SPANISH EXPEDITION REACHES NORTH AMERICA IN THE 1520'S

In 1528, a Spanish expedition of more than 400 men (including Governor Governor Pánfilo de Narváez and second in command and treasurer of the overall Narváez expedition Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca ) and a few dozen horses set out from Spain and spent several months traveling along the Gulf coast of the land known to them as La Florida. The Spaniard's contact with Florida’s native people, including agriculturally based chiefdoms,had been violent and ultimately resulted in dozens of deaths on both sides. As with other conquistadores, the expedition’s leader, Governor Pánfilo de Narváez, often plundered food from the Native Indians including corn, beans, squash, and fish, and took captives from the local populations as de Narváez and his soldiers of fortune sought New World treasures. Following a series of disastrous encounters with angry Indians and stormy seas from Florida to the lower Texas coast, the Governor perished along with most of his expeditionary force and all of his horses.

ÁLVAR NUNEZ CABEZA DE VACA REACHES GALVESTON ISLAND (1528)

After their ship capsized in the Gulf waters off the Texas coast, a few dozen survivors under the leadership of Cabeza de Vaca clung to a makeshift barge and managed to make land on Galveston Island beach in November 1528. After building fires, warming up, and eating some of the corn they had stolen from the Florida Indians, Cabeza de Vaca sent the strongest of the survivors inland as scouts with instructions to climb a tree and checkout the landscape.

These scouts reported back that they were on an island and that the ground was dug up in the way where cattle roam [anda ganado], and it seemed to him that it ought to be a land of Christians. De Vaca ordered his scout to return to look at the ground more carefully and to see if there were any tracks that could be followed. The scout left and and found some huts [chozas] of Indians which were empty because the Indians had gone to the mainland. The scout took an olla [vessel] and a small dog and a few skate fish and returned to the De Vaca camp.

CABEZA DE VACA CAPTURED BY THE KARANKAWAS (1528)

The Spanish scout was followed back to his camp by three Indians with bows and arrows. After half an hour, another hundred Indian archers appeared. Cabeza de Vaca resorted to diplomacy to try to save his life.

"De Vaca went toward them [the Indians] and called to them and they came toward us and the best we could do was to assure them and assure ourselves, and gave them beads and hawk-bells, and each of them gave me an arrow, which is a sign of friendship, and by signs they told us they would return in the morning and bring us something to eat, because they did not have any [with them].

The next day, at sunrise, which was the hour that the Indians had told us, they came to us as they had promised and brought us much fish and some roots which they ate and which are like nuts, some large or smaller. The greater part of them is taken from under water and with great trouble. At evening they returned and brought us more fish and the same roots and they brought their wives and children so that they could see us, and thus they returned rich with hawk bells and beads that we gave them. And other days they came to visit us again with the same as the other time.

After a few days of being cared for by the native people, Cabeza de Vaca and his small band of castaways again attempted to depart in their damaged barge for points south. They had rowed only a few hundred yards when they were struck by a large wave. Three of the castaways drowned as the barge sank, but the others managed to swim back to shore through the cold water, “naked as we were born.” Fortunately, the Indians soon returned with food, built fires, and escorted the freezing vagabonds to their village where they had already constructed a large “hut” for them with many fires. Nonetheless, in view of their desperate straits and knowing well their own history of mistrust and bloody conflict with Indians, the castaways worried for their very lives.

“About an hour after we arrived, the Indians began to dance and to make a great celebration (which lasted all night) although for us there was no pleasure, celebration, or sleep, waiting [the time] when they were to sacrifice us. In the morning they again gave us fish and roots and treated us so well that we were somewhat reassured and lost somewhat the fear of sacrifice.”

Other castaways from the Narváez expedition did not fare nearly so well among South Texas’ coastal Indians. As Cabeza de Vaca would learn later from the Avavares people he met at the prickly pear grounds in the heartland of South Texas, every member of one barge that wrecked down the coast from Galveston Island was killed on the spot.

These Indians told us that there were others farther on, called Camones, that lived near the coast and that they had killed all the people that came in the barge of Penalosa and Tellez, and that they [the Spaniards] were so weak that though they were killing them they did not defend themselves, and so they finished them all off. And they showed us their clothing and armor and said that barge was there wrecked.

