Cabeza de Vaca's 1528 Expedition Journey

at dawn on a spring day in 1528 a Spanish Fleet from Cuba prepared to land an army of conquistadors on the shores of North America they had come to find new lands of gold [Music] [Music] it was Thursday the 14th of April 1528 when they came ashore the beginning of the most disastrous of all the expedition to the Conquistadors and yet one of the great epic stories in the history of the Americas [Music] [Music] go [Music] the Spanish had called this Florida the land of flowers but they found a strange and evil country that summer over 300 conquistadors struggled through these swamps their leader panilo Den narvis was arrogant and incompetent they had no interpreters Their Food Supplies ran out and worse they were picked off by hostile tribes the survivors of those native peoples are still here the seol they have fiercely defended their independence ever since so you were the only Native American people within the USA who never submitted right only tribe to never sign a treat submission the elements of Florida a very very good Ally the elements of Florida are a very good Ally right snakes and alligators Europeans worried more about them again these people had no knowledge of Florida navis had been licensed by the king of Spain to discover and Conquer Florida he hoped to find cities here with large populations and gold instead he found a poor landscape totally unsuitable for colonization but he pushed his army on further into the [Music] nightmare if only navis had come here to seek the well-being of the Indians one Spaniard wrote and not to Wade through their blood to gain ill-gotten wealth but his capacities did not come up to his [Music] dreams with Autumn coming on the expedition was on the point of collapse hoping now just to save their lives they struggle down to the sea below Tallahasse but there was no sign of their ships the fleet had given them up for dead they're starving disillusioned and na weighs up the situation he thinks that the Spanish settlements in Mexico are only a few leagues down that Coast in fact they're a thousand miles so he decides to build boats to escape and on the 22nd of September nearly 300 survivors set sail in five barges in Terrible Weather they tried to sail across the Gulf of Mexico past the Mississippi nav himself was never seen [Music] again we would know nothing of this story but for the captain of one of the bodges a young young Spanish gentleman called Alva Nunes cabz [Music] deaka cab deaka wrote a remarkable account of his adventures and with it we set out to follow him across the Gulf of Mexico to find out which way wind and Tide might have taken him that Autumn and if he was coming out of this part of Florida you can see the green arrows indicate the current and the speed here and as you see it gets pretty Swift right along the Mississippi Delta the arrows showing the the predominant Direction that's the predominant direction of the current uh occasionally though you have a lot of fronts that will come through push the wind offshore and those tend to be very strong winds that will push offshore and build up great seas but predominant wind is from the southeast oh that's very interesting because when they pass the Mississippi mouth they get caught up in a storm coming from the north that blows them right out to sea and CA well nearly kill nearly drowns them in fact they mentioned that [Music] in the end says cabz devaka we commended ourselves to God and the dangers of the sea and there was not a man among us who did not think that death was certain none of us had any idea of navigation for 6 weeks we were lost eating rotten maze drinking seawater which drove some men mad [Music] I was at the helm that night I had prepared to [Music] die and then in the darkness we heard Breakers we were near land it was the 6th of November 1528 at dawn they came in Shore but the boat capsized in the surf too weak to swim some of the men were drowned they found themselves on a Windswept Shore unseen before by white men Galveston Island Texas how far up do you think they went I you know given uh how weak he was I don't think he could probably went much further than you're going one of them climbed an oak tree to see where they were I can see it I can see the bay yeah I think they guessed the island was about half a League wide you know maybe a mile and a half or so is that that would be about right would it at the widest point yeah yeah and then uh they could actually on a good clear day like to today see the mainland across the bay and you recognize that you're on an island but the island was inhabited by karanga Indians they were hunter gatherers and they only came here uh during the fall they usually left uh at the end of February in the beginning of March in the spring and would return to the mainland yeah and uh but this was their kind of you might call their winter residence like the New Yorkers go to Florida we had expected to be sacrificed says Caba deaka but when the Indians saw our misery they sat down with us and began to weep too those uncivilized Savage men were sorry for us and they shared what little food they had you know you look at all these great Expeditions of The Conquistadors and the terrible events that happened through the new world Cortez and pizaro and everything else and here is a story where uh the the the the man begins here on this spot to become the other doesn't he he exactly because and it's the Indians who give him the first uh clue to this transformation isn't it they cry for him and he realizes the common Humanity don't you think they saw people destitute in pain they were moved by compassion to to help them and Aid them in the process and so they saved cabesa deaka to their own detriment it's it it it's they were exterminated they were exterminated the caranas began to die of European diseases that same winter they vanished for good in the course of the 18th century but they kept cabesa deaka alive with the food of the island that's razor shark so there's a great Oyster Bed running all the way down this little inet yes and and and there are places out here where there oysters are several miles and during low tide they're exposed and that's probably at the time when they harvest them I'm I don't know how many people they were trying to feed but I wouldn't stop the Expedition had been scattered to the winds the men from another barge were slaughtered by Indians up the coast one group reduced to eating their dead Shipmates but cabz devaka survived on oysters and Roots this plant this is a cattail and and this is probably what he was speaking of when he said that he was breaking the those nuts off to eat oh tastes like a nut extraordinary it was easy picking they could just walk out and pick it up and there acres and Acres of oysters that are exposed at low tide but of the 300 men who left Florida only four would survive please do not walk or stand in front of any vehicle while the was approaching the landing the karanas were nomadic in the spring they crossed over to the mainland and they took cabes deaka with them they had thought him a superior man but with no skills he was an extra mouth to feed and he became