Theorizing the Hybrid || Go-between: The Roles of Native American Women and Alvar Núñez Cabeza de...

Go-between: The Roles of Native American Women and Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca inSouthern Texas in the 16th CenturyAuthor(s): Mariah WadeSource: The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 112, No. 445, Theorizing the Hybrid (Summer,1999), pp. 332-342Published by: American Folklore SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/541366 .

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MARIAH WADE

Go-Between The Roles of Native American Women and Alvar Nvii ez Cabeza de Vaca in Southern Texas in the 16th Century

Alvar Ntifiez Cabeza de Vaca's Naufragios y Comentarios con Dos Cartas y Relaci6n de Hemando de Ribera is unique because it is the first document about contact between Europeans and Native Americans in Texas, and it is the only document, for this area, in which the rules of the game were reversed and the colonizer became Other to those he came to colonize. This 1540s narrative is rich in cultural material about the

native groups encountered and particularly the roles of Native American women.

Pulling you this way and that, mimesis plays the trick of dancing between the very same and the very different. An impossible but necessary, indeed an everyday affair, mimesis registers both sameness and difference, of being like, and of being Other. [Taussig 1993:129]

HYBRIDITY IS AN ENCOUNTER OF SAME WITH A DIFFERENCE, and the results of that encounter

become manifest in a multiplicity of forms. Colonial discourse is grounded by issues of mimesis and alterity (sameness and difference). The power plays, which underlay and underlie colonial discourse (and metacolonial discourse), may tend to homogenize discursive strategies that evolved through centuries of colonial endeavors and engaged a

variety of individuals and nations with different historical trajectories. Not all historical narratives that report encounters with the Other can be viewed from the same

perspective. Alvar Nilfiez Cabeza de Vaca's Naufragios y Comentarios con Dos Cartas y Relacidn de Hernando de Ribera is a case in point (see 1971).

In the context of colonization studies, the concept of hybridity has most often served to look at the effects of the processes of colonization on the colonized (Bhabha 1990, 1994; Greenblatt 1992; Piedra 1991; Taussig 1993; Todorov 1982). Few historical documents depict long-term situations in which the colonizer becomes Other to those he came to colonize (cf. Strong 1992). Cabeza de Vaca's La Relaci6n for the king of Spain, with the attached Joint Report from his traveling companions, is such a document.' This

Mariah Wade is a member of the Anthropology faculty of the University of Texas at Austin Extension Service

Journal of American Folklore 112(445):332-342. Copyright C 1999, American Folklore Society.



Wade, Go-Between 333

narrative provides a rare glimpse of an interaction between the Native American host

groups ("colonized") and their European guests ("colonizers") in which the fate of the latter depended completely on the actions of the former. Through it one can look not at what the Europeans did to survive but at what they were allowed to do by the Native Americans. The narrative is constructed and presented from the point of view of Cabeza de Vaca, and in it he relates the events that shaped his life and the lives of his

European companions. The reader sees and hears through Cabeza de Vaca's senses. Such sensual proxy is fraught with dangers, but the ethnohistoric and anthropologic value of the document outweighs the ethnocentric biases. The natives' voices are

conveyed by reported speech, and the reader learns about the lifeways of the Native Americans through acts that speak. Undoubtedly, "the word is implicated in literally each and every act or contact between people" (Volo'inov 1986:19).

Sameness is only conceptualized by virtue of the existence of difference. These

concepts are bipolar and bifocal in perception but are conceptual twins. The slippery space between same and different is dialogic. In this work, Cabeza de Vaca and his Native American hosts perceive the sameness of the human condition (hunger, cold, death), outlined by signs of cultural difference (language, clothing, arrow points, and

copper bells) (1971:38-41). Both groups attempt an understanding: the Europeans out of necessity, the Native Americans out of hospitality. What places this narrative apart from most others is that the game of alienation is being rehearsed on the European. He is the pariah, the marginal, the hybrid who meanders through social roles to exit a place of fate (Bad Luck Island) and molt his hybridity. Cabeza de Vaca's hybridity is not "the

sign of the productivity of colonial power" (Bhabha 1994:112) but the reversal, the sign of Others to be plagued with colonization.