SICKNESS BROUGHT IN BY THE SPANIARDS KILLS HALF THE INDIANS

It was not long before the Indians put the surviving castaways to work, what the latter felt was slavery. Many of theSpaniards died of sickness, including a “stomach disease” they brought to the island and that led, in the first winter, to the deaths of half of the “Indians of this land.” Some of the castaways sought their own pathways to survival, but those not in the custody of a hunter-gatherer group died from exhaustion, exposure, or starvation. A few resorted to literally cannibalizing their fellow castaways, much to the chagrin of the ostensibly barbaric and obviously better-fed natives.

CABEZA DE VACAS DOCUMENTS LIFE IN PREHISTORIC TEXAS

Much of our knowlege about the prehistoric Indians of Texas has come from the writings of Spanish explorer, Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca and his castaway companions (Andrés Dorantes de Carranza, and Alonso de Castillo Maldonadoand) and one African slave).

When Cabeza de Vaca arrived on Galveston Island in November 1528, he found himself, for the first time in his life, in the company of a band of hunters and gatherers. Most of the Indians he had encountered east of the Mississippi were chiefdom-based farmers, from whom he and his comrades had stolen corn, beans, squash, fish, and ceramic vessels for carrying water. A few may have been from fishing-oriented groups who traded extensively with the chiefdoms. While the Galveston Island survivors were certainly familiar with the taste of Indian-prepared “skate fish” (what other translators called “mullet”) from their forays along the Florida Gulf coast, this was probably their first time to dine on wild roots. At that time in history, root foods, also known as geophytes (i.e., perennial plants with underground storage organs, aka perennating tissue or overwintering buds), were staples in various parts of North America and had been so among many Texas Indians for several millennia.

Importance of Root Foods to Texas Indians

By their very nature, most geophytes would have been dug in the winter, as that is when their “roots”—bulbs, corms, tubers, taproots, and rhizomes—retain maximum food value. This would also be the case with hydrophyptes and helophytes, water-born roots or perennials that bear their surviving tissue underwater. Given that root foods mentioned by Cabeza de Vaca and his fellow noblemen were dug during the winter season, it would have been difficult, in the absence of flowers and other above-ground and above-water plant parts, for the trekkers to identify the plants to species or family and, perhaps, even to make meaningful comparisons with Old World root-food plants with which they were familiar.

Given the importance of root foods on Galveston Island and elsewhere in greater South Texas, what Cabeza de Vaca reported, as ground “dug up in the way where cattle roam” (the land appeared to have been trampled by livestock) represented the aftermath of successful days at the local root grounds by Indian women with digging tools.

There is also another hint of nearby root grounds embedded in Cabeza de Vaca’s follow-up comment, that the emptiness of the houses his man found at the village on Galveston Island was “because the Indians had gone to the country.” (had gone into the fields). The importance of root foods among the coastal groups is made clear in Oviedo’s summary of the foodways of the castaways and island Indians who survived the stomach-disease epidemic.

And because all were sick and died as the natives died, they agreed to cross to the mainland to some overflowed places and ponds [paludes] to eat oysters, which the Indians eat for three or four months of the year, without eating any other things…. Another four months of the year they eat herbs from the fields and blackberries; and another two months they chew some roots. And they eat some very large spiders and lizards and snakes and mice (sometimes they have deer), and for another two months they eat fish which they kill in canoes. They also eat some other roots which are like truffles [turmas de tierra], which they get from water. Those people are very well disposed and the women work a great deal.

The Indians lived on Galveston Island—or Isla de Malhado [Island of Misfortune] as it was called by Cabeza de Vaca—from October through February and subsisted primarily from fish and unidentified hydrophytes or water-born roots. Their catch from fish weirs diminished by the end of December but roots continued to be important through February when they began to sprout and were no longer considered edible. While we do not know for certain which helophytes (i.e., marsh plants with surviving buds in water or mud at the bottom of water) were exploited, water chinquapin (Nelumbo lutea), arrowhead root or wapato (Sagittaria spp.), and cattail (Typha spp.) have been noted as likely candidates. These plants likely grew in sufficient densities to have been used as seasonal staples as would have a number of native geophytes, including spring beauty (Claytonia virginica) and yellow star-grass (Hypoxis hirsute). Cabeza de Vaca is mute as to how the island’s root foods were cooked but, but it is likely that cooking requirements varied from root-food to root-food. Some roots were probably baked in earth ovens, while others may have been cooked directly in the coals of an open hearth.

