Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca

Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca (c.1490-c.1557) THE MAN Alvar Nùñez Cabeza de Vaca was born into the Spanish aristocracy around 1490. He took the honorific title Cabeza de Vaca, meaning “head of a cow,” from his mother’s side of the family. (One of her ancestors-a shepherd named Mart’n Alhaja-had helped the Spanish Christians win a decisive battle against their Moorish oppressors in the year 1212 by marking an unguarded mountain pass with …showed first 75 words of 669 total…

…showed last 75 words of 669 total…countrymen, the Indians scoffed. First among themselves and then aloud, the Pimas compared the noble wanderers to the hated soldiers: “We had come from the sunrise,” Cabeza de Vaca remembered them saying, “the soldiers from the sunset; we healed the sick, they killed the sound; we came naked and barefoot, they clothed, horsed, and lanced; we coveted nothing but gave whatever we were given, while they robbed whomever they found and bestowed nothing on anyone.”