Mimesis, as a way of knowing, grafts on the self and creates a derma of hybridity that fuses, haphazardly, with the dermis. In his physical representation of the Other, Cabeza de Vaca literally sheds and regrows skin (1971:63). The practice of representing the Other gets under his skin. Once hybrid, he cannot return to a centered self. The violence of becoming hybrid indeed splits the "screen of the self' (Bhabha 1994:114), irremediably kaleidoscoping life's experiences.

The unique qualities of La Relacidn would suffice to justify its analysis, but the document is even more unusual because of the information it gives on native women's roles, particularly this early (1528) in the colonizing process. To reconstruct the shoreline where women dwelled, the ethnohistorian has to gather minute pieces of information from historical documents, as one gathers grains of sand. In the attempt to investigate native women's roles, I ended up also considering Cabeza de Vaca's roles. The two projects came together on their own, through that strange volition that projects have of outlining a pattern that was hitherto invisible. Cabeza de Vaca's roles and the roles of native women in Texas are also an encounter of same with a difference. Cabeza de Vaca, a male, is compelled to perform native women's chores, and later he is allowed to become a trader, a role also within the purview of the native women of some groups.2 His gender is irrelevant to the performance of these roles. He is same with women because he is not a warrior and he performs women's work (Cabeza de Vaca 1971:42, 46). Also like women, he enjoys safe conduct and can cross ethnic boundaries (Cabeza de Vaca 1971:46-48, 70, 73, 77). And yet he is different. It



334 Journal of American Folklore 112 (1999)

may be that some Native American groups in Texas conceptualized and assigned roles

independent of notions of biological sex. Was difference also organized around con-

ceptualizations and prescriptions of role? The evidence is unclear, but it is worth

pondering over, especially if one considers the plasticity of statuses and roles as a way to deal with social change.

Cabeza de Vaca's sea voyage to North America brought him to the shores of those Others to whom he became Other, where he became first a healer, then a slave doing women's work, then a trader, and finally a healer again (1971:44, 46, 59). To witness the metamorphosis, I have to bring Cabeza de Vaca to this epistemic moment when

categories blur or, as Taussig would have it, to that space in-between, "permeated by the colonial tension of mimesis and alterity" (1993:78-79). Mine is a retelling, a

reduplication with an accent, of Cabeza de Vaca's narrative: it is reported speech of Cabeza de Vaca's and his companions' reported speech of the Native Americans' reported speech.4 To ease the retelling the Native Americans will be called Americans while the members of the expedition will be designated as Europeans even though one, Estevanico, was not a European.5

The Voyage

Cabeza de Vaca was the king's treasurer for the Painfilo Narviez colonial expedition, which left Spain for Florida on 17 June 1527. The expedition landed in Florida on 15

April 1528. It was Good Friday (a good day to place footprints on the sand). The long

trip from Florida to Texas was plagued by violent disagreements among the crew and the commander, battles with Native American groups, famine, thirst, disease, and death. About six hundred people left Spain in five caravels. When the expeditionary group neared the Texas coast it had been reduced to about two hundred men in five

barges. By then the men had abandoned their ships, eaten their horses, lost most of

their weapons and possessions, and discarded dreams of glory and wealth. Huddled in

the leaky, unseaworthy barges, they yearned to reach Pinuco (present-day Tampico, the northernmost Spanish settlement in 16th-century Mexico). Their yearning for

Pinuco forced the realization and acceptance of their failure but also provided hope for

deliverance. Pinuco was thought to be just around the next shoal, the next bay, the

next cartographic horizon. In their barges they hugged the coast of the Gulf of Mexico and moved westward.

Somewhere near the Texas coast the five barges got separated in a storm. The group in

Cabeza de Vaca's barge battled the storm all night and at dawn found itself near

Galveston Island. In the last four days the men had eaten only half a handful of raw maize and drunk no fresh water. In this condition they stepped ashore on what they called Mal Hado Island-Bad Luck or Bad Fate Island-on 6 November 1528.