their slave he was brutally treated but they kept him alive after five or six years of that life Caba deaka decided he'd had enough it was time to escape not out to sea but into the interior the interior of Texas at that time was completely unknown to the outside world but during during those years cabad devaka had got to know many of the nomadic tribes who lived inland some of them he describes for the first time kelens tonkawas atapan but that was not all he had also discovered that one of the coastal tribes had sheltered three other survivors of the Shipwreck who were still alive they met up and made their break for freedom their plan was to walk a thousand miles to Mexico City they couldn't go south because of hostile tribes so they decided to walk to the Pacific but which way it used to be thought that they took a northern route through New Mexico and Arizona down into Spanish Mexico but there's another possibility that they cross the Rio Grand near near the sea and turn west inside Mexico the clues are in cabz dea's book one of the few copies to survive is in San Marcos and there I met Don Olen so this is an original copy of kabaka's story yes it is and the page we're most interested in in the research we did is page 40 there are four physical Clues all that happen on the same page here there's a mountain of seven leagues oh yeah which would be 20 or 21 miles long yeah and the stones there were like scoria of hero on slag iron slag slag down near the bottom of the page he finds some trees penos chos Pines with pinones and there again you see the pinones and the words that really catch our eye down there are right there muas that means their shells were very thin so this is a um a very particular kind of pine Tre a very particular kind the other two Clues are much harder he says they gave us many small sacks of margita and alcohol Malo now those are minerals people before us have translated that word or transcribed it I should say as Margarita which can mean pearls or Pearl Micah which is abundant in the deserts of Arizona and New Mexico and they've used this to support the northern route well if you look closely you see there do you see what I see that word is not Margarita the the second R isn't the same as the first R is no it's not it has a descender down into the left which prints very faintly you see it there yeah and if you look closely you see it's actually margita with an X Marita Marita what does that mean what that means is iron pyrites iron [Music] pyrites so the Spaniards walked into a land rich in minerals to follow them we crossed the Rio Grand and entered the desolate landscape of northern [Music] Mexico searching for cabz dea's Route into unknown America chatin is just he's just over [Music] there at TR we marched along mountain range seven leagues long they walk the whole length of this Sierra in one day they were the first Europeans to walk across the continent they give us the first account of the people here but it's never been traced on the ground maybe we can ask them about the uh the pine trees do you want to roll your window done his story is still misunderstood because we don't know for sure what route he took we're looking for a p the pinion with very very thin shells if we knew his route then his account might begin to reveal the Lost history of these lands and now as then local knowledge is all the old man knows about them here gracias gracias byebye goodbye so the old man did the old man knew about them yeah fantastic great we're on the right track the old herder had sent us on to a dried up riverbed and there were the pine trees so this is one of them yeah great it's amazing to think the paper shell pinion was only identified by science in 1979 and how easy to imagine the Spaniards feasting on the kernels there's still some on the floor yeah still some it was the best food they'd had for days this year is not uh was not a good season yeah yeah when they're still green he says he just grind them up make a ball and eat them are if they're dry eat them with the shells too you see how thin it is that's what kabak is talking about that's what the Indians here used as food along with the the noal cacti that we passed on the way but to clinch his route we needed to find his mountain of iron the locals sent us up a place called mercardo the hill of wealth 5,000 more than 5,000 ft the mountain cabes deaka says the people here smelted metals they gave him a worked Copper Bell there are copper deposits here and there's also a huge Quarry it's golden brown with iron ore strewn with pyrites and iron slag so this whole vast excavation here is actually has been done for the iron yes they've dug out this made the hole and then of course some rocks have fallen in from the sides into the some of the other Clues you might be able to help on as a geologist they find something which everybody argues over they call it alcco alcohol molo powdered alcohol which some people say could be site uh lead sulfide there's also black manganese uh around outside here it's called the pyite the Indians use it as paint and that's exactly what cabz deaka says a black powder used by Indian women to paint their faces okay I found it okay we've got some manganese here fastic so you think this could be it well it's the kind of Manganese we call pyro lucite it sure comes off black wow [Music] brilliant I left mon Clover feeling sure Caba deaka had come this way he wasn't moving through the nomadic peoples of Central Texas he was among the settled communities here in North Mexico people who lived in houses worked metals and had longdistance tray the ancestors of today's [Music] people the next few weeks he tells us they walked 3 or 400 miles across dry Plains into Barron mountains they were heading northwards now back up towards the Rio Grand but they weren't wandering aimlessly they spoke the languages and moved from one Community to another on Ancient Trails which now crossed and recrossed a great River these trails are marked on US military maps from the 1850s one of them was called the Great kamansi Trail going back down into Mexico it met the Rio Grand at the the grand Indian [Music] Crossing these Trails can be thousands of years old may be even used by the first migrants over 12,000 years ago we took an expert guide with us Linda Walker and an archaeologist Bob Maloof and all along the trail we found places where human beings had once lived Caba dea's Journey had begun to reveal the vanished map of ancient America you can see shelter part and it probably ran farther out and it uh this is one of the better pictograph sites that we come up to you see that they're all over this panel oh those are beautiful pictographs that's late prehistoric pictographs what what's late prehistoric then 500 AD to as late as 1550 about we could still make out the finger marks of the artists one they depicting down this looks like something with legs doesn't it uh if they're difficult or impossible as a rule to interpret accurately although a lot of people try so so could any of these uh be religious in sign we can probably assume that uh they they practice certain kinds of of shamanistic religion certainly with healers and and this