Welcome to Cabeza de Vaca.

Episode 15, Tests of Faith. I'm Brandon Seale.

Alonso Castillo looked terrified.

Then again, he may have been a bit of a meeker soul to begin with.

It's hard to know for sure, because neither of the two surviving accounts of the Narvaise expedition seemed to come from Castillo directly.

And even in the so-called joint report, Castillo's voice gets swallowed by Cabeza de Vacas and Dorantes.

But Castillo was actually one of the highest-born men amongst the original Narvaise Expeditionaries.

He had relatives in high positions in the Castilian administration of the New World,

so it hadn't been an unnatural thing for him to have sold off

part of his estate to buy a captaincy in Narvaise's expedition. He was of the class in Castilian

society that was born to command. Yet even in the surviving expedition accounts, we never really

see him acting as a commander. As I mentioned, he's more often than not overshadowed

by the other two Castilians, like when he went along with Cabes de Vaca on some of his scouting

missions back in Florida, or when he served as the more subdued co-commander with the more veteran

Dorantes on one of the five doomed rafts that the expeditionaries had taken out into the Gulf of

Mexico.

It's curious, then, that it was the Castillo, whom Native Americans first looked to heal whatever it was that was ailing them. The natives had only met Castillo the day before,

when a strange-looking black man had preceded him and two other bearded pink men into their village.

The black man, Estevan, he said his name was, told the villagers that he and the other three were medicine men.

Fortunately, according to one of the accounts, the natives, quote, had already heard news of us, end quote, and were honored by their presence.

These people called themselves Avavares, and the Avavar village, we assume, was somewhere perhaps in modern-day Star County.

And in that village, the four expeditionaries were met by the most charitable reception they'd had since landing

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