Arrival

The grotesque, emaciated conquistadors huddle near a fire and contemplate their situation and hunger. Lope de Oviedo searches over the island, finds some unoccupied huts, and takes a water jar, a dog, and some fish. On his way back he hears shouts,




looks back, and sees three armed Americans following him. Incapable of fleeing, Oviedo, by signs, bids them to follow him to where the Europeans wait. This first moment of contact is marked by unsettling acts of stealing and fleeing. Rules of

hospitality have been breached. Soon some one hundred Americans, armed with bows and arrows, come to look over the strangers. Cabeza de Vaca offers the Americans beads and metal bells, and they, each in turn, place an arrow point in Cabeza de Vaca's hand. Through signs, the Americans indicate that they will bring food the following morning.6 This moment of reciprocal exchange redresses the wrongs of invading the Others' space and the taking of their property.7 The next morning, and again in the

evening, the natives bring fish and edible roots. Later, the Europeans who survive will understand the price, in labor, exacted for those meager roots. Cabeza de Vaca tells us that his hands and unprotected body bled as he harvested roots amid the cane near the shore (1971:46). This was women's labor and would also be his labor: equal roles, different sex. In these first moments of contact the Europeans are dressed in the accoutrements of their Westernness. What the Americans see are clothed bodies, protective gear, markings of Otherness.

Revived by food, the Europeans undress and dig their barge out of the sandy shore.

Apparently they pile all their clothing and possessions on the barge and make out to sea. A strong wave overturns the barge, and they lose all they possess. The sea washes

away the indexes of their Westernness. In the fray, three Europeans are trapped under the barge and drown. It is a very cold November day, and a strong north wind is

blowing. When the Americans next see the Europeans, three dead bodies lie on the shore and

the survivors are naked. Cabeza de Vaca states that when the Americans saw them unclothed and appearing so different from the first encounter they were astonished and turned to leave.8 The body matters and change in appearance are incommensurable. Naked, without shelter, unable to survive in an unknown, hostile environment, the

Europeans are at the mercy of their hosts. Aware of the razor's edge of the situation, Cabeza de Vaca, despite the fears of his companions, begs for shelter from the Americans, who practically carry them to their huts, setting up fires along the way to guarantee their survival. Make no mistake: all it would take is an act of omission to guarantee the Europeans' demise.

Soon afterward Cabeza de Vaca learns that another barge has come aground nearby. That barge brings to Texas Alonso del Castillo, Andres Dorantes, and his North African slave Estevanico. These three and Cabeza de Vaca will be the only survivors of the expedition.

Imagine the impact of the arrival of 80 adult male Europeans, unable to provide for themselves and with no skills relevant to the lifeways of their hosts-80 mouths to feed on scarce, scheduled resources. To make matters worse, the storms assailing the shores impede fishing and harvesting of the water roots. The Europeans begin to die of disease, exposure, and hunger. Near shore five Europeans perish one by one, and the survivors cannibalize the dead. Cabeza de Vaca states that the last one to die had nobody to consume him (1971:41). When their native hosts contemplate this theater of consumption, they are extremely scandalized.9 This is a defining moment and one that may have altered permanently their perception of the strangers at their shores.




Cabeza de Vaca tells us that if that moment had occurred earlier, they would all have been killed. The fifteen or so survivors are distributed among various native groups. Cabeza de Vaca, Hier6nimo de Alaniz, and Lope de Oviedo stay with a coastal group, possibly the Han. Alaniz soon dies, and Lope de Oviedo is the reason Cabeza de Vaca

delays his escape to New Spain (Cabeza de Vaca 1971:47).10 Cabeza de Vaca tells us how he was coerced, by the withdrawal of food, into the

role of healer. Quite likely his hosts tried to incorporate him into their social group by finding him a role compatible with his persona, and fasting was a necessary step to the induction into such a role. Cabeza de Vaca is Other but not enemy; he is disassociated; he is useless as a warrior; and he is not female. He has an unintelligible language: he

speaks Latin to his God." He has also managed to survive. Can he therefore access the

powers of healing? His American mentor tells him that if natural objects such as stones have the power to heal, he, as a man, can have even more power (Cabeza de Vaca

1971:44; for similar statements see Chapin 1983, quoted in Taussig 1993:101; Taussig 1986:140).

In this area curing was done by cutting near the area where the sickness was lodged and sucking around it by passing a hot stone over the diseased zone, by cauterizing with fire and afterward blowing over the sick area, or by a combination of these

practices. To the local shamanistic practices Cabeza de Vaca added a blessing followed

by a Pater Noster and an Ave Maria certainly said in Latin (1971:44). He is fearful and

respectful of the forces he is manipulating. The survivalist and economic rewards of the

healing practitioner guaranteed a share of the available food and trade items. To be healed the people would part with food to the point of being left with nothing to eat

(Cabeza de Vaca 1971:44).12 Cabeza de Vaca reasons his meddling into the sacred as God lending a hand.

