The Encounter: Exploration, Evangelization, and Ethnohistory in Echevarria's Cabeza de Vaca

http://www.texasbeyondhistory.net/stplains/peoples/images/cabeza.html

What are your stories about encounters with people different from you or with ideas that seem to challenge your own beliefs? Do you think that the people you have encountered would tell the same story as the one you tell?

Before viewing...

Who the heck is Cabeza de Vaca?

Spanish nobleman from Jerez de la Frontera

Treasurer of the Panfilo de Narvaez expedition to establish a colony in Florida (1527)

Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca

Author of Castaways (Naufragios) a report to the emperor of the failed expedition and the story of how four men from this expedition survived for eight years living among Amerindian communities along the Gulf Coast and in the northern Mexican Desert

Watch the movie (or selected clips) IMDb Plot Summary

Where the heck is Cabeza de Vaca in the movie?

On a raft in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico On Galveston Island on the coast of Texas where he spent more than a year with a healer and his other servant (slave?) He and the other three survivors spent a total of six years here before traveling westward In the high desert near the Pueblo cultures (?) (He does describe bison for the first time in the report)

Amerindians from the Gulf Coast

Check out this website for more information on the cultures of the Gulf Coast and the arrival of Europeans Amerindian Cultures of Texas

What the heck is Cabeza de Vaca doing in the movie?

Is that in the report????

See our lesson plan for more detailed ideas about possible activities and a discussion of the movie

What does Echevarria want us to understand from his film?

Is that the same message that Cabeza de Vaca communicates in his report?

Can the same story offer different messages?

More Resources
Social biography by Otterness Review in Spanish describing the cinematic techniques of the director Enchanted Learning "Explorers from the Early 1500's" Site Indians of Texas

What happened to the other people on the trip?

Narvaez, Estevanico, Dorantes, Castillo, Amerindians?

Narvaez was never heard from again, but survivors told of the other raft that left with him and the demise of those aboard.

Estebanico "guided" Fray Marcos de Niza and another expedition to the Zuni Pueblo in search of Cibola. He died in an attack by the Zuni on the expedition.

What About the Others?

and magistrate in Mexico City as a reward for his service. He died sometime before 1573 when his son petitioned the viceroy for support because of his father's contributions. Alonso de Castillo Maldonado is the person actually given credit for studying shamanic practices during their captivity. Dorantes, Cabeza de Vaca and Estebanico all learned from him and became successful as itinerant healers. Castillo became a treasury official in Guatemala and an "encomendero" in Tehuacan, Mexico. He died in the late 1540's. Many of the Amerindian groups Cabeza de Vaca named were not heard from again. Others remained in some areas (especially in what is today Mexico) and still others were removed

Through the Lens: Teaching Latin America Though Film June 5th-10th, 2011
by Hunter Upchurch Jeanne Gillespie