‘How did you tell, what you call it, latitude?’
‘The stars told me how far north we were.’
When they reached Guadalajara, Garcilaço turned his mules toward the capital, and one afternoon the boy said: ‘The stars seem to have told you everything,’ and Cabeza de Vaca replied: ‘They did.’
‘Would they tell me their secrets? So that I could keep my calendar if the Indians made me their slave?’
‘They come out at night, ready to serve anyone. God brings them up in regular order so that we can know when to plant our crops or when, up there, to move inland for the ripening cactus.’ It was during those lovely evenings as they rested that the Spanish explorer taught the little mestizo muleteer lessons he would never forget: how the constellations could be identified, the ways a farmer could use them to determine when to plant his seeds, and how a traveler could verify his location.
With each new concept mastered, Garcilaço found his horizons expanding; he had been eager to see the Pacific, but once he saw it, he knew instinctively that discoveries equally great must wait on its western shore, and he began to dream of China. Now as the Spaniard told him about the wonders lying to the north—within his reach if he walked vigorously in that direction—he wanted to explore those regions too. But most of all he felt a burning desire just to know, to experience, to be a heroic man like Cabeza de Vaca. Garcilaço had stumbled upon one of the greatest treasures a boy can find: a man of dignity whom he would like to emulate.
They had reached a point well east of Guadalajara, in the month of June, when Cabeza de Vaca surprised him by speaking of years when he traveled alone as a trader for a different tribe of Indians. ‘But, Señor Cabeza,’ the boy said, and the proud Spaniard corrected him: ‘My name is Cabeza de Vaca, three words, and I prefer to be so addressed.’
‘I am sorry, Señor Cabeza. I meant no offense,’ and the great traveler smiled: ‘Since you have just turned eleven, as you inform me, you may call me Cabeza. Now, what was your question?’
‘Well, if you were a slave, how could you also be free to wander about?’ and Cabeza said: ‘I left Oviedo, escaped from the dreadful Indians on the island and sought refuge with other kinder souls who live inland.’
‘But you were still a slave?’ Garcilaço asked, and in reply Cabeza de Vaca related an improbable story.
‘After I had shown that I was skilled at trading the seashells my tribe collected in exchange for arrowheads made by other tribes, my Indians encouraged me to travel in search of things they needed, and in this way I went far to the north [Oklahoma], where I saw the remarkable cattle of the Indians, much larger than ours, hairy, with a big hump forward. Sometimes I would see a thousand or ten thousand, so numerous were they, and they provided those Indians with robes to wear.
‘I also had a chance to taste their meat which surpassed any roasted in Spain. But you know, lad, men are often imprisoned by chains of their own forging. Living with my kind Indians, I was happy with my freedom, but I could not forget that Oviedo was still a captive. I had to go back.’
‘Why?’
‘Honor.’ He strode ahead in silence, then waited for the boy to overtake him. ‘Pitiful though Oviedo was, he remained my only link with civilization.’
Two days later, as they neared the capital, Cabeza’s spirits brightened and he spoke with animation: ‘In 1532, I finally persuaded Oviedo to escape with me from the island, no mean feat, since the big, hulking man could not swim and I had to coax him through the waves. Once ashore, we learned from passing Indians that three other strangers lived with a tribe to the south, and we were overjoyed, but when these Indians turned ugly, tormenting us with sticks, poor Oviedo grew utterly frightened and begged some women to help him swim back to that horrible island. We never heard of him again, the biggest and strongest of our group. He was afraid of his own destiny.’
This mournful memory silenced Cabeza for the rest of that day, but next morning he was eager to talk again: ‘You can imagine how excited I was when I found that those three men were my shipmates. We exchanged stories, learning that of the ninety-three who had landed, only we four and poor Oviedo had survived. Urgently we made plans to escape and walk to Mexico, but our Indian masters became engaged in a great fight over a woman, so we Spaniards were separated for the rest of that year, with never a chance of breaking for freedom.’
‘You must have been miserable,’ Garcilaço said, and Cabeza replied: ‘Yes, miserable, but at tuna-time in 1534 we met again among the cactus plants, and everything was now perfect for our escape, so we four set out … no clothes, no food, no maps, no shoes.’