In this first moment of healing he may not have been very successful or the healing practices took second place to the search for food. Soon he is doing the labor of women: digging the roots among the sharp cane, fetching the water, gathering and

carrying wood for the fires that burn all night (Cabeza de Vaca 1971:46). He speaks of women's work as incessant labor affording little rest. The violence of the work leads him to try his luck inland as a trader. However, Cabeza de Vaca also says that he was

directed by his hosts to take up this role (1971:46). He has observed what the

Americans need, and he uses his Otherness to seduce his native hosts. His strange appearance, his beard and hair, and his inchoate language add interest to trading. He

parodies the image of Otherness to perfect his hybridness, playing Othemess against

acceptance, juggling vulnerability and ambiguity-all this to escape and regain his

Spanish identity. But in the process, nativeness seeps in, creating disjunctures between Self and Other, fracturing his life-to-be. Such residual ambiguities will erupt when he

finally arrives among Spaniards, especially in his later life in Paraguay.13 Cabeza de Vaca's plan is masterful in its simplicity: as a trader he can reconnoiter the

landscape; learn the roads to Pinuco; know the Americans' harvesting and hunting grounds, their timing, their meeting places; make friends; trade information; and become embedded in the chiaroscuro of the hybrid who stands out just enough to be viable and not enough to be threatening. As Other he can cross group boundaries. He tells us that the natives, because of their continuous wars, cannot pass or go to trade,




but he can. As a trader he is well received; he brings news and the items people cherish

(Cabeza de Vaca 1971:46-47). He caters desire. His success as a trader depends on how he deals the hand of anticipation. He does not need to look for people: they search him out and he tells us so (1971:47).14

When he decides to leave for New Spain, he goes back to Mal Hado Island for Oviedo. They depart together but Oviedo decides to return to the island. For Oviedo the price of regaining Spanishness is too great, and he remains in Texas. Maybe Oviedo is the immigrant who is homesick for no home at all (Greenblatt 1992:48). When Oviedo returns to Mal Hado we have a furtive glimpse of the native women burdened with colonial silence. Oviedo is ferried back across the river by women of the

Deaguenes group with whom he and Cabeza de Vaca had originally crossed. Women of some groups can cross group boundaries. They, like Cabeza de Vaca, embody safe conduct (Cabeza de Vaca 1971:48).

Cabeza de Vaca moves westward, and after crossing four rivers he meets again Castillo, Dorantes, and Estebanico, whom he had thought were dead. As they shell and

grind pecan meats on a river's bank, Cabeza de Vaca learns from them what happened to the other three barges and their occupants. He is told how several of his shipmates died of starvation, how they cannibalized each other, and how the survivors have fared (Cabeza de Vaca 1971:50-51).

It is now the fall of 1532. The four survivors decide to escape during the next summer harvesting of the prickly pear fruit, called tuna, when many local groups get together. Tuna harvesting was a time of plenty, and during the confusion and feasting pursuit by the Americans was unlikely. Also the Europeans could leave with groups that were located further westward. But at the tuna gathering a dispute issues over a woman, their respective groups separate, and their escape plan is delayed. Cabeza de Vaca tells us that although women are sometimes the reason for disputes, they also intervene in men's quarrels as peacemakers-something which no man can do (1971: 66). He also relates an episode of an attack by the Quevenes group on the Deaguenes group. This first attack is immediately followed by an attack by the Deaguenes on the Quevenes. After the latter attack the Quevenes women come to the Deaguenes to make peace agreements (Cabeza de Vaca 1971:66).

The four Europeans meet again in the tuna harvesting grounds the following summer and leave at harvest moon. They spend the winter with the Avavares and then move westward, hopscotching from group to group. They also begin again to practice healing.'5 The healing practices probably included the native techniques they had learned, but Cabeza de Vaca's narrative emphasizes the Christian aspects of these

practices-~namely, the blessing and Christian prayers. Their fame as healers spreads, and sick people are continuously brought to them for curing. Among the Susolas, Castillo is called to heal a man considered dead. When Castillo, who is fearful of meddling with the spirit world, refuises to go, Cabeza de Vaca performs the healing. That night messengers probably from the Susola pueblo come to report that the man is walking and talking. This event mushrooms the Europeans' fame, and the healing work becomes so intense that all four survivors become involved in curing. Whatever rewards they receive for healing they share with the native group with whom they happen to be staying at the time.




