Narváez expedition
Many more people died as the expedition traveled west along the unexplored Gulf Coast of the present-day United States and into the American southwest.
Making stops at Hispaniola and Cuba on the way to La Florida, the fleet was devastated by a hurricane, among other storms, and lost two ships.
Their intended destination was the Rio de las Palmas (near present-day Tampico, Mexico), with the purpose of founding two settlements.
Narváez ordered that the expedition be split, with 300 men sent overland northward along the coast and 100 men and ten women aboard the ships were also sent northward along the coast, as Narváez intended to reunify the land and seaborne expeditions at a supposed large harbor to the north of them that would be "impossible to miss".
As it marched northward, the land expedition encountered numerous attacks by indigenous forces and suffered from disease and starvation.
By September 1528, following an attempt by the survivors to sail on makeshift rafts from Florida to Mexico, only 80 men survived a storm and were swept onto Galveston Island off the coast of Texas.
[4] On December 25, 1526, Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor granted Pánfilo de Narváez a license to claim what is now the Gulf Coast of the United States for the Kingdom of Spain.
The contract gave him one year to gather an army, leave Spain, found at least two towns of one hundred people each, and garrison two additional forts anywhere along the coast.
He recruited investors by marketing the promise of riches comparable to those recently discovered by Hernán Cortés in Mexico.
Appointed by the Spanish Crown as treasurer and sheriff, Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca was to serve as the king's eyes and ears, and was second-in-command.
Other expedition members included Alonso de Solís as royal inspector of mines, Alonso Enríquez as comptroller, an Aztec prince called Don Pedro by the Spanish, and a contingent of Franciscan and diocesan priests led by Padre Juan Suárez (sometimes spelled Xuárez).
Most of the expedition's 600 men were soldiers, chiefly from Spain and Portugal, including some of mixed African descent, and some 22 from Italy.
[5] On June 17, 1527, the expedition departed Spain from the port of Sanlúcar de Barrameda at the mouth of the Guadalquivir River.
During the storm, both ships sank, 60 men were killed, a fifth of the horses drowned, and all the new supplies acquired in Trinidad were destroyed.
Among those hired by Narváez was a master pilot named Diego Miruelo, who claimed extensive knowledge of the Gulf Coast.
In any case, two days after leaving Cienfuegos, every ship in the fleet ran aground on the Canarreos shoals just off the coast of Cuba.
Narváez landed with 300 men in Boca Ciega Bay at what is known as the Jungle Prada Site in present-day St. Petersburg.
Making his way to the nearby native village, he traded items such as glass beads, brass bells, and cloth for fresh fish and venison.
He read (in Spanish) the Requerimiento, which stated to any natives listening that their land belonged to Charles V by order of the pope.
He planned to have an army of 300 march overland to the north while the ships, with the remaining 100 people, sailed up the coast to meet them.
After heading north for some time without finding the party on land, commanders of the other three ships decided to return to Tampa Bay.
The Apalachee and Timucua captives told him that the people of Aute had a great deal of food, and their village was near the sea.
Nearly helpless, the Spanish could neither use their horses nor quickly reload their heavy weapons, and they found their armor weighing them down in water.
After a few days stuck near the shallow waters, one man came up with a plan: he suggested reforging their weaponry and armor to make tools and to build new boats to sail to Mexico.
Closely following the Gulf Coast, the boats proceeded to the west, but frequent storms, thirst and starvation reduced the expedition to about 80 survivors before a hurricane cast Cabeza de Vaca and his remaining men on the western shore of a barrier island.
In July 1536, near Culiacán in present-day Sinaloa, the survivors encountered fellow Spaniards on a slave-taking expedition for New Spain.
Cabeza de Vaca returned to Spain, where he wrote a full account, especially describing the many indigenous peoples they encountered.
The Moor's Account, a 2014 novel by Laila Lalami, is a fictional memoir of Estebanico, the Moroccan slave who accompanied Cabeza de Vaca as one of the four survivors of the expedition.
Lalami explains that nothing is known about him except for one line in Cabeza de Vaca's chronicle: "The fourth [survivor] is Estevanico, an Arab Negro from Azamor.
A Land So Strange, a 2007 historical narrative by Andrés Reséndez, retells the journey for a modern audience using primary sources by Cabeza de Vaca and the official report.
