughout the book, he noted some of their customs, ranks, language, attires and even the way these natives thrive despite a harsh weather and uncertain environment. When Spaniards found him at last, he told them that natives should have been left alone. Unfortunately, his advice fell on deaf ears. This book made me recalled back Robinson Crusoe. I dont know why i felt the need to do so but i am finding myself asking question especially how Crusoe truly felt about Friday. Overall, i dont want to recommend this. Read at your own risk if you are interested in reading a book about recollections of expedition.

[Sheehan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have seen the author referenced in any number of early Caribbean and Gulf histories, never got around to reading the root text. Found this copy in the donate box at the Library and figured it was worth a read finally.

It was worth it, if only to dip into a memoir of what travel and exploration entailed in the 16th Century, in short, it was NO JOKE! The disparity in the simplest of transit woes between 21st century me an Cabesa de Vaca are so vast as to make any concern I have in the modern day seem a trifle; this book puts some real perspective on the most basic comforts I take for granted on a daily basis.

Also of note, the degree to which de Vaca had to effectively "go native" and cast off much of the hubris that led him on the expedition, to survive the ordeal and make it home. Starting with over six hundred men, his expedition returns single-digit humans home, he himself goes from conqueror, to slave to proto-deity and back a number of times. He basically walked across the entire southwestern U.S. and northern Mexico, with nothing, begging for everything and surviving almost entirely due to the giving nature of the indigenous groups he encounters.

It's easy to pick the low-hanging fruit and simply criticize colonial exploitation et al and dismiss the whole tale, but I think it's worth really examining the more meaningful underlying personal journey of de Vaca as he has to manifest the principals of his faith and learn an unorthodox understanding of the giving humanity of those simply seen as heathens prior to his tribulations. The whole book shows the actions of every indigenous group encountered to be more in line with stated christian mores than the behavior/actions of every European Christian in country; de Vaca realizes this inconsistency of thought before he gets out of harm's way, and speaks up (which changes nothing for the indigenous folks, no spolier there, you know how that story ends).

Very interesting and enlightening memoir.

[Max Reads · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not really written in diary format, this is sort of a debriefing report of the 1527 Narvaez expedition to explore Florida, which went completely awry, as they traveled along Louisiana, into Texas and ending up in Mexico City almost ten years later.

The author really gives two simultaneous and totally opposing views of "uncharted" North America, and is often at odds with himself. You have his descriptions of a totally pristine land, sometimes desolate, sometimes teeming with animals, and then you have his constant descriptions of moving through tribal land and the homes of the native people, who they clearly consider to be on the same level as plant and wildlife, not counting them towards population of the country at all due to their not being Christian, or able to communicate fluently with them.

It's an interesting read, and I guess very sad because it showcases the attitudes of the original European explorers of North America, walking into peoples' villages and giving orders which are immediately followed because the reputation of death and destruction that precedes them. The idea that any native of North America shouldn't immediately obey these weird outsiders is treated as insane or annoying to them, and the subjects of the account clearly feel that absolutely everything in sight is a no-consequence resource, regardless of whether it's human or not.

It's bonkers how in-the-right and justified these people felt at the time, when they really were upsetting the balance of a peopled nation just by being present in a culture they didn't fit into or understand, even before the mayhem the Europeans caused thoughtlessly and deliberately.

Not the kind of thing I usually read, felt like a list of boring and depressing events. Objectively interesting, and short enough to knock out in an afternoon, but not really fun at all.

[James Barker · Rating 2 out of 5]

Despite moments of anthropological interest this book did not capture me at all. History can always be seen as questionable but this reduction of Cabeza de Vaca's record of his adventures in the New World is full of questionable claims that do not seem to be legitimate. The author makes himself a hero, the go-to boy for his governor, a god sent from Heaven for the credulous natives. Yes, a flavour of 1520s Florida comes through but it could have been a thing of majesty rather than this flimsy collection of glass baubles.

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

i love history and have read a great deal of historical books. sadly reading about the Spaniards who landed in America, I find the tales are all rather bleak. This one follows the rest. The author was one of the first to travel from Florida along the gulf coast to Mexico. one sees how impoverished the natives were and how the Spaniards, first bent on conquest were forced to live like the true Americans. Interesting insight to early America.

[Graziano · Rating 4 out of 5]

Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca (ca. 1492 – ca. 1560) was a Spanish explorer.
He took part in the 1527 Panfilo de Narvaez expedition to explore Florida.
Became famous writing in 1542 The Report, or The Shipwrecked Men. Six hundred men and five ships was reduced to four people.