Everywhere they go they are expected to perform curing. Healing is their passport out of Otherness. On one occasion Cabeza de Vaca tells us that they traveled with and were guided by women. These women had come from the pueblo to which the

Europeans were going. When the Europeans left they were also accompanied by women from the group they were leaving. These latter women, who were from the east side of the river, received many projectile points, deer meat, and other food from the people on the west side of the river, to whom they took the healers. Not only did

goods change hands, but the healers themselves were passed on (Cabeza de Vaca

1971:60-61, 70-74). There is clear evidence of more than one type of redistribution

system connected with hospitality and possibly with healing or other ritual practices. In far western Texas or northernmost Mexico, a man with a projectile point

embedded in his chest comes to Cabeza de Vaca for healing.'6 Cabeza de Vaca cuts

through his flesh, extracts the projectile, dries the blood with a hide, and, using a deer bone needle, stitches the wound (Cabeza de Vaca 1971:75). The leftover scar is small, like a line in the palm of one's hand: scars of healing, scars of fate, and for a moment the healing of scars. The Americans present at the event ask for the extracted point in order that it can be sent and shown among the peoples of the hinterland (Cabeza de Vaca 1971:75).'7 The ubiquitous symbol of Texas archaeology made by a Native American and extracted by a Spaniard out of the body of another Native American travels the winding road of the symbolic.

Sometime later Cabeza de Vaca and his companions learn that they are near Spanish settlements. When the four survivors finally meet other Europeans, they are faced with

slave-raiding parties that use Cabeza de Vaca to obtain food from the Americans and to

lure and enslave them (Cabeza de Vaca 1971:88-89). An interpreter is asked by the

European slave raiders to explain to the Americans accompanying Cabeza de Vaca that

he and the other three survivors are the same people as those others who capture slaves, and that the Americans owe obedience to the slave raiders because they are the

authorities, while the four survivors are nobodies and have no authority. Faced with the dilemma of his Spanishness and his ambivalent hybridity, and finding

such human divorce tearing at his "half-Other," Cabeza de Vaca hides in the reasoning of his American companions. He says they said

que los cristianos mentian porque nosotros veniamos de donde salia el Sol, y ellos donde se pone; y que nosotros sanibamos los enfermos, y ellos mataban los que estaban sanos; y que nosotros veniamos desnudos y descalzos, y ellos vestidos y en caballos y con lanzas; y que nosotros no teniamos cobdicia de

ninguna cosa, antes todo cuanto nos daban tornibamos luego a dar, y con nada nos quedibamos. [that the

christians (sic) were lying because we (the four survivors) were coming from where the sun rose and they (the slave raiders) were coming from where the sun set; and that we cured the sick while they killed those that were healthy; and that we were naked and barefoot while they were clothed (riding) on horses and with lances; and that we did not covet anything, on the contrary, we returned all that was given to us and

kept nothing.] [1971:88]

Cabeza de Vaca has been co-opted by signs of wondering and wilderness. He no

longer looks like a Spaniard. Naked, barefoot, and colored by the same eastern sun that determined his difference, he is unrecognizable to other Europeans; he is and has




"no-body." Only language betrays him. Fractured by the epiphany, he covered his skin and went on to face the coming winters of discontent.

Conclusions

Cabeza de Vaca was hybrid because he could not be otherwise. It was a matter of survival, as is often the case for hybrids. The manifested expressions of his hybridity were shaped by the roles he was allowed to perform by his hosts and by what he

brought to the performance of those roles (e.g., Taussig 1986:158, 328, 515). The

conceptualization and attribution of roles in the native societies that Cabeza de Vaca encountered may not have had much to do with the concept of hybridity, except in the native recognition and negotiating of sameness and difference. What is astonishing is the flexibility of the native social structure of groups classified as gathering and

hunting societies. The women of several native groups in the modem territory of Texas (central,

southern, and western areas) and northern Mexico performed roles as traders, guides, and peacemakers. These roles continued to be performed by women of several native

groups throughout most of the colonization period.'8 The obvious condition that

distinguished these native women from their male counterparts is that they were not warriors, which seems to have allowed them to pass through and cross ethnic boundaries and borders of conflict. Cabeza de Vaca never mentions being involved in a native conflict or carrying a weapon. He, and his companions, made baskets and combs and traded bows and arrows, but he does not mention making weapons (1971:63).