sort of thing this was the kind of religion that cab deaka and his friends encountered along this this route and they thought cabesa deaka was a shame I mean they called they they went to him to heal to get become healed and and they would go to him just like people would go to a medical doctor today and it's possible that could have saved their lives what's the the lifestyle of these people well they're they're hard there wouldn't have been a great Hospitality at the table in the evening well yeah we have hard archaeological evidence for the fact that they that they actually were eating just about anything they could get their hands on Bob's hard evidence came from the ancient human excrement in the rubbish dumps on these campsites when cabesa deaka said they were eating worms and spiders he wasn't telling lies the Spanish gentleman was tasting the life most humans had lived since the Stone [Music] Age that night we found a campsite overlooking the [Music] desert on the great prehistoric route into Central [Music] America the place was an abandoned Indian settlement we found grinding holes just as Caba Daka describes these are probably from 2000 3000 BC to as late as 500 AD see they're kind of tapered very smooth tapered and so you so you have a wooden pounder and seeds or whatever you use inside seeds mosqu beans things like that they would grind uh they would grind up in these and powder them to make meal wonderful these are good examples wonderful Caba deaka says these holes were used to grind MOS beans to make the hallucinogens for the Indian ceremonies get ston redot he also describes the way they cooked food look at that boiling the water with hot stones from the fire that is hot I've never seen that done there go so they do this because they don't have ceramics they don't have metal they can't put a they can't put a pot on the fire well they didn't they didn't probably because they moved about frequently and pottery is not very conducive to a lot of movement in this country especially because it's so Rocky and it's easily broken so where are the tea bags come on English breakfast or El grave you know you guys are supposed to be the experts on this Michael as cab deaka said how diverse and strange are human beings and their ways the four men had now reached the very middle of the continent but did they still feel like con doors did cabz deaka the gentleman he had the chance to see this world before it was destroyed by The Conquistadors and exploiters who followed but how much he leaves unsaid some burritos yeah that'd be great thanks one thing that um I keep wondering about as we're traveling on this you know in the footsteps of cabz deaka is that he's he's away for seven or eight years you got something great and he um he tells us all sorts of fascinating things about the Indians but he never speaks about his uh or any of his friends relationships with the women I don't think he would have lived that long in a native Society without having taken on a woman and not and I suspect it wasn't one that was just a short-term scenario either it was probably the first infusion of Spanish blood into America you could bet he wouldn't mention it though and no because it would have caused him problems with the church probably and and he had to write this to the audience that were now feeding him which was Spain and he doesn't want them to think that he you just ditched Spanish values and went completely native went all these values that I was raised with that you all live with I've now decided are suspect no I don't think he could do that but I I I totally concur with you I think there was an Unwritten story there and so they continued following the sun Across The Ridges of the Sierra Madre though we could speak six Indian languages says cabz devaka we found a thousand differences in their ways of speech but we were always understood and kept our Authority with the Indians though still naked shedding our skin twice a year like snakes this is a Taha this would hold water year round it can be anywhere as deep as 10 ft or as shallow as a foot in half but there's always water there and it's good water good water and we finally reached the little town of San Carlos Hi how are you we finally made it did you want to he I love one thanks [Music] you yep you know what it was sure [Music] fun it had been fun but it had also told us more about cabz deaka and the man he was becoming something has happened to him he has been transformed somehow that he is no longer neither an Indian uh and he is no longer a spaner and a Christian that he is a new a new man you speak of him as a man situated in between those two cultures I suppose in a sense he's he's the first modern man there in a way you think he uh he had uh learned something that very few Spaniards knew is that uh that the Indians were human beings uh and uh many uh in Spain didn't want human beings at that time they wanted [Music] slaves everywhere on their Journey now they were treated as people with powers people who could heal to we modern people this is the least believable part of his story and even in in his day he was accused of fantasizing and worse claiming Supernatural Powers the Indian healers do their cures like this he says by blowing on the sick person and then using their hands to cast the illness out we did the same but with the sign of the cross praying to God to make them better and he did this is the Sacred Heart of Jesus he appears to me when I cure the sick oh and this this is my protection against the evil spirits who could harm me absolutely wonderful mixture of Christian symbols and yet the way of working with them is much more traditional than Mexican um it touches back to what was the religion of the whole of the Americas in ancient times the sort of shamanistic religion and in a sense cabak is the first person to try and cross the boundary between the two and use them both it pleased God to give them Health says cabesa devaka as a 16th century man would in the future he wrote To the King of Spain these lands will be brought to the true faith and though my story may be difficult to believe I assure your majesty it is the truth [Music] and however we might explain it thousands of Indians clung to them now asking for Their Blessings walking with them through the Wilderness the natives were astonished that cabz deaker and friends could walk for a whole day without needing food but by then says kabaka we were so inured to suffering that we felt no [Music] fatigue their guides now led them towards another great native trade route across the Americas the shell Trail which came down from the Pueblo of Arizona and New Mexico all the way to the Pacific we saw many towns now says cabz deaka built by civilized people they were near the ruined city of kazas grandis this astonishing place was once a center of the shell trade the archaeologists found a ton and a half of shells in these warehouses shells for grinding up for use as decoration on the face of the walls shells for personal adornment necklaces bracelets shells like the pink spilus which was used for religious rituals all the way along the Pacific Coast down to South America this place was abandoned a