During March and April oysters were the primary food and they were taken from those parts of the bays that were best accessed from the mainland. In May, the Indians returned to the coast where they ate “blackberries,” and presumably fished. Here too, the castaways are mute as to how these foodstuffs were prepared. Of the coastal people in general, Oviedo reported that “these people do not eat anything during the whole year but fish, and not much, and for this [reason] they suffer much less hunger than those inland (with whom they were later). Which [the fish], as other things, is often scarce, and for this reason they move about so frequently because if they do not do thus they would not have anything to eat.” This quote is a bit confusing in that it seems to relate people having “not much” to eat but at the same time they “suffer less hunger.” It seems likely that Oviedo’s intent was to comment that while fish were widely available to the coast groups there never were very many fish at any one time but, compared to the interior groups who had even fewer fish, the coastal groups had enough to eat, all and all.

Prickley Pears/Berries/Pecans Found Further Inland

Some of the groups who lived farther south along the coast went inland a few miles south of present-day San Antonio to gather prickly pear nopalitos (pads) and later in the early fall on the tunas (fruit). Among them were the Mariames and Yguazes, as well as the “Fig People,” a name intended to denote their dependence on the fig-like tunas. As already noted, and as described in the following section, nopalitos and green tunas were often cooked in earth ovens. Pecans were a major resource during the fall along the lower reaches of the rivers that emptied into the central portion of the Texas coast. While we are told that numerous groups traveled many miles to the most productive pecan groves, nothing in the accounts attest to whether or how nut-foods were cooked. In parts of the southeast, for example, people boiled hickory nuts to extract their calorie-rich oil.

THE YGUAZES INDIANS

In writing about the Yguazes Indians, an inland group, Cabeza de Vaca noted “their dwellings are of mats placed on four arches; they carry them [i.e., the mats] on their backs and move every two or three days to look for food.” Similar wickiup-like structures were described for coastal groups. Substantially larger residential structures were constructed as well, including a “hut” built on Galveston Island especially for the numerous shipwreck survivors that contained “many fires in it.”

Winter tended to be a season of limited mobility when, according to Cabeza de Vaca, the Indians “closed up their huts [chozas] and settlements [ranchos] and were unable to withstand or protect themselves.” Cabeza de Vaca notes further: When the Indians were in a “region where their enemies can attack them they set their huts at the edge of the wildest and thickest brush” and cut a narrow trail to the center of the thicket where they make a place for their wives and children to sleep. “When night comes they light fires in their huts so that if there are any spies around they [the spies] may think that they are inside them. And before dawn they light the same fires again.

VILLAGE SIZES

Cabeza de Vaca’s accounts, as well as information provided by other Europeans who travelled the region in the late 1600s and early 1700s, consistently talk of the temporary villages composed of wickiup-like structures of various sizes. Village sizes in the Gulf Coastal Plain, as reported by Cabeza de Vaca, ranged from a few huts to those with 50 or 100 dwellings. Villages reported by Henri Joutel, who traversed the Post Oak Savannah in east-central Texas in the late 1680s, ranged from 3 huts and 15 people, to 25 huts with several families each, to 40 huts, to as large as 200–300 huts with 1000–1200 inhabitants.

In short, single- and multi-family residential structures with interior fires for cooking and warmth were commonplace in south-central Texas and surrounding regions when Europeans first arrived. It seems reasonable to conclude, as have archeologists working in similar settings in the American Southeast, that villages composed of wickiups were also occupied during the preceding millennia, although they may not have been as numerous as they were during early post-contact times.

THE WRITINGS OF CABEZA DE VACA

During the 10 years that Cabeza de Vaca and his spanish companions had spent in captivity, they were permitted to travel extensively to trade among the various native tribes. Much of what we know about early-day Texas Indian life was preserved by the writings of this small group of Spaniards that eventually managed to escape to Mexico City.

