Welcome to Cabeza de Vaca.

Episode 18, the first American Ponzi scheme.

I'm Brandon Seal.

Sometime in the summer of 1535, four self-proclaimed medicine men presented themselves to a Native American village consisting of 50 or so lodges.

The first of the four men was the most distinctive looking. His skin was dark brown, the color of a buffalo hide, and his hair and beard were darker even than

that. By contrast, the other three were so pale and sunburned that they almost glowed, their

skin flaking off them like a snake shedding its skin. The dark one in front started making

hand signs and shouting as he drew closer.

We bring you good news, he gestured to the Native Americans.

Maliacones, they called themselves.

We're the four medicine men you've heard about, performing great cures throughout this land.

And indeed, the Maliacones had heard of this curious band of medicine men.

But at the same time, they'd also started hearing stories about bearded demons appearing mysteriously on the edges of villages,

performing their bad medicine, then leaving and taking with them everything the villagers owned.

Malacosa, they called this trickster medicine man.

And so the Maliacones held back until they could be sure just who it was that had come to visit them.

If truth be told, the four medicine men had plenty of misgivings themselves.

Cabace de Baca, Castillo, Dorantes, and Estevan believed that they were doing God's work

and performing their cures, but deep down they'd begun to wonder.

They were so overwhelmed by the power that they suddenly had that they began to mistrust it.

And so several months ago, they had closed their ministry, so to speak,

taking up work instead as artisans, making bows, arrows, and mats for the Indians

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