Cabeza de Vaca and the native women from some groups performed household chores and shared the roles of gathering and trading. The role of healer is only attributed to native males, Cabeza de Vaca, and his companions. The role of peacemaker is solely attributed to women. If, and only if, the native recognition and

negotiation of same and different is manifested in the assignation of roles, the message is

confusing: not a warrior but a healer, not a peacemaker but a trader. Left with acts that

speak, one can only say that Cabeza de Vaca performed both male roles and female roles. But there was always a difference.

The process of becoming hybrid is an ontological and epistemological pas de deux. In the vertiginous choreography of daily life, Janus-like pirouettes mirror Self and the Self of Others, always adding, at each turn, a mimetic difference that alters. I have used Cabeza de Vaca's narrative to look at the roles he was directed and allowed to perform and to look at the roles his eye witnessed native women performing. Granted, these are native echoes hybridized with heavy Western accents, but they are echoes nonetheless. The similarities and differences between the roles of Native American women in

southern Texas and those of an expatriate Other like Cabeza de Vaca may indicate notions of difference organized around conceptualizations of role that include, but are not equivalent with, biological conditions of age and sex.

Colonial texts are porous texts; they leak histories, orders, conversations, practices, and intentions. La Relacidn leaks estrangement: first of Self and then of Other. It is a text of multiple fractures, epiphanic and of continuous yearning for redemption. Cabeza de Vaca expresses no wonder (Greenblatt 1992:20, 27, 36) in this first encounter




with a world of newness. There are no "barbarous" peoples, no nefarious customs, no monsters. No horror is expressed at female ritual infanticide, "demonic" visions, or even European cannibalism. There is not even the "recognition of the Other in

himself, himself in the Other" (Greenblatt 1992:25) because, for a while, Cabeza de Vaca is the Other. The wonder, a disappointing, agonizing, sad wonder, pierced him

only when he arrived among other Spaniards. It was then that conquest happened, and Cabeza de Vaca paid the toll to regain Spanishness by "never again feeling quite at home" (Greenblatt 1992:48). Maybe Lope de Oviedo, who remained in Texas, was

right after all. As Taussig writes,

The fundamental move of the mimetic faculty taking us bodily into alterity is very much the task of the

storyteller too. For the storyteller embodied that situation of stasis and movement in which the far-away was brought to the here-and-now, archetypically that place where the returned traveler finally rejoined those who have stayed at home. [1993:40]

Notes

'All citations to this work made in the text are taken from Cabeza de Vaca 1971. This is the Spanish version of the 1555 edition, published at Valladolid. All translations are mine. The Joint Report, a 30-page summary of the travels by Cabeza de Vaca, Castillo, and Dorantes, published by Captain Gonzalo Fernindez

de Oviedo y Valdes in volume III, Book 35 of the Historia General y Natural de las Indias, Islas y Tierra-Firme

del Mar Oceano, was consulted but is not mentioned.

2Cabeza de Vaca encountered many Native American groups while living and traveling through the

territory today known as Texas. He mentions 19 different groups by name. All of the native groups mentioned in the text were met within the present boundaries of Texas. Not enough is known about the

social organization of these groups to classify them as bands or tribes. The anthropological concept of

"group" is the most adequate designation that can be used to avoid misconceptions and misinterpretations

(Wade 1998:3-4). 3The Spanish text reads, "Las mujeres son para mucho trabajo" [The women have to perform much

work] (Cabeza de Vaca 1971:42). Referring to his chores and women's work Cabeza de Vaca states, "Entre

otros trabajos muchos habia de sacar las raices para comer debajo del agua" [Among many other chores (I

had) to pull the roots to eat (or, we ate) from beneath the water] (1971:46). In reference to two other

native groups with whom Cabeza de Vaca lived for a period of time, he states, "Y desque amanece

comienzan a cavar y a traer lefia y agua a sus casas y dar orden en las otras cosas de que tienen necesidad"