‘Señor Cabeza, how could you be so brave?’
He did not answer that day, but on the next he sought the boy, as if he were hungry to share his wild experiences: ‘In the first days of our escape we encountered disaster. I, always eager to explore, searched widely for anything edible and became hopelessly lost. And because this was the time of year when the great north winds began to blow, the others had to think of protecting themselves. They left me, and since I was now totally alone, it seemed that I must perish.’
‘How did you meet the others again?’ Garcilaço asked, and Cabeza allowed pride to creep into his voice. Standing taller, his slim body etched against the sky, he said: ‘I determined not to die. Moving in great circles, I quartered the barren land until at last I came upon their tracks, and when I overtook them, they said: “We thought that perhaps you’d been bitten by a snake.” I said nothing, but I would never have abandoned one of them had they become lost.’
Dorantes and the other two survivors seldom joined in Cabeza de Vaca’s discussions with Garcilaço; they were from one group, Cabeza from another, and by habit they maintained that division. So Garcilaço did not see much of Esteban, but when they did talk, he liked him, for the man’s dark face glowed when he spoke of his adventures. Once Garcilaço asked: ‘Are you a slave like we get from Africa, or are you a Moor, whatever that is?’ and he replied: ‘I am many things.’
‘You seem to have many names, too.’
The slave laughed: ‘You noticed? Dorantes calls me Estevan. Castillo calls me Estevánico. Others called me Estebaníco. Cabeza calls me Esteban.’
‘What do you call yourself?’
‘Doctor of medicine.’
When Garcilaço asked Cabeza about this, the latter chuckled: ‘Esteban kept us alive not with his medicine but with his humor. He was a slave, bought and paid for by Dorantes, but on our travels he was free—free to laugh and to be our ambassador to the Indians.’
The amazing thing Cabeza said next explained how these four defenseless men had been able to traverse the vast area later to be called Texas. Indeed, they traveled so widely that they even came into contact with the Teyas, or Tejas, Indians (the Friendly Ones) for whom the entire region would one day be named: ‘When we were in the country of hills Alonzo del Castillo, who is a cultured gentleman from the university town of Salamanca, discovered that he had magical or religious power. Whatever it was, he could cure sick Indians by touching them and assuring them that God in His mercy would make them well. His first patients must have had simple illnesses, for his gentle care cured them, and his fame quickly spread across this desolate land, inspiring Indians to come to him from far distances.’
Cabeza said that many villagers began to travel with the wonder-workers, sometimes wandering sixty or seventy miles and wailing piteously when they could no longer keep up with the Spaniards. ‘Such misguided faith made Castillo afraid that he was trespassing on powers reserved for God, and he refused to treat patients who were obviously dying and for whom he could do no good. Not me, for I realized that our power to heal could prove our passport to freedom.
‘One morning as we approached a new village, weeping women took me to a man obviously near death. His eyes were upturned. He had no heartbeat. All signs of life were gone. Thinking to make his last moments as easy as possible, I placed him upon a clean mat and prayed to our Lord to give him
peace.
‘Late that afternoon the Indian women ran to us, weeping and laughing and cheering, for the dead man had risen from his mat, had walked about and called for food. This caused enormous surprise, and all across the land nothing else was spoken of. In following days Indians came to us from many places, dancing and singing and praising us as true children of the sun.’
Cabeza then said a revealing thing, which at the time Garcilaço could not comprehend: ‘When the Indians made a god of me, I behaved like Castillo. I did not want such idolatry, because I knew I was not worthy of it. Any cures I had effected were due to God’s intervention, not mine, and I refused to mislead pagan Indians into thinking otherwise. But as captain of our expedition, I needed the assistance our miracles provided, and it was in this cast of mind that we three white men decided that Esteban should be the doctor, since he had no such religious reservations. No man ever accepted promotion with more delight or followed it with finer accomplishment.’