century before cabesa daka's day but the Commerce and the trade routes on which it was carried still [Music] continued winter was coming on now as they climbed out of the Plains their last hurdle the immense fard landscape around Copper Canyon one of the biggest native groups in the America still lives here the taruma the people here are the most opened and intelligent folk I met says cabz deaka they're women more modestly and better dressed than in any other part of the Indies we'd seen the Tara umara are descendants of the peoples who once spread all over the high plains of northern Mexico they have borrowed from the Europeans only a handful of useful things the violin the goat the apple tree and the metal plow share there are no roads through their lands you still have to go on foot they call themselves the people who walk straight and they mean in their hearts as well as with their feet by now Caba deaka had seen the first signs of the Spanish presence an Indian wearing a sword hilt as an amulet his world was not far off this is where we'll be sleeping tonight and jolly comfy it looks too he knew now he must leave the Indian world but however much he wanted to he also knew that what he was leaving behind had true [Music] worth reading his account I think that he remained a Christian gentleman he still believed in the civilizing mission of Spain but he was no longer a conquistador if you had had to explain to somebody what it is about this life that is so good what would the things be that they think are so valuable he had understood that the peoples of the Americas were human too as the Tara umara would put it cab deaka had learned to walk straight he said what's good about life is that there's goat [ __ ] there's goat droppings and that's good because we put it on the land so that the corn will be born to make tortillas with and to make pinoli with and to make tesguino with I said why do you make tesguino he says to have a fiesta so that you can dance around this special dance they do all night so that God will bring water and why do you need water he says so that the corn will be born because there's the circle if we kept asking it'll go around fantastic they don't walk straight [Laughter] anymore so people like me we don't we don't walk straight anymore no this is not hardly at all sorry but how would cab deaka use his knowledge on his return [Applause] The Odyssey of cabad deaka was drawing to its close that winter they came down forested Canyons towards the Pacific after more than 2,000 miles he was about to re-enter the world he'd once known [Music] we came down into a wonderful landscape he says fertile with rivers forests and Fields nowhere in the world in our eyes could be so rich and beautiful alo alo cab deaka ran into Spanish slave Hunters it's a moment which has been portrayed in novels and [Music] films and so cabz deaka met his old self the man he been all those years [Music] before they threatened to enslave his Indian Companions and to kill him but he stood his ground and forced them to let him and his Indians go and finally nearly 10 years after he left Cuba he walked like a ghost into the town of kulak Khan to the astonishment of the local Spanish colonists they had been the first people to walk across the continent they'd seen things no Outsider had ever seen but there's no happy ending to his story when he got back to Spain he argued for benevolent rule in the Americas but he was ruined by his enemies and he died a poper his only Legacy the book of his adventures [Music] while he'd been lost the world had changed as never before the Conquistadors had carried their swords from Florida to [Music] Chile their bravery and their greed had led them to Lake tiaka and to the heights of Machu [Music] Picchu and the cost ancient civilizations overthrown tens of millions dead from European violence and disease and the plundering of the natural world of the [Music] Americas [Music] back in Spain these events woke the conscience of the age and people now began to question the justice of Conquest all the great civilizations had treated people not of their own color or Creed as alien but now in Catholic Spain these assumptions were questioned did the Indians have human rights what does it mean to be [Music] human in 1550 the king's counselors gathered here in valad doid to listen to two great figures of the age the Dominican Las kazas speaking for the Indians and the philosopher Sepulveda for the mission of Imperial Spain this is where the debate was held it's quite a moment in the history of the world isn't it the first time that principles of universal human rights and Global Justice were worked out took place here seul Vader concluded by saying this that human beings are not equal that some are superior to others and that the inhabitants of the new world were natural slaves because they were barbarous and inhumane how can it be doubted that they have been justly conquered by our most Humane nation which excels in every kind of virtue Las kazas spoke second staggered in an enormous pile of documentation 40 years in research King's counselor's Jaws must have dropped must have thought he was going to talk for days and he did he talked for five days and the Nu of his argument was this that the conquests in the new world were wrong and had to be stopped that the only way was peaceful conversion through love and kindness there's no Nation on Earth said no matter how Savage cannot attain Humane civilization all the peoples of the world are human beings and the definition of a human being is that we are all rational things we share the same faculties and will and capacities and understanding we all take place pleasure in goodness the war against the natives of the new world is wrong because it is unjust to wage war against our fellow humans and all the peoples of the world are human the king listened he ordered a stop to the conquests while the issue was debated further but he couldn't stop history on the ground the conquests continued driven as ever by the Lust For [Music] Gold and what of the Conquistadors themselves The Men Who won the new world what did they think looking back he died in Stuart Sterling's ancestor was one of them he fought in the battles in Peru saw ATA walpa dead married an incor princess but he had blood on his hands he wrote this extraordinary document which he addressed to King Philipi on his deathbed age 78 he addressed to the king a remarkable confession I captain Manon make this my last will in Testament firstly for the Peace of my soul I declare for many years now I have wanted to speak to his Catholic Majesty King Phillip I wish your majesty to understand the motive that moves me to say this is the Peace of my conscience because of the guilt I share for we have destroyed by our evil Deeds such a government as was enjoyed by these Natives and now they have come to such a pass that these natives from doing no evil have changed to people who now do no good and so I have unburdened my conscience there is nothing more I can do to alleviate these injustices other than by these words for I am the last to die of the conquist [Music] lordes [Music]