[And at sunup they begin to dig and to bring wood and water to their houses and arrange for the other

things they need] (1971:53). 4The verbal exchanges reported by Cabeza de Vaca that took place between himself, his European

companions, and his Native American hosts establish a dialogic relationship between "the speech being

reported (the other person's speech) and the speech doing the reporting (the author's speech)" (Volominov 1986:119). This relationship is mimetic but embodies a difference. This difference--a "hybrid construc-

tion"-is multiaccented and multistyled (Bakhtin 1990:304). It embodies the socioideological context of a

native world (with its diverse "tastes" of various native Texas groups) and Cabeza de Vaca and his

companions' own contextual worldview (Bakhtin 1990:293-294). Volosinov continues by stating that these

two speeches (the other's and the author's) "actually do exist, function and take shape only in their

interrelation and not on their own, the one apart from the other" (1986:116, see also 191, n. 18, on

reported speech and alien speech). The embeddedness of native utterances in Cabeza de Vaca's utterances

re-presents a hybrid worldview (a heteroglossic view) that is both native and European, experienced

through their life together (Bakhtin 1990:276). This multiaccented dialogic relationship is historically extended by my own retelling (Bakhtin 1990:341-342) as a hybrid ghostwriting and appropriating many others' words.




5The expeditionary group that came to America with Pinfilo Narvaez was made up of individuals from several modem countries who at the time were subjects of colonial Spain. Among these individuals were

Cubans, Greeks, Portuguese, and North Africans (Cabeza de Vaca 1971:33, 41, 50). It would be incorrect to call them Spaniards. The Spain that colonized America had very little to do with modem Spain and its territorial borders.

6This whole sequence of events provides several examples of acts that speak. The shouts Lope de Oviedo hears, the pursuit, the arrival of many warriors, and the exchange of gifts and messages are all acts that

bespeak intentions, decisions, value judgments, and cultural values. The same is true for the following episode of the loss of the barge, the native astonishment at the different body appearance of the Europeans, and their rescue by the Americans. Cabeza de Vaca does include three words in a native language (1971:68). Otherwise all verbal or sign exchanges are transmitted as reported speech.

7A study of La Relacidn shows that, before the arrival of Europeans, local native communities had a sanctioned behavior baseline that included precise hospitality rules (Wade in press).

8The Spanish text reads, "Mas cuando ellos nos vieron ansi en tan diferente hibito del primero y en manera tan extraiia, espantairanse tanto que se volvieron atris. Yo sali a ellos y Ilamelos, y vinieron muy espantados" [But when they saw us in such different attire and such different appearance they were so astonished they retreated. I went to call them and they came (but) very unsettled] (Cabeza de Vaca

1971:39). 9The Spanish text reads, "De este caso se alteraron tanto los indios, y hobo entre ellos tan gran escindalo,

que sin duda al principio ellos lo vieran los mataran, y todos nos vikramos en grande trabajo" [The indians

(sic) were very disturbed by this occurrence, and there was such great scandal among them, that if they had seen that (cannibalism) earlier they would have killed them and we would all be in great trouble] (Cabeza de Vaca 1971:41).

10Cabeza de Vaca and Lope de Oviedo were good friends. While he was a trader, Cabeza de Vaca returned every year to the island of Matagorda on the Texas Gulf Coast to convince Lope de Oviedo to

depart with him westward in order to reach the Spanish at Panfico (Cabeza de Vaca 1971:47).

11The Catholic prayers were certainly said in Latin as the mention of Pater Noster and Ave Maria indicate. Until very recently, Mass and all principal prayers were said in Latin. Taussig (1986:460) makes reference to the importance of an unintelligible language for shamans and healing practitioners. The Native Ameri- cans certainly recognized the difference between the language used among the Europeans (Spanish) and the

language Europeans used to pray to their God (Latin). 12The Spanish text reads, "Y dejaban ellos de comer por dirnmoslo a nosotros, y nos daban cueros y otras

cosillas" [And they would part with their food to give it to us, and they (also) gave us pelts and other

things] (Cabeza de Vaca 1971:44). 13In 1540, Cabeza de Vaca was appointed governor of the Rio de la Plata. Three years later he was

arrested and taken to Spain to stand trial. Part of the problems experienced by Cabeza de Vaca resulted from his good treatment of the native populations, his refusal to let the natives be kept as slaves, and his insistence that the European soldiers be prepared to survive in the jungle under conditions similar to those experienced by the native populations.