He called for Esteban, who confirmed all that Cabeza had said: ‘I started life as a slave in Morocco. I was sold to Dorantes in Spain, and in Cuba and Florida and among the Indians, I was still a slave. I was unhappy, because I knew that with my tricks, I could be a fine doctor.’ He smiled at Cabeza as he said this. ‘So from the Indians I got myself a pair of rattling gourds, some turkey feathers, woven hair from one of the big humped hides, and announced myself as a healer.’
‘He was marvelous,’ Cabeza said. ‘When we approached a new village, we allowed him to go first, dancing and leaping and singing Indian songs. Shaking his gourds, shouting incantations, his white teeth flashing, he cured old women and won the hearts of sick children with his radiant smile. Since women loved him, he accumulated a harem of first a dozen, then dozens, and finally, more than a hundred who trailed him from one camp to the next.’
Esteban affirmed everything and added: ‘I liked the women, indeed I did, but I also knew we needed food. So I would not let them come with me unless they brought us real food, not oysters and blackberries. We four lived on my dancing.’
‘Would you show me your dance?’ Garcilaço asked, and he said: ‘I can’t do it without my gourds,’ so the boy ran to fetch them, but when his master saw him quit his mules, he struck him sharply across the head. When Esteban saw this, he leaped in the air, then rushed at the master to restrain him: ‘He is not your slave!’ The master glared at the big black man. ‘But you are a slave, you damn Moor,’ he said, and spat.
As soon as Garcilaço produced the gourds, Esteban forgot his anger, and with a rattle in each hand he began taking short, mincing steps in the dust, at first shuffling rather than dancing, but quickly becoming more agitated. His eyes flashed. His grin widened. His arms flapped wildly, and soon he was leaping in the air, assuming wild and grotesque contortions. Laughing like a joyous spirit, he danced until all the carters in the cavalcade stopped to watch and then applaud. To see Esteban dance was to see the earth smile.
Always when Cabeza spoke of his adventures in the north, he referred in some manner to the look of the land in which an incident had occurred, and it was during such a narration that he happened to use a phrase which determined the character of Garcilaço’s subsequent life.
‘Señor Cabeza, you speak of the land, but when you do, you describe many different lands,’ and the explorer laughed: ‘You’re an observant little fellow. I enjoy traveling with you.’ He said that, yes, he did speak of many different lands; that was the glory of up there.
‘Along the coast where I first stayed, there were beautiful sand dunes and marshes filled with birds. Inland, a waving sea of grass with rarely a tree. Farther to the west where we gathered nuts, rolling crests and clusters of oak more beautiful than any I saw in Spain. Then hills, cut through with little rivers, and after them the vast empty plains, flat as tables and sometimes void even of cactus. Finally more hills, the mountains and the desert.’
He closed his eyes, as if he were praying. ‘I can see it all, lad. The years were cruel, of that there can be no doubt, but they were also glorious, and if you ever find a chance to go up there,’ and here came the words that fired the boy’s imagination, ‘you too will see the land of many lands.’
As soon as Garcilaço heard that happy phrase, ‘the land of many lands,’ he was captured by the lure of the north. The Pacific Ocean was forgotten; anyone could build himself a ship and sail on it, Garcilaço thought, but the challenge of those limitless plains, the ferocious winds, the grandeur of an earth that seemed infinite in its variations—these wonders he wanted to see. From this day on he entertained only one vision: to visit that land of many lands.
When Cabeza resumed his narrative about their travels far to the west (into New Mexico, but not as far north as Santa Fe), he said: ‘One night while we three white men talked idly with some of Esteban’s women, one of them used a phrase which caught my attention: “Fifteen days to the north, the Seven Cities. My mother saw them when she was a girl.” That night I could not sleep, because even as a child I had heard vague talk about holy men who had fled Spain and built the fabled Seven Cities of Cíbola. I knew no more of the legend except that these cities held much gold. So very quietly, using signs and the few words we had, I began asking Indian men about the Seven Cities, and they confirmed what the woman had said: “Yes, yes! That one, he saw the Cities.” The Indian thus indicated said he had not actually been to the Cities, but he knew a man who had, and this man had spoken of them with awe: “Very big. One, two, three, four, up, up to the sky.”