at dawn on a spring day in 1528 a Spanish Fleet from Cuba prepared to land an army of conquistadors on the shores of North America they had come to find new lands of gold [Music] [Music] it was Thursday the 14th of April 1528 when they came ashore the beginning of the most disastrous of all the expedition to the Conquistadors and yet one of the great epic stories in the history of the Americas [Music] [Music] go [Music] the Spanish had called this Florida the land of flowers but they found a strange and evil country that summer over 300 conquistadors struggled through these swamps their leader panilo Den narvis was arrogant and incompetent they had no interpreters Their Food Supplies ran out and worse they were picked off by hostile tribes the survivors of those native peoples are still here the seol they have fiercely defended their independence ever since so you were the only Native American people within the USA who never submitted right only tribe to never sign a treat submission the elements of Florida a very very good Ally the elements of Florida are a very good Ally right snakes and alligators Europeans worried more about them again these people had no knowledge of Florida navis had been licensed by the king of Spain to discover and Conquer Florida he hoped to find cities here with large populations and gold instead he found a poor landscape totally unsuitable for colonization but he pushed his army on further into the [Music] nightmare if only navis had come here to seek the well-being of the Indians one Spaniard wrote and not to Wade through their blood to gain ill-gotten wealth but his capacities did not come up to his [Music] dreams with Autumn coming on the expedition was on the point of collapse hoping now just to save their lives they struggle down to the sea below Tallahasse but there was no sign of their ships the fleet had given them up for dead they're starving disillusioned and na weighs up the situation he thinks that the Spanish settlements in Mexico are only a few leagues down that Coast in fact they're a thousand miles so he decides to build boats to escape and on the 22nd of September nearly 300 survivors set sail in five barges in Terrible Weather they tried to sail across the Gulf of Mexico past the Mississippi nav himself was never seen [Music] again we would know nothing of this story but for the captain of one of the bodges a young young Spanish gentleman called Alva Nunes cabz [Music] deaka cab deaka wrote a remarkable account of his adventures and with it we set out to follow him across the Gulf of Mexico to find out which way wind and Tide might have taken him that Autumn and if he was coming out of this part of Florida you can see the green arrows indicate the current and the speed here and as you see it gets pretty Swift right along the Mississippi Delta the arrows showing the the predominant Direction that's the predominant direction of the current uh occasionally though you have a lot of fronts that will come through push the wind offshore and those tend to be very strong winds that will push offshore and build up great seas but predominant wind is from the southeast oh that's very interesting because when they pass the Mississippi mouth they get caught up in a storm coming from the north that blows them right out to sea and CA well nearly kill nearly drowns them in fact they mentioned that [Music] in the end says cabz devaka we commended ourselves to God and the dangers of the sea and there was not a man among us who did not think that death was certain none of us had any idea of navigation for 6 weeks we were lost eating rotten maze drinking seawater which drove some men mad [Music] I was at the helm that night I had prepared to [Music] die and then in the darkness we heard Breakers we were near land it was the 6th of November 1528 at dawn they came in Shore but the boat capsized in the surf too weak to swim some of the men were drowned they found themselves on a Windswept Shore unseen before by white men Galveston Island Texas how far up do you think they went I you know given uh how weak he was I don't think he could probably went much further than you're going one of them climbed an oak tree to see where they were I can see it I can see the bay yeah I think they guessed the island was about half a League wide you know maybe a mile and a half or so is that that would be about right would it at the widest point yeah yeah and then uh they could actually on a good clear day like to today see the mainland across the bay and you recognize that you're on an island but the island was inhabited by karanga Indians they were hunter gatherers and they only came here uh during the fall they usually left uh at the end of February in the beginning of March in the spring and would return to the mainland yeah and uh but this was their kind of you might call their winter residence like the New Yorkers go to Florida we had expected to be sacrificed says Caba deaka but when the Indians saw our misery they sat down with us and began to weep too those uncivilized Savage men were sorry for us and they shared what little food they had you know you look at all these great Expeditions of The Conquistadors and the terrible events that happened through the new world Cortez and pizaro and everything else and here is a story where uh the the the the man begins here on this spot to become the other doesn't he he exactly because and it's the Indians who give him the first uh clue to this transformation isn't it they cry for him and he realizes the common Humanity don't you think they saw people destitute in pain they were moved by compassion to to help them and Aid them in the process and so they saved cabesa deaka to their own detriment it's it it it's they were exterminated they were exterminated the caranas began to die of European diseases that same winter they vanished for good in the course of the 18th century but they kept cabesa deaka alive with the food of the island that's razor shark so there's a great Oyster Bed running all the way down this little inet yes and and and there are places out here where there oysters are several miles and during low tide they're exposed and that's probably at the time when they harvest them I'm I don't know how many people they were trying to feed but I wouldn't stop the Expedition had been scattered to the winds the men from another barge were slaughtered by Indians up the coast one group reduced to eating their dead Shipmates but cabz devaka survived on oysters and Roots this plant this is a cattail and and this is probably what he was speaking of when he said that he was breaking the those nuts off to eat oh tastes like a nut extraordinary it was easy picking they could just walk out and pick it up and there acres and Acres of oysters that are exposed at low tide but of the 300 men who left Florida only four would survive please do not walk or stand in front of any vehicle while the was approaching the landing the karanas were nomadic in the spring they crossed over to the mainland and they took cabes deaka with them they had thought him a superior man but with no skills he was an extra mouth to feed and he became their slave he was brutally treated but they kept him alive after five or six