A Small Difference in Time -- Cabeza de Vaca
What a difference a few years make!
Nearly 500 years ago, in 1528, a large party of Spanish land-grabbers and believers bringing the Good News was driven ashore by the familiar hurricanes near what is now Tampa, Florida, and, as all the Spanish newly arrives did, they promptly set about ripping off the native population, calling themselves "trading" stuff like beads and broken pieces of pottery for food and, preferably at first but not for long, gold. The Spanish carried a lot of weapons, armor, horses, and crosses but not enough food, and for eats they depended on these 'trades," but more often on the use of outright force. But the party of about 300, of which a man named Cabeza de Vaca was the treasurer, was too large for the food supply as it then existed in that part of the Florida Gulf Coast,and that was the beginning of their downfall.
Their story is to me one of the most dramatic chapters in all of American history, because of those original 300, only four emerged from the wilderness eight (8) long years later and thousands of miles away, far over near the Baja Peninsula in Mexico and not far from California. One was Cabeza de Vaca, and another was a Moorish slave from Africa named Estabanico. For all those years they had meandered -- it can't be said that they hiked, because hikers usually move in reasonably straight lines -- generally westward across the underbelly of the American South and the Southwest, undergoing all sorts of interesting experiences and deprivations and escapes while dealing with the numerous tribes along the way and eating things that hadn't been part of their cuisine since they had been tiny tots sampling bugs and dirt.
In this process, first they trekked a little northward and then they turned west and passed right by where Left-Leaning Lady's newly refurbished house now sits, in what she calls Florida's "Redneck Riviera." And much farther on, near Steve Bates' haunts in Houston, Cabeza spent several years as a slave of some of the tribesmen on the island where Galveston, Texas now sits, during which he and other Spanish empire-builders devoted all their days to unceremoniously digging roots of some unnamed variety out of the shallows. (The Spanish made no attempt to drop by Minnesota where Rook hangs out, probably because it had too much water and too many trees to suit any right-thinking Castilian, and the Sioux and the Mandans were glad of that.)
Ironically, among other things, though they probably brought with them diseases that took out their share of the local tribes in the first place, in time Cabeza and his fellow survivors were literally forced by the tribesmen into becoming doctors or faith-healers, which they did successfully, using various Catholic prayers and what-not that the Indians found to be effective.
I thought of de Vaca and his comrades a couple of mornings ago when, during a phone call to my wife down in that same area of Florida where she is now and which he and the rest of his party found to be so inhospitably short of things to eat, a pickup truck loaded with watermelons, okra, and tomatoes came around and unloaded so much of these desirable edibles on my wife and her stepfather free of charge that she tried to get the givers to keep some of it. The second planting of such crops has already been made there, and much more will come later.
Well, there's no need to feel superior. If I were to wash up on those shores today, I would likewise be dependent on the pickup trucks and the stores. This is because, though I know perfectly well how to grow edibles of many kinds, there wouldn't be enough time before I would be in the same serious trouble as those would-be conquistadores.
But I have options, in place of which the Cabeza party mainly had chutzpah, and huge amounts of it, too, though still not enough for the great majority of them to see Andalusia and other such places ever again. Unluckily for the tribes, however, there were still far too many Spanish still in Spain, waiting to take their shots at sailing over and milking the New World.
The moral of this story is never to go anywhere unless you are absolutely sure of being able to get enough to eat once you get there, and also to be aware that Tennessee Williams' great line, "I have always depended on the kindness of strangers," doesn't apply if being unkind is a big part of your agenda. Or, as was so wisely emblazoned on the front of Union Station in Washington, D.C. (I hope it is still there), "Those who would gain the wealth of the Indies must bring the wealth of the Indies with them."
Nearly 500 years ago, in 1528, a large party of Spanish land-grabbers and believers bringing the Good News was driven ashore by the familiar hurricanes near what is now Tampa, Florida, and, as all the Spanish newly arrives did, they promptly set about ripping off the native population, calling themselves "trading" stuff like beads and broken pieces of pottery for food and, preferably at first but not for long, gold. The Spanish carried a lot of weapons, armor, horses, and crosses but not enough food, and for eats they depended on these 'trades," but more often on the use of outright force. But the party of about 300, of which a man named Cabeza de Vaca was the treasurer, was too large for the food supply as it then existed in that part of the Florida Gulf Coast,and that was the beginning of their downfall.
Their story is to me one of the most dramatic chapters in all of American history, because of those original 300, only four emerged from the wilderness eight (8) long years later and thousands of miles away, far over near the Baja Peninsula in Mexico and not far from California. One was Cabeza de Vaca, and another was a Moorish slave from Africa named Estabanico. For all those years they had meandered -- it can't be said that they hiked, because hikers usually move in reasonably straight lines -- generally westward across the underbelly of the American South and the Southwest, undergoing all sorts of interesting experiences and deprivations and escapes while dealing with the numerous tribes along the way and eating things that hadn't been part of their cuisine since they had been tiny tots sampling bugs and dirt.
In this process, first they trekked a little northward and then they turned west and passed right by where Left-Leaning Lady's newly refurbished house now sits, in what she calls Florida's "Redneck Riviera." And much farther on, near Steve Bates' haunts in Houston, Cabeza spent several years as a slave of some of the tribesmen on the island where Galveston, Texas now sits, during which he and other Spanish empire-builders devoted all their days to unceremoniously digging roots of some unnamed variety out of the shallows. (The Spanish made no attempt to drop by Minnesota where Rook hangs out, probably because it had too much water and too many trees to suit any right-thinking Castilian, and the Sioux and the Mandans were glad of that.)
Ironically, among other things, though they probably brought with them diseases that took out their share of the local tribes in the first place, in time Cabeza and his fellow survivors were literally forced by the tribesmen into becoming doctors or faith-healers, which they did successfully, using various Catholic prayers and what-not that the Indians found to be effective.
I thought of de Vaca and his comrades a couple of mornings ago when, during a phone call to my wife down in that same area of Florida where she is now and which he and the rest of his party found to be so inhospitably short of things to eat, a pickup truck loaded with watermelons, okra, and tomatoes came around and unloaded so much of these desirable edibles on my wife and her stepfather free of charge that she tried to get the givers to keep some of it. The second planting of such crops has already been made there, and much more will come later.
Well, there's no need to feel superior. If I were to wash up on those shores today, I would likewise be dependent on the pickup trucks and the stores. This is because, though I know perfectly well how to grow edibles of many kinds, there wouldn't be enough time before I would be in the same serious trouble as those would-be conquistadores.
But I have options, in place of which the Cabeza party mainly had chutzpah, and huge amounts of it, too, though still not enough for the great majority of them to see Andalusia and other such places ever again. Unluckily for the tribes, however, there were still far too many Spanish still in Spain, waiting to take their shots at sailing over and milking the New World.
The moral of this story is never to go anywhere unless you are absolutely sure of being able to get enough to eat once you get there, and also to be aware that Tennessee Williams' great line, "I have always depended on the kindness of strangers," doesn't apply if being unkind is a big part of your agenda. Or, as was so wisely emblazoned on the front of Union Station in Washington, D.C. (I hope it is still there), "Those who would gain the wealth of the Indies must bring the wealth of the Indies with them."
posted by Carl (aka Sofarsogoo) | 7:50 AM
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