Truth & fiction chart a miraculous journey.

• Author: Werner, Louis
• Position: Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca's 'Naufragios' - Includes related article on retellings in modern media

Cabeza de Vaca's own record of his wanderings has been reinterpreted by myriad generations

Two New World prophecies of doom from year 1528, both soon to come true. One made by the Moorish seeress of Badajoz, later recounted by a Spanish gentlewoman aboard ship as it landed three hundred explorers on the Florida coast. The other by a young officer of these men, who in the next eight years would lead all but three to their death from drowning, starvation, and torture.

The ensuing story of shipwreck, Indian captivity, and epic barefoot march to the Pacific was later committed to writing by that same officer - and the only survivor to return to Spain - as an authentic testimonial, winning for him rich rewards and appointments from Charles V.

But the book's veracity is today contested by scholars, many of whom read the tale more as a confabulation of magic realism than as a true account of actual events. Notwithstanding the author's claim of the latter, how does one explain this perceptual shift from fact to fiction?

Is it because this narrative - under the storybook title Naufragios [Castaways], by Alvar Nunez, better known by the improbable name Cabeza de Vaca, which had been given to a forbear while battling the Moors in 1212 - takes place in the mirage-filled genre of autobiography without witness, lurking as it does in the penumbra between the real life one has led and the imagined life one would have preferred?

But there is a possibly truer explanation for what are now taken as the delusions of a pretend messiah. Leading the exploration of an uncharted arcadia, Cabeza de Vaca was as much shepherd as captain. Firmness of faith was tested to the point of death at every turn, and the men who followed him wagered their own lives on the outcome. Maybe at first he did feel "chosen" to lead mortals to salvation, but as the years passed and the miles trod on, he realized soon enough that he, too, needed saving. Thus he wrote Naufragios, to be read perhaps as a New World version of the story of Christ.

That Cabeza de Vaca should die penniless and alone after a criminally failed governorship of Paraguay, stripped of honor, title, and fame - lucky indeed to have escaped exile to Algiers - may account for the precedence he later gave to his early years. The same man who from his first voyage to the New World came back an epic-telling hero returned a second time in chains and disgrace with no willing audience for his life's last chapter.

The first expedition began smoothly enough. Five ships and six hundred men under the command of Panfilo de Narvaez, newly named governor of the unexplored mainland territories between Tamaulipas, Mexico, and the tip of Florida, set out from the Spanish port of Sanlucar de Barrameda on June 17, 1527. Thirty-six-year old Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca served as treasurer and chief officer of justice.

After intermediate stops in the Canaries, Hispaniola, and Cuba, during which men, horses, and provisions were lost to hurricanes, a group of three hundred adventurers was dropped near Tampa Bay on April 14, 1528. The next day, Good Friday, the group came upon a native settlement and there found gold and feathered headdresses.

Seeing these as a foretaste of yet greater riches, they "asked the Indians by signs where those things had come from. They indicated to us that very far away was a province called Apalachee, where there was much gold and made signs indicating that there was a large quantity of everything we wanted."

A scheduled rendezvous with the ships for new provisions was missed but caused little concern. With renewed vigor, and despite the swamps and poisonous snakes, the men marched northward to this strangely named province of plenty, with the Indian sign language for treasure speaking ever louder in their heads. "They said there was great abundance in Apalachee."

But Cabeza de Vaca thought differently, cautioning against a headlong march without adequate supply. Contrary to the Indian promise, the terrain was difficult and barren. Rather than face dishonor, however, he remained with the troops and matched their excitement upon finally reaching the village of Apalachee, near present-day Tallahassee.

Only then began the Indians' relentless bow-and-arrow attack and, afterward, a futile search for food by the survivors. "When we had arrived we saw how little possibility we had of going forward, for there was nowhere to go, and even if the men had wished to continue they could not, for most of them were sick.... I will not dwell on this here, for everyone can imagine what it is like to be in such a strange and evil land without any possibility of help." How quickly their thoughts turned from gold to the grave.

Or more precisely, the watery grave - for there they decided to build boats from what poor material they could find, using horse hair for rigging and shirts for sailcloth. "And such was the land to which, for our sins, we had come...