Replies

I had read about Cabeza de Vaca in a colonial history book, but never knew the extent of his cultural anthropological discourses. Thanks for this...

What he described was a a brutal insurance against inbreeding...almost all tribal societies merely have the young women leave the village. It has been theorized by evolutionary biologists that the reason teenage girls are so at odds with their mothers is a remnant of one way to ensure out-migration of the women. Another point is this: when a young adult lives at home, it's usually the son and not the daughter.

Check out Cabeza de Vaca here Adventures in the Unknown Interior of America. He was shipwrecked in Florida in 1527 and wandered around the southwest for eight years, first as a captive slave, and eventually becoming a medicine man and primitive surgeon held in awe by the tribes he met.

Cabeza de Vaca was a remarkable individual. His account is available in a Penguin edition. He was one of four survivors of the Narvaez expedition which went to Florida, then tried to get to Mexico on makeshift rafts. Most of them either died at sea or of disease or exposure after being cast up on the Texas coast. The survivors were slaves of the local Indians for several years.

Cabeza de Vaca is said to be the first European to mention the bison. He also mentions at one point of one group of Indians, "during the time I was among them I saw something very repulsive, namely, a man married to another. These are impotent and womanish beings who dress like and do the work of women." He would not be welcome in today's Democratic Party.

One of the four survivors was a Moroccan slave, Estevanico, whom he sometimes refers to as "the Negro." Not long ago I caught Henry Louis Gates talking about Estevanico's great explorations (greatly exaggering the number of miles he walked) but totally ignoring the others as if he either was alone or was the leader of the group.