Welcome to Cabeza de Baca.

Episode 9, Out of Slavery.

I'm Brandon Sealed.

It had been almost one year since 12 of Cabes de Bacca's fellow expeditionaries

had left him behind on Galveston Island,

but he harbored no grudge toward them.

How could he?

They'd made every effort to try and bring him along,

but in the sad state that he was in at the time,

they couldn't even be sure he was coherent enough to understand their words.

After his companions had left him sometime in the spring of 1529, Cabesa de Vaca actually managed

to recover from his illness, though. He was sustained, perhaps, by a sense of obligation

toward the two other expeditionaries who

had also been too sick to travel with the twelve.

One of the two, the expedition's notary, died in the coming months, leaving only that

heartiest crew member from Cabesa Vaca's ill-fated raft, Lope de Oviedo.

Yet he wasn't the man that he once was.

The experience of his first year on Galveston Island had taken a toll on him.

This is because as soon as the novelty of the Narvaise Expeditionaries had worn off on their native hosts, the Caboques, as they called themselves, well, so too had their welcome.

A big part of this had to do with the fact that their arrival coincided with the outbreak of some terrible, unidentifiable disease that killed 80 or 90% of their own number and almost half of their native hosts as well.

Especially in the moment we're currently living through here in 2020,

these numbers have new poignant significance to us.

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