The Narrative of Cabeza de Vaca: Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca.

The Narrative of Cabeza de Vaca: Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca. Edited, translated, and with an introduction by Rolena Adorno and Patrick Charles Pautz. (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1999, 2003. Pp. [viii], 204. Paper, $15.95, ISBN 0-8032-6416-X; cloth, $45.00, ISBN 0-8032-1528-2.)

We Came Naked and Barefoot: The Journey of Cabeza de Vaca across North America. By Alex D. Krieger. Texas Archaeology and Ethnohistory Series. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002. Pp. xviii, 318. $39.95, ISBN 0-292-74350-5.)

To cite in full bibliographic form all Spanish- and English-language publications that have analyzed or translated the Relacion (Account) of Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca's adventures on the North American continent from 1528 to 1536 would in itself likely exhaust the words allotted to this review. The first of these publications in Spanish appeared in 1731, in English in 1851, and the outpouring has continued down to the present. In 1999 the University of Nebraska Press published a massive three-volume work (totaling 1,317 pages) by Rolena Adorno and Patrick Charles Pautz on Cabeza de Vaca. That magnum opus, entitled Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca: His Account, His Life, and the Expedition of Panfilo de Narvaez, received the American Historical Association's J. Franklin Jameson Award and has been the subject of numerous reviews in scholarly journals. The same press reissued the translation and notes from the first of the three volumes in 2003, under the title The Narrative of Cabeza de Vaca. The University of Texas Press released a related publication by Alex D. Krieger in 2002.

The Adorno/Pautz translation is unique because it is based on the text of one of the rarest books in the western world, Cabeza de Vaca's Relacion, first published in Zamora, Spain, in 1542. A second, revised printing was put to press at Valladolid, Spain, in 1555. Only two complete copies of the earlier publication are extant. The second publication, while assuredly a rare book, may be found in several university libraries. Its accessibility has made it the text used in earlier publications on Cabeza de Vaca, including the book by Krieger.

A second aspect of the Adorno/Pautz translation adds more importantly to its uniqueness. Rolena Adorno's command of the Spanish language and its English equivalencies is perhaps second to none in the United States. Accordingly, it is unlikely that anyone will ever surpass the accuracy of her translation. It is important to note, however, that the reprint volume under review does not contain the Spanish transcription and English translation of the Relacion on opposite pages, a departure from volume 1 of the larger work. It does retain the same discursive footnotes and citations to other sources found in the parent volume, but far less attention is given to the route traveled by Cabeza de Vaca than is found in the book by Krieger.

One might question why anyone should concern themselves with the question of where Cabeza de Vaca traveled in Texas and Mexico and what he described after nearly eight years' separation from the larger community of Spaniards in colonial Mexico, especially since this issue has produced a thorny thicket of controversy fueled by "Texas nationalism" and local boosterism. The late Dan Kilgore, former president of the Texas State Historical Association, once remarked to this reviewer that by his count approximately half of Texas's 254 counties had claimed that Cabeza de Vaca trekked across their borders. As anthropologist Thomas N. Campbell has explained, a common failing among route interpreters has been to send Cabeza de Vaca where they "wanted him to go, not where ... [he] plainly indicates that he went" (T. N. Campbell and T. J. Campbell, Historic Indian Groups of the Choke Canyon Reservoir and Surrounding Area, Southern Texas [San Antonio, 1981], 4).

Yet, because Cabeza de Vaca's Relacion provides the earliest written account of lands in south Texas and northern Mexico, as well as their inhabitants, it is important to establish Cabeza de Vaca's approximate whereabouts. To do so requires a book-length study, "for the route interpreter must carefully coordinate the ... [text of the Relacion] with all available data--physiography, time and distance of travel, ethnographic information, biota, [and] geographic knowledge ..." (Donald E. Chipman, "In Search of Cabeza de Vaca's Route across Texas: An Historiographical Survey," Southwestern Historical Quarterly, 91 [October 1987], 142). Until this publication by anthropologist Krieger, the best effort in this regard was his doctoral dissertation, submitted in 1955 to the Universidad Nacional de Mexico and previously available only in Spanish-language typescript.

Krieger spent dozens of years studying the geography, flora, and native residents of coastal and south Texas. He used these data to postulate convincingly a southern, coastal route for Cabeza de Vaca, his two Spanish companions, and an African black as they sought to reach European settlements in central Mexico. Krieger's route interpretation was a substantial departure from the traditional east to west crossing of Texas, which started near Galveston Island and ran for hundreds of miles to the border of present-day New Mexico. Again, as T. N. Campbell has remarked, the trans-Texas route was grossly wrong, primarily because it required moving Texas Indians to parts of the state "where they obviously never lived" (quoted in Chipman, "In Search of Cabeza de Vaca's Route across Texas," 146).

Adorno and Pautz have accepted the coastal path of Cabeza de Vaca and his companions, as reflected in their maps on pages 38-41, but they are not as conversant with Texas geography, anthropology, and archaeology as might be expected in a work of this caliber. For example, they place the wayfarers crossing of the Rio Grande closer to its mouth, rather than farther upstream in the vicinity of the Falcon Reservoir, as argued by Krieger. Second, while an article by Thomas R. Hester, "Artifacts, Archeology, and Cabeza de Vaca in Southern Texas and Northeastern Mexico" (Bulletin of the Texas Archeological Society, 70 [1999], 17-28), was not available when the three-volume work went to press, it should have been consulted before republication of material from volume 1. Hester offers persuasive physical evidence in support of a Rio Grande crossing by Cabeza de Vaca and his companions in the Falcon Reservoir district.

No one should be foolhardy enough to say that these publications are the last word on Cabeza de Vaca in Texas and Mexico. Nevertheless, these volumes should come close to satisfying the scholarly community.

DONALD E. CHIPMAN

University of North Texas