Cabeza de vaca biography

Cabeza de Vaca was most likely born in Jerez de la Frontera , Andalusia. For different reasons, both enterprises proved disastrous for Cabeza de Vaca, the first beginning in shipwreck, the latter ending in political failure. Cabeza de Vaca's account, known in Spanish as the Naufragios Shipwrecks , tells the story of his travails and coexistence with the Mariame, Avavare, and Opata peoples.

He became a merchant and, with the three other survivors practiced shamanism with such success that hundreds of Indians formed a cult about them and traveled with them across the continent. The Naufragios is at once an account of an officer of the crown and the story of a European who penetrated and was penetrated by Native American cultures.

He died in Seville. Although a pirated edition of Naufragios appeared in , while Cabeza de Vaca was in Paraguay, the authorized version was published with the Comentarios in The Naufragios is the more compelling of the two in its narration of a complete loss of material civilization and total dependence on the Indians. In this regard the Naufragios manifests the dubious nature of Western civilization's claims to superiority, since it is the Spaniards who are naked and unable to feed themselves or build boats, who fall into anomie and resort to cannibalism.

What is cabeza de vaca known for

Cabeza de Vaca's story is the antithesis to Robinson Crusoe as it testifies that the Western individual does not embody the knowledge of European civilizations and must learn from Native Americans to survive. His account of cannibalism among the Spaniards includes a condemnation of the act by the Indians and a description of a highly ritualized consumption of the ashes of dead shamans.

Thus, Europeans come to embody the savagery conventionally attributed to Indians.