‘I asked if he meant that one level of the house stood upon the other, as in Spain, and the man said eagerly: “Yes! My friend said so. Up to the sky!” whereupon I asked if there had been great wealth there, and this question the Indian did not comprehend, for I carried nothing with which to illustrate what I meant, but the Indian liked us so much that he wanted to please, so he talked with his friends, and even though he did not understand my words, he nodded vigorously: “Yes, just as you say.”
‘ “And what is the name of these Seven Cities?” I asked, but the man did not know, nor did anyone, but I believed there was a chance that I had found those cities of sacred legend.’ As Cabeza uttered these provocative words he fell silent, and it was then that Garcilaço enlarged his dream to include the finding of those cities clothed in gold.
When Cabeza next talked with Garcilaço he was serious and almost mystical: ‘When it happened, after those years of slavery and wandering and storms, it excited us almost to the point of frenzy. One morning Castillo saw, on the neck of an Indian, a little buckle from a swordbelt, and in it was sewed a horseshoe nail. We took it from the Indian and asked what it was. He said it had come from heaven, but when we asked who had brought it, he answered that some men, with beards like ours, had come from heaven to that river; that they rode on animals like very large deer; carried lances and swords; and that they had lanced two Indians.
‘As cautiously as possible, we then inquired what had become of those men, and they replied that they had gone to the sea, putting their lances into the water and moving them, and that afterward they saw men on top of the waves heading toward the sunset. We gave God our Lord many thanks for what we had heard, for we had been despairing to ever hear of Christians again.’
During the last days of the journey, Cabeza took an extraordinary interest in Garcilaço, and one morning he cradled the boy’s face in his weathered hands and looked deep into his eyes: ‘Lad, you were not meant to be a muleteer. But to accomplish anything, you must learn to read and write.’ And with an almost furious determination, he taught the lad, as they walked with the mules, the alphabet, and when they stopped to rest he would draw the letters in the ground with a stick.
Cabeza was also eager to share his specific knowledge of the land he had traversed, as if he were afraid that valuable learning might be lost. He described the many Indian tribes, taught Garcilaço some of the phrases they spoke, said that dog was good to eat, and warned of the many dangers the boy wo
uld encounter if he ever went ‘up there.’
The night before the two parted company, Cabeza grasped Garcilaço’s hands and said: ‘Lad, if ever the chance arrives, go up there, because that’s where fame and fortune will be found—in the fabled Seven Cities of Cíbola.’
On the day after the arrival of the mule team in the capital, it was reloaded and back on the trail to Vera Cruz, so that Garcilaço saw Cabeza no more, but many years later, when he was hauling freight to Guadalajara, an army captain said: ‘I knew Cabeza de Vaca in Paraguay. Yes, when he returned to Spain he sought the governorship of Florida, but learned to his great disappointment that this plum had already been awarded his fellow explorer Hernando de Soto, and he had to settle for a miserable post in Paraguay.’
‘Did he succeed in that job?’ Garcilaço asked, and the man said: ‘Oh, no! They nibbled at him, brought infamous charges against him, and I think he left the country in chains. I know he was in jail for seven years in Spain. My sister-in-law’s brother knew him.’
‘What happened?’ Garcilaço asked, and the captain said: ‘I saw him in Africa when I served there. Banished, he was, a man who walked alone, talking with the stars. Years later the emperor came to his senses, brought this honorable man back to court, and paid him a yearly stipend which enabled him to live in relative comfort.’
At age sixty-five, Cabeza de Vaca, the first white man to have journeyed into Texas and across its vast plains, died. Texas, a state which would always honor the brave, had its first true hero.
The miracle of perfect wisdom and sage decision which Garcilaço had expected at age eleven did not materialize; nor at twelve, either. For some days after Cabeza de Vaca’s departure the boy wept softly when he went to bed, and for many weeks he recited the alphabet while trudging along with his mules. But one day, when the master caught him looking at the few pages Cabeza had given him, he grabbed them in a rage and tore them up: ‘You have no business with learning. Your life is with the mules.’ But the master could not take away the boy’s knowledge of the stars, and when Orion rose, Garcilaço could see the figure of Cabeza among those brilliant dots of light.