Cabeza de Vaca's
Adventures in the Unknown Interior of America Translated and Annotated by Cyclone Covey Reprinted 1983 by University of New Mexico Press, ISBN 0-8263-0656-X pbk
Cordially dedicated to Vernon A. Chamberlin Contents [by Translator] Proem The Sailing of the Armada The Governor's Arrival at Xagua with a Pilot Our Landing in Florida ... Afterword Index [not reprinted here] Preface THIS SIXTEENTH-CENTURY odyssey of Cabeza de Vaca's is one of the great true epics of history. It is the semi-official report to the king of Spain by the ranking surviving officer of a royal expedition to conquer Florida which fantastically miscarried. Four out of a land-force of 300 menby wits, stamina and luckfound their way back to civilization after eight harrowing years and roughly 6,000 miles over mostly unknown reaches of North America. They were the first Europeans to see and live to report the interior of florida, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and northernmost Mexico; the 'possum and the buffalo; the Mississippi and the Pecos; pine-nut mash and mesquite-bean flour; and a long string of Indian Stone Age tribes. What these wanderers merely heard and surmised had just as great an effect on subsequent events as what they learned at first hand. Their sojourn "to the sunset," as they told certain of the Indians in the latters' idiom, took on a great added interest and value in the 1930's with the convergent discovery of Carl Sauer and Cleve Hallenbeck that Cabeza de Vaca and his companions had traveled, for the most part, over Indian trails that were still traceable. The thorough work of these two distinguished professors, plus that of innumerable others in such disciplines as archaeology, anthropology, cartography, geology, climatology, botany, zoology and history, has given surprisingly sharp definition to much of the old narrative that had hitherto seemed vague and baffling. The present translation is the | |
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