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Until this week I had never heard of a Spanish explorer by the name of Cabeza de Vaca. Historian Andres Resendez has written a page turner in "A Land So Strange." It's the amazing story of a Spanish expedition that set out to colonize Florida in 1527, and due to a hurricane and an incredible error in navigation, the whole expedition went awry. The land party of the expedition, searching for a fabled place called Panuco, became separated from their ships and were forced to walk hundreds of miles through inhospitable Florida terrain to present-day Apalachee Bay.
The elements and hostile Indians took a toll on the expedition and the survivors had to resort to the superhuman feat of constructing four log rafts with primitive tools and the impossible task of reaching Mexico, a journey of hundreds of miles. As can be imagined it didn't go well and those who finally ended up on the Texas coast were soon enslaved by Indians. Ultimately, only four men survived the ordeal and they eventually trekked to the Pacific Coast. It's a strange odyssey covering almost ten years that seems almost unbelievable. A link giving de Vaca's biography follows:
Did that PBS segment discuss the introduction of diseases to the natives by de Vaca? I understand that much of the southern Mississipian culture was still around in the SE when de Vaca visited. However, by 1700, most of those natives were dead and there great villages/cities lay abandoned. That area became completely depopulated because of such introduced diseases. In fact, historians did not understand the exstent of the depopulation until recently.
I think the sentiment of the name is more like 'Cattle Master' but, yeah, literally 'head of cow'. Its variations: C de Baca, sidiBaca, and just Baca, are pretty common where I live in New Mexico because I believe the name was an honorific bestowed upon certain accomplished individuals by the Spanish monarchy as opposed to a proper family name.
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I suppose I took the history lessons of Texas primary education for granted. Cabeza de Vaca has always been one of my favorite historical studies. It is a little difficult for we who live in the iPhone era to imagine a world as big as the one the conquistadors lived in. Just last week I was in the deepest, darkest, most remote East Texas pine forest on business and I felt as though I were on the dark side of the moon. Can you imagine being a sailboat ride across the Atlantic away from home with no idea where you were, who or what else was there, and not even an inkling of microbial disease theory?
I think the sentiment of the name is more like 'Cattle Master' but, yeah, literally 'head of cow'. Its variations: C de Baca, sidiBaca, and just Baca, are pretty common where I live in New Mexico because I believe the name was an honorific bestowed upon certain accomplished individuals by the Spanish monarchy as opposed to a proper family name.
ABQConvict
Quite possible, but the literal is more humourous, isn't it.
Quite possible, but the literal is more humourous, isn't it.
Oh, absolutely. Didn't mean to take the wind out of the sails, there. Actually it was years after I started encountering people with the name that I learned the true sentiment behind the name. I just assumed they had a rather odd looking ancestor.
Until this week I had never heard of a Spanish explorer by the name of Cabeza de Vaca. Historian Andres Resendez has written a page turner in "A Land So Strange." It's the amazing story of a Spanish expedition that set out to colonize Florida in 1527, and due to a hurricane and an incredible error in navigation, the whole expedition went awry. The land party of the expedition, searching for a fabled place called Panuco, became separated from their ships and were forced to walk hundreds of miles through inhospitable Florida terrain to present-day Apalachee Bay.
The elements and hostile Indians took a toll on the expedition and the survivors had to resort to the superhuman feat of constructing four log rafts with primitive tools and the impossible task of reaching Mexico, a journey of hundreds of miles. As can be imagined it didn't go well and those who finally ended up on the Texas coast were soon enslaved by Indians. Ultimately, only four men survived the ordeal and they eventually trekked to the Pacific Coast. It's a strange odyssey covering almost ten years that seems almost unbelievable. A link giving de Vaca's biography follows:
Cabeza de Vaca later had a son, Pene. So named after his father mistook his umbilical cord,,,,
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