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Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca
The item that I choose to bring in is a Spanish film about the first De Baca ancestor to come to America. The journey of my family to the United States began with a man named, Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca. Cabeza de Vaca was born into Spanish nobility in 1490. Little of his early life is known, except that he made his carrier in the military. In early 1527 he left Spain as a part of a royal expedition intended to occupy/conquer a part of Florida (present day Tampa Bay). During there invasion the native inhabitants put up a stiff fight and dismantled the Spanish invasion party, leaving only a handful of survivors. Cabeza and eight others survivors drifted on a poorly constructed raft all the way to present day Texas. By 1532, only three other members of the original expedition were still alive—Alonso del Castillo Maldonando, Andres Dorantes de Carranca, and Estevan an African slave. Together with Cabeza de Vaca, they now headed South West in hopes of reaching the Spanish Empire’s outpost in Mexico, becoming the first men of the Old World to enter the American West. Their precise route is not clear, but the apparently traveled across present-day Texas, perhaps into New Mexico and Arizona and through Mexico’s Northern provinces. In July 1536, near Culiacan in present-day Sinaloa, they finally encountered a group of fellow Spaniards who were on a slave taking expedition. As Cabeza de Vaca remembered, his countrymen were “dumbfounded at the sight of me, strangely dressed and in company with Indians. They just stood staring for along time (entry from Cabeza de Vaca)
Appalled by the Spanish treatment of Indians, in 1537 Cabeza de Vaca returned to Spain to publish an account of his experiences and to urge a more generous policy upon the crown. He served as a Mexican territorial governor, but was soon accused of corruption, perhaps due to his unflattering comments towards the treatment of Native Americans. He returned to Spain and was convicted; a 1552 pardon allowed him to become a judge in Seville, Spain, a position which he occupied until his death in 1556. Obviously this is not the average American migration story. The offspring of Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca still live and work all over North America. New Mexico, Arizona, and Colorado have the highest concentrations of his offspring, and over time the name Cabeza de Vaca has evolved into three different forms; C’de Baca, De Baca and Debaca.
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