Chapter One
Journey’s End
The First Crossing of America, 1536
In the far northwest of Mexico, a posse of Spanish
cavalrymen was riding deep in Indian country. History
has marked these men as among the most bloodthirsty and
brutal of the notoriously cruel conquistadors, the
soldiers of fortune who forged the great Spanish Empire
in the Americas. It was about the time of the spring
equinox in 1536, the “ides of March,” long believed to
be a season when the Fates might conspire to destroy a
man.
They had ridden far beyond the frontiers of their own
world in search of peaceable Indians to capture and sell
as slaves. A wave of fear had broken across the country.
The inhabitants had fled high into the Sierra Madre or
had taken refuge in the thick brush. No one had tilled
the soil; there were no crops; the desert plain was
barren; the fertile river valleys were emptied of
people.
The conquistadors now reaped the harvest of those seeds
sown in wrath and greed. Men and horses were weak with
hunger. For days they had found no victims to enslave in
that abandoned world, and they had no idea where they
were. There was no one to guide them, nor lead them to
water, nor give them food, and little grazing for their
horses. They were hungry and thirsty, lost in the
network of Indian trails that cut through the
impenetrable backwoods of brush and thorn scrub, cactus,
mesquite, and ebony, which closed in claustrophobically
around them. The threat of ambush was unrelenting and
terrifying in a land where the Indians used arrows
poisoned with the sap of venomous trees. Their Mexican
foot soldiers were restless.
This brutal band was led by a man called Diego de
Alcaraz. He was hard and brave, a frontier man who lived
in the saddle and a pirate who pillaged the land of its
people. His creed was violence and his motive was greed.
He cared nothing for the love of God, nor for the
decrees laid down by his sovereign and the laws of
Spain. He did his evil work far beyond any Spanish
imperial jurisdiction, riding time and again deep into
Indian country in search of peaceful victims he might
easily enslave and send for sale in Mexico City.
But Alcaraz was worried that he had forced his posse of
tough riders too far, farther north than any Spaniard
had ever ridden before. With his men worn down by hunger
and fear, he ordered a retreat, and they set out on the
slow march south to the remote imperial outpost of
Culiacán, the tiny military base they temporarily called
home.
Culiacán was the farthest settlement on the most distant
frontier of the vast Spanish Empire, a rough settlement
on the green and pleasant banks of the San Lorenzo
River. It marked the northern limit of a rich, fertile
province known as New Galicia, ruled over by Nuño
Beltrán de Guzmán, by almost all accounts a “natural
gangster” and one of the most merciless and pitiless of
men. Yet like so many conquistadors, he was as
audacious, dynamic, and brave as he was bloody.
Alcaraz was cast in Guzmán’s image; they were two
psychopaths with a common, perfidious ambition. They
sought out violence for violence’s sake. They raped and
pillaged, and with their plunder and the slaves they
took, they could afford the cost of further violent
missions. It was this cycle that had led Alcaraz and his
men to overstretch themselves in the remote region they
now hoped to find their way out of.
They backtracked for a week until they reached the lush
and verdant banks of the Sinaloa River, where Alcaraz
ordered his men to set their camp. This was some
respite, at least, from the endless flat plain, covered
in scrub. Some of the men thought they recognized the
river. Early the following morning, he sent his most
trusted man, Lázaro de Cebreros, to search for the trail
to Culiacán, or for someone who could guide them there.
As Cebreros set out with three companions, he no doubt
pondered the recent past. Only three years earlier,
another slaving expedition to the region had found
Indians wearing jewelry of horseshoe nails and other
European objects. One man even had a scrap of material
from a cape.
“Where did you get these things?” the Spaniards had
asked. Eventually, they were told a grim story. A
troubled Spanish ship had put into a nearby harbor, the
crew had come ashore in search of succor and safety, and
every one of them had been mercilessly massacred by
Indian warriors.
Now, in the cool of early morning, as Cebreros and his
companions went about their task, they suddenly tensed.
Alert with fear, they sensed danger moving in the bush.
Soon, Indians appeared. Cebreros watched as a group of
fourteen or fifteen men approached along the trail.
Instinctively, the Spaniards reached for their swords.
Then, as the Indians came closer, Cebreros noticed that
these usually beardless men seemed to be led by a
strikingly hirsute African, tanned deeply black by the
relentless sun. Close behind him was a European, his
blond hair and long beard bleached almost white. Both
wore feather headdresses and carried the sacred rattles
of Indian shamans or medicine men. Rude tunics sewn from
deer pelts half-covered their nearly naked bodies. They
went unshod, their feet deeply lined and cracked.
The two groups stared at each other a while. Then the
blond man stepped forward. “Take me to your leader!” he
ordered. He may have looked sinister, with his lion-like
mane and Indian clothes, but he spoke with the familiar
accent and arrogance of an Andalusian aristocrat.
Cebreros and his men were dumbfounded, struck silent by
such a strange and improbable meeting.
These two men were Esteban, an African slave; and Alvar
Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, a Spanish nobleman. One or two
days’ journey back along the trail were their two
Spanish companions: Andrés Dorantes, Esteban’s legal
owner; and Alonso del Castillo Maldonado, a doctor’s
son. These four men were the only survivors of the
disastrous expedition of 300 would-be conquistadors who
had landed at Tampa Bay eight years before, filled with
confidence that they could conquer Florida for Spain.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from Crossing the Continent 1527-1540
by Robert Goodwin
Copyright © 2008 by Robert Goodwin.
Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
HarperCollins
Copyright © 2008
Robert Goodwin
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-06-114044-0