14The Spanish text reads, "Holgaban mucho cuando me vian y les traia lo que habian menester, y los que no me conoscian me procuraban y deseaban ver por mi fama" [They were very pleased when they saw me and (when) I brought them the things they needed, and those who did not know me looked for me and wanted to see me because of my fame] (Cabeza de Vaca 1971:47).

1'The issues of who was involved in curing and at what precise time are not always clear. It is very clear that Cabeza de Vaca was deeply engaged in curing practices and that Castillo was the healer preferred by the Native Americans, although he was always reluctant to engage in curing. It is also clear that by the time they reached western Texas and northeastern Mexico all four individuals, including Estebanico, were

practicing healing to keep up with the demand. It should be kept in mind that this was a very dangerous practice because of its implications for witchcraft and the Inquisition. Curing was fraught with danger for both the soul and the body.

16Many routes have been suggested for the travels of Cabeza de Vaca and his companions (for a concise review of the problem, see Chipman 1987). Campbell (1988:7-38) studied the evidence for the native




groups encountered by Cabeza de Vaca and proposes a route for the portion of the trip from Matagorda Island to the Rio Grande. That route is accepted here.

17The Spanish text reads, "Y cuando hube sacado la punta, pidi6ronmela, y yo se la di, y el pueblo todo vino a verla, y la enviaron por la tierra adentro, para que la viesen los que alli estaban, y por esto hicieron muchos bailes y fiestas, como ellos suelen hacer" [And when I extracted the point, they asked me for it and I gave it to them, and all the pueblo came to see it, and they sent it to the hinterland, in order that those that were there could see it, and because of this (event) they held many dances and parties as they know how to hold] (Cabeza de Vaca 1971:75).

18The evidence for women's roles as peacemakers and traders is vast but very widespread through the historical archival documents and "hidden" in documents that discuss very diverse matters (Wade 1998:

286-289).

References Cited

Bakhtin, Mikhail. 1990. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Ed. Michael Holquist; translated by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Bhabha, Homi K. 1990. DissemiNation: Time, Narrative and the Margins of the Modem Nation. In

Nation and Narration, ed. Homi K. Bhabha, pp. 291-322. London: Routledge. . 1994. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge.

Cabeza de Vaca, Alvar NifiTez. 1971[1555]. Naufragios y comentarios con dos cartas y relacid'n de Hernando de

Ribera. Colecci6n Austral no. 304, Quinta Edici6n. Madrid: Editorial Espasa-Calpe, S.A.

Campbell, Thomas. 1988. The Indians of Southern Texas and Northeastern Mexico: Selected Writings of Thomas Nolan Campbell. Austin: Texas Archeological Research Library.

Chapin, Norman MacPherson. 1983. Curing among the San Blas Cuna. Ph.D. dissertation, Anthropology

Department, University of Arizona at Tucson.

Chipman, Donald. 1987. In Search of Cabeza de Vaca's Route across Texas: An Historiographical Survey. Southwestern Historical Quarterly 91:127-148.

Greenblatt, Stephen. 1992. Marvelous Possessions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Piedra, Jose. 1991. Literary Whiteness and the Afro-Hispanic Difference. In The Bounds of Race, ed.

Dominick LaCapra, pp. 278-310. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.

Strong, Pauline. 1992. Captivity in White and Red. In Crossing Cultures, ed. Daniel Segal, pp. 33-104.

Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

Taussig, Michael. 1986. Shamanism, Colonialism, and the White Man: A Study in Terror and Healing. Chicago:

University of Chicago Press. . 1993. Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of the Senses. New York: Routledge.

Todorov, Tzvetan. 1982. The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other. Translated by Richard

Howard. New York: Harper and Row.

Volo'inov, V. N. 1986. Marxism and the Philosophy of Language. Translated by Ladislav Matejka and I. R.

Titunik. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Wade, Mariah. 1998. The Native Americans of the Texas Edwards Plateau and Related Areas: 1582-1799.

Ph.D. dissertation, Anthropology Department, University of Texas at Austin.

. In press. Cultural Fingerprints: The Native American Peoples of Texas between 1530 and

1750. Bulletin of the Texas Archeological Society.



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