years of that life Caba deaka decided he'd had enough it was time to escape not out to sea but into the interior the interior of Texas at that time was completely unknown to the outside world but during during those years cabad devaka had got to know many of the nomadic tribes who lived inland some of them he describes for the first time kelens tonkawas atapan but that was not all he had also discovered that one of the coastal tribes had sheltered three other survivors of the Shipwreck who were still alive they met up and made their break for freedom their plan was to walk a thousand miles to Mexico City they couldn't go south because of hostile tribes so they decided to walk to the Pacific but which way it used to be thought that they took a northern route through New Mexico and Arizona down into Spanish Mexico but there's another possibility that they cross the Rio Grand near near the sea and turn west inside Mexico the clues are in cabz dea's book one of the few copies to survive is in San Marcos and there I met Don Olen so this is an original copy of kabaka's story yes it is and the page we're most interested in in the research we did is page 40 there are four physical Clues all that happen on the same page here there's a mountain of seven leagues oh yeah which would be 20 or 21 miles long yeah and the stones there were like scoria of hero on slag iron slag slag down near the bottom of the page he finds some trees penos chos Pines with pinones and there again you see the pinones and the words that really catch our eye down there are right there muas that means their shells were very thin so this is a um a very particular kind of pine Tre a very particular kind the other two Clues are much harder he says they gave us many small sacks of margita and alcohol Malo now those are minerals people before us have translated that word or transcribed it I should say as Margarita which can mean pearls or Pearl Micah which is abundant in the deserts of Arizona and New Mexico and they've used this to support the northern route well if you look closely you see there do you see what I see that word is not Margarita the the second R isn't the same as the first R is no it's not it has a descender down into the left which prints very faintly you see it there yeah and if you look closely you see it's actually margita with an X Marita Marita what does that mean what that means is iron pyrites iron [Music] pyrites so the Spaniards walked into a land rich in minerals to follow them we crossed the Rio Grand and entered the desolate landscape of northern [Music] Mexico searching for cabz dea's Route into unknown America chatin is just he's just over [Music] there at TR we marched along mountain range seven leagues long they walk the whole length of this Sierra in one day they were the first Europeans to walk across the continent they give us the first account of the people here but it's never been traced on the ground maybe we can ask them about the uh the pine trees do you want to roll your window done his story is still misunderstood because we don't know for sure what route he took we're looking for a p the pinion with very very thin shells if we knew his route then his account might begin to reveal the Lost history of these lands and now as then local knowledge is all the old man knows about them here gracias gracias byebye goodbye so the old man did the old man knew about them yeah fantastic great we're on the right track the old herder had sent us on to a dried up riverbed and there were the pine trees so this is one of them yeah great it's amazing to think the paper shell pinion was only identified by science in 1979 and how easy to imagine the Spaniards feasting on the kernels there's still some on the floor yeah still some it was the best food they'd had for days this year is not uh was not a good season yeah yeah when they're still green he says he just grind them up make a ball and eat them are if they're dry eat them with the shells too you see how thin it is that's what kabak is talking about that's what the Indians here used as food along with the the noal cacti that we passed on the way but to clinch his route we needed to find his mountain of iron the locals sent us up a place called mercardo the hill of wealth 5,000 more than 5,000 ft the mountain cabes deaka says the people here smelted metals they gave him a worked Copper Bell there are copper deposits here and there's also a huge Quarry it's golden brown with iron ore strewn with pyrites and iron slag so this whole vast excavation here is actually has been done for the iron yes they've dug out this made the hole and then of course some rocks have fallen in from the sides into the some of the other Clues you might be able to help on as a geologist they find something which everybody argues over they call it alcco alcohol molo powdered alcohol which some people say could be site uh lead sulfide there's also black manganese uh around outside here it's called the pyite the Indians use it as paint and that's exactly what cabz deaka says a black powder used by Indian women to paint their faces okay I found it okay we've got some manganese here fastic so you think this could be it well it's the kind of Manganese we call pyro lucite it sure comes off black wow [Music] brilliant I left mon Clover feeling sure Caba deaka had come this way he wasn't moving through the nomadic peoples of Central Texas he was among the settled communities here in North Mexico people who lived in houses worked metals and had longdistance tray the ancestors of today's [Music] people the next few weeks he tells us they walked 3 or 400 miles across dry Plains into Barron mountains they were heading northwards now back up towards the Rio Grand but they weren't wandering aimlessly they spoke the languages and moved from one Community to another on Ancient Trails which now crossed and recrossed a great River these trails are marked on US military maps from the 1850s one of them was called the Great kamansi Trail going back down into Mexico it met the Rio Grand at the the grand Indian [Music] Crossing these Trails can be thousands of years old may be even used by the first migrants over 12,000 years ago we took an expert guide with us Linda Walker and an archaeologist Bob Maloof and all along the trail we found places where human beings had once lived Caba dea's Journey had begun to reveal the vanished map of ancient America you can see shelter part and it probably ran farther out and it uh this is one of the better pictograph sites that we come up to you see that they're all over this panel oh those are beautiful pictographs that's late prehistoric pictographs what what's late prehistoric then 500 AD to as late as 1550 about we could still make out the finger marks of the artists one they depicting down this looks like something with legs doesn't it uh if they're difficult or impossible as a rule to interpret accurately although a lot of people try so so could any of these uh be religious in sign we can probably assume that uh they they practice certain kinds of of shamanistic religion certainly with healers and and this sort of thing this was the kind of religion that cab deaka and his friends