Cabeza de Vaca’s story of the journey is brief but tells to the readers many important facts related to the first knowledge of the New World. Cabeza de Vaca’s point of view is not the usual of the conqueror, but like one of a modern anthropologist: accepting the people with their way of life, without judging or trying to change something.

Although there are several theories about the exact route of Cabeza de Vaca’s journey, it is known that they travelled across Dominican Republic, Cuba, Florida, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and Mexico City where they have been rescued.

‘Since the lodges afforded so little shelter, people began to die, and five Christian quartered on the coast were driven to such extremes that they ate each other, until but one remained, who, being left alone, had no one to eat him.’ (page 50)

[Wendy · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the fascinating aspects of this account is the way it occurs in a space of which the writer has no concept, at the time of his trials and wanderings, or even later, when he has returned home. Everything seems to happen in an indeterminate place, one for which no map is known, and no coordinates exist. I haven't read anything else that gave me so clear an idea of what it was like for Europeans and Native Americans to meet before each one's sense of the other had gelled, at a point when things could have conceivably gone in a much better direction than they did, towards the end of this account and not long after.

[Jon · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was a bit difficult for me to rate. It's an incredibly interesting read, but I don't know that I would call it a great book. The story is fantastic, but it isn't the most beautiful in terms of its prose.

[Anthony Peter · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is an abridged version of Cabeza de Vaca’s ‘The Chronicle of the Narvàez Expedition’ of 1527. This was an expedition that set out from Spain with the brief to explore Florida, but 9 years later all but four of the 600 men were dead.

The author, a survivor, describes how they were shipwrecked, tried to carry out the exploration they had been tasked with, how the different parties were eventually dispersed and lost to each other and then how he and three others managed to subsist and make their way – all on foot - into, I think, modern day California and then to Mexico City where the Spanish had already established a colonial presence.

The extent to which his account can be believed is questionable, I’d have thought. For nine years he cannot have had any opportunity to make notes and if his memory has served him truly, then it was a remarkable one.

I’d rather hoped for a rattling good yarn, but the narrative is a ‘chronicle’ so it’s striving after some sort of factual accuracy which makes it rather dry. Much of the time the survivors are living amongst the ‘Indians’, and we get rather tedious details about when and why they decamped from one group to another. Nevertheless, there is some interesting anthropological detailing of the cultural life of the native populations in the Gulf of Mexico area of North America. Much of it is to do with the hunger that hunter-gatherer coastal peoples experienced for much of the year – the Californian tribes fare much better in settlements with abundant crops from agricultural practices. There is also a lot of reference to what seemed to me to be the capricious behaviour of the native tribes: they were generally very welcoming, but also regarded the Spaniards as slaves and beat them cruelly; they had a peculiar attitude to property, often giving everything they had to others but thinking nothing of stealing from each other or other tribes; and yet Cabeza de Vaca notes , admiringly, that they are often tall, well-built people whose stamina and skill with weaponry is second to none.

But more than these observations, I was struck by the Spaniards’ colonising Christian arrogance. They think nothing of stealing food to victual themselves, and the fellow countrymen de Vaca and his friends meet in New Mexico are downright bandits who are enslaving natives left, right and centre. Their cruelty is ruthless. De Vaca habitually calls himself and his friends ‘the Christians’, and is always thanking God for their survival. But it must be far-fetched to claim that, as they proceeded through the land, local tribes got wind of their ability to heal the sick by making the sign of the cross over them. This they seem to do regularly and with huge numbers of people, unfailingly managing to cure them. Surely not? I thought it was pretty much established now that they were much more likely to have killed them with European diseases. But truth is said to be stranger than fiction, so maybe I shouldn’t be so sceptical.

But I am.

[Petra Deane · Rating 4 out of 5]

This has the strangest aura, this story. Starts out abhorrent, plainly evil. Then it morphs into something else. Surely one of the most interesting examples of a character arc in diary narration. He becomes semi-humanized and divine, but remains a colonist with colonist intentions. His profound ignorance at first contact with ancient north american cultures makes for a fascinating read. The toss-off way he refers to the entire plains buffalo culture as ‘the cows’ was one of my favorite examples. For the longest time I thought he was just talking about a dozen spanish cows that had escaped some ship and were roaming the woods.

[Ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

The way Cabeza de Vaca writes about Native Americans is almost absurd considering the context of Spanish colonialism and the fact that this was written in the 16th century. To have a Spanish aristocrat write a report about Native Americans in an insightful, unprejudiced and almost anthropological way is fascinating. From this book alone, Cabeza de Vaca appears to be a genuine enlightenment figure and if you have an interest in the period, it makes for an excellent read.

[Caleb Barron · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating account of arrogance, hubris and a complete heel turn on any possible redemption. A reminder of the dangerous ideas that fueled imperialism wrapped up in an incredible tale of survival. A few moments where you feel the creakiness of it being a historical account, so not always the most thrilling read, but feels like a unique story however dubious its contents.

[John Nelson · Rating 3 out of 5]

In 1527 a poorly organized and led Spanish expedition landed on the coast of Florida to search for gold. They initially treated the Indians with contempt, plundering food from them and not infrequently fighting and killing them when trading and communicating with them would have served the Spanish interests much better. The expedition quickly fractured when supplies ran low. Most of the Spaniards died of disease or starvation, were killed in Indian attacks, or disappeared into the wilderness. The handful of survivors were enslaved by Indians, who they had treated with scorn just a few months earlier, before escaping and eventually reaching safety in Mexico several years later.

It is a remarkable story. However, this memoir by one of the survivors, Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, does not tell the story well. Cabeza de Vaca does not really delve into the feelings of desolation, despair, and abandonment the survivors must have felt. Instead, he falls back on repeated statements of gratitude to God. While this religiosity was the norm for the period, it does not satisfy the modern reader's (mine, at least) desire to know what they really felt.

Cabeza de Vaca's description of the survivor's long journey to safety also is deficient. It is not possible to identify Cabeza de Vaca's route based on his what he wrote, and his description of the Indians he met along the way contains too many superficial statements of strange, bizarre, and unknowable customs and too few observations reflecting an understanding of what really was happening. The literature of the time included many half-true fables of what existed beyond the edges of the known world. Cabeza de Vaca appears to have viewed the lands through which he traveled as this sort of wonderworld, and may have anticipated that his audience would do the same thing, and sought to satisfy their expectations.

[Lindsey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wow. This is one of my first experiences reading about a historical figure (whom I learned of in school) from a "living book," instead of a textbook. Hearing about Cabeza de Vaca's trials in the New World straight from his own hand blew my mind. I literally remembered nothing about him from school, except his name (memorable) and that he was an explorer. Now I know that he wandered from Cuba, to the coast of Florida, to Texas, and beyond, with nearly every kind of misfortune you can imagine. Now when I go down to Galveston Island, TX, I can think of it as "The Isle of Misfortune" and all the things Cabeza de Vaca and his fellow explorers went through in that time (namely, starvation and being beaten by and enslaved by various groups of Indians).

I thought the most curious element was how Cabeza de Vaca and his companions fell into the position of medicine men for the Indians they met along the way. It does not sound like they pursued the profession or wanted it for themselves, but that they felt they had to in order to appease the Indians and not be killed by them (many of their companions were killed or died along the way).

Now I would like to read a biography about CdV. Some of his own tellings were so confusing because he did not understand the Gulf Coast or the lay of the land, so it was hard to envision exactly where he was for parts of the story.

[Don · Rating 3 out of 5]

Six hundred self-confident would-be conquistadors depart from Spain in June 1527 with the intention of conquering central America. Beset by fierce storms as soon as they entered the Caribbean they saw some of their ships wrecked, their party separated and driven by winds across the coast of Florida.

The Indians tell them of the land of Apalache, where gold was abundant. There is contention in the camp bu the governor is determined to strike inland and and a route to this province. Battles with hostile groups of natives take place and illness breaks out amongst the invaders. Disasters begin to come thick and fast. An attempt to leave the area by boat flounders and the party becomes separated. Nunez finds himself amongst a small band of survivors, lost and disorientated.

The story after this becomes one of an existence negotiated with different groups of Indians, the the Europeans sometimes reduced to slavery but at other times appearing as saviours of the tribes with mysterious healing powers. Ever smaller as a group then trail across an immense distance, which is believed to have taken them across territory now known to be in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. The survivors, now just four men, finally stagger into Mexico City after years of wandering.

