Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca (ca. 1490-ca. 1557) was a Spanish explorer. Marooned on the Texas coast, he wandered for 8 years in a land no European had ever seen. His account is the earliest description of the American Southwest....

c. 1490-c. 1560 Spanish explorer in the region of what is now Texas, whose claims regarding legendary cities of gold influenced later exploration efforts by Hernando de Soto (c. 1500-1542) and Francisco de Coronado (c. 1510-1554). In 1528...

Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca Born c. 1490, Jerez de la Frontera, Spain Died c. 1560, Seville, Spain AIthough Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca could have lived an easy life as a member of one of Spain’s noble...

Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca (c. 1490 – c. 1557) was an early Spanish explorer of the New World and is remembered as a protoanthropological author. His name is spelled as Alvar Nuñez Cabeça de Vaca. [1] in 16th Century...

The Narrative of Cabeza de Vaca: Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca. Edited, translated, and with an introduction by Rolena Adorno and Patrick Charles Pautz. (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1999, 2003. Pp. [viii ], 204. Paper, $15.95, ISBN 0-8032-6416-X; cloth, $45.00, ISBN...

...

In the following essay, Adorno traces the evolution of Cabeza de Vaca from slave to shaman and argues that the most important theme of his narrative—namely the peace and resettlement the explorer initiated in lands devastated by earlier sadistic conquistadors—has been largely ignored by critics.

In the following study, Wild argues that Cabeza de Vaca's account of the years he spent lost and near death in North America has many elements of the modern novel and that the explorer masterfully blends factual events with literary devices to win favor for himself and gain support for his conviction that Native Americans were more likely to be conquered with a loving Christianity than the conquistador's sword.

In the following essay, McGann recounts the major adventures of Cabeza de Vaca as described in the Relación