encountered along this this route and they thought cabesa deaka was a shame I mean they called they they went to him to heal to get become healed and and they would go to him just like people would go to a medical doctor today and it's possible that could have saved their lives what's the the lifestyle of these people well they're they're hard there wouldn't have been a great Hospitality at the table in the evening well yeah we have hard archaeological evidence for the fact that they that they actually were eating just about anything they could get their hands on Bob's hard evidence came from the ancient human excrement in the rubbish dumps on these campsites when cabesa deaka said they were eating worms and spiders he wasn't telling lies the Spanish gentleman was tasting the life most humans had lived since the Stone [Music] Age that night we found a campsite overlooking the [Music] desert on the great prehistoric route into Central [Music] America the place was an abandoned Indian settlement we found grinding holes just as Caba Daka describes these are probably from 2000 3000 BC to as late as 500 AD see they're kind of tapered very smooth tapered and so you so you have a wooden pounder and seeds or whatever you use inside seeds mosqu beans things like that they would grind uh they would grind up in these and powder them to make meal wonderful these are good examples wonderful Caba deaka says these holes were used to grind MOS beans to make the hallucinogens for the Indian ceremonies get ston redot he also describes the way they cooked food look at that boiling the water with hot stones from the fire that is hot I've never seen that done there go so they do this because they don't have ceramics they don't have metal they can't put a they can't put a pot on the fire well they didn't they didn't probably because they moved about frequently and pottery is not very conducive to a lot of movement in this country especially because it's so Rocky and it's easily broken so where are the tea bags come on English breakfast or El grave you know you guys are supposed to be the experts on this Michael as cab deaka said how diverse and strange are human beings and their ways the four men had now reached the very middle of the continent but did they still feel like con doors did cabz deaka the gentleman he had the chance to see this world before it was destroyed by The Conquistadors and exploiters who followed but how much he leaves unsaid some burritos yeah that'd be great thanks one thing that um I keep wondering about as we're traveling on this you know in the footsteps of cabz deaka is that he's he's away for seven or eight years you got something great and he um he tells us all sorts of fascinating things about the Indians but he never speaks about his uh or any of his friends relationships with the women I don't think he would have lived that long in a native Society without having taken on a woman and not and I suspect it wasn't one that was just a short-term scenario either it was probably the first infusion of Spanish blood into America you could bet he wouldn't mention it though and no because it would have caused him problems with the church probably and and he had to write this to the audience that were now feeding him which was Spain and he doesn't want them to think that he you just ditched Spanish values and went completely native went all these values that I was raised with that you all live with I've now decided are suspect no I don't think he could do that but I I I totally concur with you I think there was an Unwritten story there and so they continued following the sun Across The Ridges of the Sierra Madre though we could speak six Indian languages says cabz devaka we found a thousand differences in their ways of speech but we were always understood and kept our Authority with the Indians though still naked shedding our skin twice a year like snakes this is a Taha this would hold water year round it can be anywhere as deep as 10 ft or as shallow as a foot in half but there's always water there and it's good water good water and we finally reached the little town of San Carlos Hi how are you we finally made it did you want to he I love one thanks [Music] you yep you know what it was sure [Music] fun it had been fun but it had also told us more about cabz deaka and the man he was becoming something has happened to him he has been transformed somehow that he is no longer neither an Indian uh and he is no longer a spaner and a Christian that he is a new a new man you speak of him as a man situated in between those two cultures I suppose in a sense he's he's the first modern man there in a way you think he uh he had uh learned something that very few Spaniards knew is that uh that the Indians were human beings uh and uh many uh in Spain didn't want human beings at that time they wanted [Music] slaves everywhere on their Journey now they were treated as people with powers people who could heal to we modern people this is the least believable part of his story and even in in his day he was accused of fantasizing and worse claiming Supernatural Powers the Indian healers do their cures like this he says by blowing on the sick person and then using their hands to cast the illness out we did the same but with the sign of the cross praying to God to make them better and he did this is the Sacred Heart of Jesus he appears to me when I cure the sick oh and this this is my protection against the evil spirits who could harm me absolutely wonderful mixture of Christian symbols and yet the way of working with them is much more traditional than Mexican um it touches back to what was the religion of the whole of the Americas in ancient times the sort of shamanistic religion and in a sense cabak is the first person to try and cross the boundary between the two and use them both it pleased God to give them Health says cabesa devaka as a 16th century man would in the future he wrote To the King of Spain these lands will be brought to the true faith and though my story may be difficult to believe I assure your majesty it is the truth [Music] and however we might explain it thousands of Indians clung to them now asking for Their Blessings walking with them through the Wilderness the natives were astonished that cabz deaker and friends could walk for a whole day without needing food but by then says kabaka we were so inured to suffering that we felt no [Music] fatigue their guides now led them towards another great native trade route across the Americas the shell Trail which came down from the Pueblo of Arizona and New Mexico all the way to the Pacific we saw many towns now says cabz deaka built by civilized people they were near the ruined city of kazas grandis this astonishing place was once a center of the shell trade the archaeologists found a ton and a half of shells in these warehouses shells for grinding up for use as decoration on the face of the walls shells for personal adornment necklaces bracelets shells like the pink spilus which was used for religious rituals all the way along the Pacific Coast down to South America this place was abandoned a century before cabesa daka's day but the Commerce and the trade routes on which