[Patrick J. · Rating 4 out of 5]

If survival stories appeal to you, then you will probably enjoy this book. He describes his adventures in being shipwrecked in Florida in 1527, and then traveling on foot about 3,000 miles through what is now the American Gulf Coast to Mexico city and back to the Gulf of Mexico. Out of 600 men who started, 5 make it back. They endure 8 years of hunger, privation, discouragement, physical pain, fear and joy among the Indians. They learn the languages, religions and superstitions. He happens upon a way to make a living in their subsistence, mostly hunter-gatherer economy. This proves to be a key to getting back.
This is written in old style, 16th century Spanish, translated to 21st Century English. Consequently, the reading experience is uneven. This is not as good as Shakespeare. One must expect that he has some significant bias since the writer is a 16th century Spanish Christian. He comes from Castile, which went through the peak of the Inquisition as he was growing up. He is an ardent believer and often sees things in religious terms. With that in mind, he seems to be an honest reporter of the facts.
Some passages are very interesting. His description of Indian culture shows them to be quite alien to us modern folks.

[Felicity Terry · Rating 1 out of 5]

With all of the books paying homage to works that are much longer, all of the books in the Penguin series of Great Journeys {each around one hundred - one hundred and fifty pages} offer the reader a glimpse into a much longer, possibly daunting, text that they may well have never considered. I know a few of them even made me want to take a look at the book from which the abridged excerpt had been taken ... others, well, not so much.

Alas one of the most dull books in the series, to say nothing of the fact that it was probably the one that caused me to roll my eyes the most. As if considering himself far superior to the native peoples wasn't bad enough, that Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca portrayed himself as an almost Christ like figure amongst the indigenous population didn't exactly endear me to him.

Copyright ... Felicity Grace Terry @ Pen and Paper

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

An account of a disastrous Spanish expedition which left the narrator and his ever decreasing number of companions at the mercy of their own decisions and the local Floridean tribal populus. An account of incredible events and hardship that makes you value half a millennium of development, and brings the phrase 'grubbing a living' to life. The enormous strangeness of the writer's experience and the descriptions of life before, and way below the breadline are riveting. His matter of fact account of the native population's horror at the sailor's cannibalism contrasts with his horror of gay marriage and cross dressing in the Indian villages. A genuinely astounding journey.

[Nat]

This is a 16th century version of Blood Meridian. The narrator gets shipwrecked somewhere in Florida and ends up walking through what I guess is New Mexico, and then down into "New Spain"/Old Mexico over the course of nine years or so. Here's a taste of what goes on and the style in which it is told:

"Since the lodges afforded so little shelter, people began to die, and five Christians quartered on the coast were driven to such extremes that they ate each other, until but one remained, who being left alone, had no one to eat him" (p.50).

[Merlin Zuni · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow, Cabeza de vaca is an amazing man! He basically walked from Florida to Arizona!!! Something even Forest Gump would be impressed with. He was shipwrecked and became a slave, saint, healer, preacher, medicine man among other things during his stay with native American tribes.

This is a true horror story recounting how of many hundred only a handful of Spainaird sailors survived.

Good stuff!

[Bruce Reiter · Rating 2 out of 5]

Okay. you have to be interested in Spanish exploration of the New World. Worse, you must like to read translated hierarchically written 16th century spanish prose and understand concepts of honra and honor and why Cabeza de Vaca has to blame everyone but himself for the misfortunes that befall the exploration.

[Emma · Rating 5 out of 5]

On the surface a record of a disastrous attempt to conquer Florida in the great age of Spanish discoveries, this is also a beautiful spiritual journey of 4 men who learn to trust God for their every need and come to recognise the value of kindness and compassion in dealing with the inhabitants of these new lands.

[Emilie · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very interesting account of an awful period in history. I wonder how much exaggeration there is (the miracles/healings), as history is so often written by the victors, or in this case the survivors. I really don't understand how Cabeza de Vaca did not die...it's not like there weren't daily opportunities by his account!!

[Rory Bergin · Rating 3 out of 5]

An extraordinary account of early travel across the Southwest USA by a group of hapless Spaniards. Limping from disaster to disaster they made a journey of thousands of miles over a ten year period losing most of their number on the way. By turns ridiculous and touching their encounters with numerous native tribes is an amazing catalogue of Native American peoples and their customs.

[Dave White · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is one of those historical documents where you really wish the author had been able to record events as they happened, because the Cliff Notes version Cabeza de Vaca gives of his travels is full of weird little moments which leave you craving more details.

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

What was it like to be stranded in Florida in the 1500s? What was it like to encounter Native Americans at that time? What was it like to walk from Florida to Mexico? It was something of a surreal nightmare, according to this fascinating account.

[Linny · Rating 3 out of 5]

His story is so interesting I can't wait to read it

[Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Remarkable. The primal, harrowing land that is written about here will make you see the American southwest with new eyes.