Welcome to the History of the Americans podcast, episode 15.

I'm your host, Jack Heneman, and this episode is Cabezza de Vaca Part 4, the final episode in the Kabezza de Vaca saga.

We are recording this episode on March 30th,

2021 in Austin, Texas. Thank you again for listening. History always begins in the middle of

something, and this time, that's especially true. While most of our episodes can stand alone,

at least up to a point,

this one will go better if you listen to at least the last two episodes on Kabeza-davaka.

The story is just too weird to start in the middle.

Back now? Very good. That said, a brief transition is still in order.

The last time the remnants of the ill-fated Narvaise expedition landed on a coastal island somewhere near today's Galveston, Texas,

and thereby discovered Texas.

Usual air quotes.

Of the 80 or so alive at the end of Cabezade Avaka 2, only three remained with

our protagonist, Cabezza de Vaca, and would eventually make it back to New Spain. A fifth,

Lope de Oviedo, had survived for years alone on the island and chose his lonely life there rather than push south with our heroes.

He disappears from history. It is now 1534, five years after the expedition landed in Tampa Bay.

And the final four are heading south in search of Panyuco, the northernmost outpost of New Spain

under the authority of one of that era's nastiest congistadors, Nuno de Guzman.

At this point, the unqualified Christian faith of the Spaniards. We don't know how Christian Esteban might have become.

Sustained them in a way that few modern, secular Americans would really understand.

Here's the moment in Kabeza de Vaca's own words in a chapter titled,

How We Cured Some Sick People.

...