it was carried still [Music] continued winter was coming on now as they climbed out of the Plains their last hurdle the immense fard landscape around Copper Canyon one of the biggest native groups in the America still lives here the taruma the people here are the most opened and intelligent folk I met says cabz deaka they're women more modestly and better dressed than in any other part of the Indies we'd seen the Tara umara are descendants of the peoples who once spread all over the high plains of northern Mexico they have borrowed from the Europeans only a handful of useful things the violin the goat the apple tree and the metal plow share there are no roads through their lands you still have to go on foot they call themselves the people who walk straight and they mean in their hearts as well as with their feet by now Caba deaka had seen the first signs of the Spanish presence an Indian wearing a sword hilt as an amulet his world was not far off this is where we'll be sleeping tonight and jolly comfy it looks too he knew now he must leave the Indian world but however much he wanted to he also knew that what he was leaving behind had true [Music] worth reading his account I think that he remained a Christian gentleman he still believed in the civilizing mission of Spain but he was no longer a conquistador if you had had to explain to somebody what it is about this life that is so good what would the things be that they think are so valuable he had understood that the peoples of the Americas were human too as the Tara umara would put it cab deaka had learned to walk straight he said what's good about life is that there's goat [ __ ] there's goat droppings and that's good because we put it on the land so that the corn will be born to make tortillas with and to make pinoli with and to make tesguino with I said why do you make tesguino he says to have a fiesta so that you can dance around this special dance they do all night so that God will bring water and why do you need water he says so that the corn will be born because there's the circle if we kept asking it'll go around fantastic they don't walk straight [Laughter] anymore so people like me we don't we don't walk straight anymore no this is not hardly at all sorry but how would cab deaka use his knowledge on his return [Applause] The Odyssey of cabad deaka was drawing to its close that winter they came down forested Canyons towards the Pacific after more than 2,000 miles he was about to re-enter the world he'd once known [Music] we came down into a wonderful landscape he says fertile with rivers forests and Fields nowhere in the world in our eyes could be so rich and beautiful alo alo cab deaka ran into Spanish slave Hunters it's a moment which has been portrayed in novels and [Music] films and so cabz deaka met his old self the man he been all those years [Music] before they threatened to enslave his Indian Companions and to kill him but he stood his ground and forced them to let him and his Indians go and finally nearly 10 years after he left Cuba he walked like a ghost into the town of kulak Khan to the astonishment of the local Spanish colonists they had been the first people to walk across the continent they'd seen things no Outsider had ever seen but there's no happy ending to his story when he got back to Spain he argued for benevolent rule in the Americas but he was ruined by his enemies and he died a poper his only Legacy the book of his adventures [Music] while he'd been lost the world had changed as never before the Conquistadors had carried their swords from Florida to [Music] Chile their bravery and their greed had led them to Lake tiaka and to the heights of Machu [Music] Picchu and the cost ancient civilizations overthrown tens of millions dead from European violence and disease and the plundering of the natural world of the [Music] Americas [Music] back in Spain these events woke the conscience of the age and people now began to question the justice of Conquest all the great civilizations had treated people not of their own color or Creed as alien but now in Catholic Spain these assumptions were questioned did the Indians have human rights what does it mean to be [Music] human in 1550 the king's counselors gathered here in valad doid to listen to two great figures of the age the Dominican Las kazas speaking for the Indians and the philosopher Sepulveda for the mission of Imperial Spain this is where the debate was held it's quite a moment in the history of the world isn't it the first time that principles of universal human rights and Global Justice were worked out took place here seul Vader concluded by saying this that human beings are not equal that some are superior to others and that the inhabitants of the new world were natural slaves because they were barbarous and inhumane how can it be doubted that they have been justly conquered by our most Humane nation which excels in every kind of virtue Las kazas spoke second staggered in an enormous pile of documentation 40 years in research King's counselor's Jaws must have dropped must have thought he was going to talk for days and he did he talked for five days and the Nu of his argument was this that the conquests in the new world were wrong and had to be stopped that the only way was peaceful conversion through love and kindness there's no Nation on Earth said no matter how Savage cannot attain Humane civilization all the peoples of the world are human beings and the definition of a human being is that we are all rational things we share the same faculties and will and capacities and understanding we all take place pleasure in goodness the war against the natives of the new world is wrong because it is unjust to wage war against our fellow humans and all the peoples of the world are human the king listened he ordered a stop to the conquests while the issue was debated further but he couldn't stop history on the ground the conquests continued driven as ever by the Lust For [Music] Gold and what of the Conquistadors themselves The Men Who won the new world what did they think looking back he died in Stuart Sterling's ancestor was one of them he fought in the battles in Peru saw ATA walpa dead married an incor princess but he had blood on his hands he wrote this extraordinary document which he addressed to King Philipi on his deathbed age 78 he addressed to the king a remarkable confession I captain Manon make this my last will in Testament firstly for the Peace of my soul I declare for many years now I have wanted to speak to his Catholic Majesty King Phillip I wish your majesty to understand the motive that moves me to say this is the Peace of my conscience because of the guilt I share for we have destroyed by our evil Deeds such a government as was enjoyed by these Natives and now they have come to such a pass that these natives from doing no evil have changed to people who now do no good and so I have unburdened my conscience there is nothing more I can do to alleviate these injustices other than by these words for I am the last to die of the conquist [Music] lordes [Music]

Transcript for:Cabeza de Vaca's 1528 Expedition Journey

Transcript for:
Cabeza de Vaca's 1528 Expedition Journey