We Came Naked and Barefoot: The Journey of Cabeza De Vaca Across North America (Texas Archaeology and Ethnohistory Series)

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Summary: The Travels of Cabeza de Vaca
Review: The Spanish explorer Cabeza de Vaca and three companions survived eight years (1528-1536) among the Indians of North America and made the first overland crossing of the continent. Cabeza de Vaca's route across the U.S and Mexico has been the subject of many impassioned scholarly examinations. Alex and Margery Krieger's is one of the best.

The book consists of a forward, an updated version of Alex Krieger's 1955 dissertation on Cabeza de Vaca's route, an afterword, and translations of the two accounts of the journey, one by CDV himself and the second by a 16th century historian. Thus, in this one not-overly-formidable tome is the complete story of Cabeza de Vaca.

The controversy about CDV is whether he followed a northern route primarily through Texas or a southern route primarily through Mexico in his wanderings from the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of California. Sorry Texas! Krieger persuades me that the evidence in favor of the Mexican route is overwhelming.

CDV's narrative is important because it is among the first -- and sometimes the only -- description of Indian societies in Florida, Texas, and Mexico. Most of his time was spent among the primitive hunting-gathering Coahuiltecan Indians of the Texas and Mexican coast. These people have disappeared from history with hardly a trace, destroyed by disease and Spanish conquest. Another interesting and important part of the narrative is CDVs account of Spanish slave-hunters in northern Mexico. We have very few accounts of the North American Indians before their cultures and societies were destroyed by Europeans. Cabeza de Vaca's is one of the most important and informative.

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