The Spaniards wrote many stories about what they witnessed during their travels and interactions with the various tribes. According to de Vaca, the Texas territory was comparatively “packed” with humans, relative to the food-yielding potential of the land. Everywhere they traveled in South Texas, they were told of enemies whose presence restricted where each group could venture.

At a time when the first wave of Spanish invaders began to penetrate the interior regions of the New World and lay the ground work for conquering the regions’ inhabitants and their lands, the accounts of Cabeza de Vaca and his cohorts are unrivaled in the details they relate about native lifeways in South Texas, including types of food and cooking technology.

The Indians hunted deer, ate raw and cooked venison. In South Texas’ and northeast Mexico’s millennia-old techniques of gathering and baking nopalitos (newly emerged prickly pear “pads”) and green tunas (unripe fruit of the prickly pear cactus) overnight in earth ovens. They talked about the expertise of Indian women who found and dug a variety of wild root foods, some of which were baked for two days in earth ovens to render them edible, albeit not always tasty. The Spaniards were also probably the first in the New World to commit to writing a description of the ancient cooking technique of stone-boiling, a worldwide practice among hunter-gatherers.

While uniquely informative, these accounts are remarkably informative when interpreted within contexts of well-known patterns in hunter-gatherer cooking technologies, the nature and distribution of game animals and plant foods in the region, and the prehistoric archeological record. It would behoove us, of course, to know more about the effects of the Little Ice Age (ca. A. D. 1350-1850) on specific animals and plants.

What is known about cooking technologies during the pre- and post-Columbian eras in regions adjacent to South Texas arguably has relevance to the heartland as well. People from adjacent regions certainly joined heartlanders during the tuna harvest in the early 1500s, and they also participated in the trade fairs that were held there. Cooking has been a family- and community-centered activity since the dawn of human occupation in the New World. Given substantial populations in all parts of Texas for thousands of years, it is unlikely that there were any significant trade secrets in the world of basic cooking technology. In summary, the people of interior South Texas were surely familiar with the types of game animals, aquatic resources, and plant foods found in adjacent regions as well as with the methods the people there used to procure, process, cook, and consume those resources.

What is known as the “joint report” was written by the three Spanish “noblemen,” Cabeza de Vaca, Andrés Dorantes de Carranza, and Alonso de Castillo Maldonado. Of these men, Cabeza de Vaca emerged historically as the primary spokesperson, as he was the second in command and treasurer of the overall Narváez expedition. According to ethnohistorian Alex Krieger, the noblemen received considerable assistance from Estevan, “the black” who was owned by Dorantes and apparently knew more about geography, distances, and directions traveled than his "formally" educated colleagues. He was also more effective in communicating with the Indians they met on their long trek. Cabeza de Vaca’s own narrative was probably written in draft form by late 1537 but it was not published as a book, Accounts of the Disasters, until 1542.

Although the original joint report remains lost, a version of it was paraphrased and published in 1547 by the well-known historian Gonzalo Fernando Oviedo y Valdez in his book entitled General History and Nature of the Indies (i.e., the New World). Oviedo included additional information in his book that he obtained during his own interviews with Cabeza de Vaca sometime between 1538 and 1541 before the latter’s departure in 1542 for what turned out to be an unsuccessful term as Governor and Captain General of the South American province of Rio de la Plata, also known as Paraguay.

Cabeza de Vaca’s governorship of Paraguay, according to Martin Favata and Jose Fernandez's translation, “gained him the enmity of officials in Asuncion" due, in large measure, to the unpopular and certainly unusual high-regard he had for Indian people. Upon arrival in Paraguay, Cabeza de Vaca implemented a “progressive, reform-minded program” that required the “clergy to take the Indians under their care,” mandated that “mistreated Indians were to be taken from their masters and put in worthier hands,” and made it “unlawful for Spaniards to buy any slaves taken by the Guarani Indians in tribal warfare.”

Discontent among the wealthy Spaniards in Paraguay culminated with a revolt in 1544 that led to Cabeza de Vaca’s arrest, his transfer to Spain in chains, his imprisonment and trial, which ended in his exile to Africa. His wife expended all her property in an effort to overturn the banishment and, eventually, he was allowed to return to Spain. In 1556, Charles V awarded him a monetary settlement and named him Chief Justice of the Tribunal of Seville. Cabeza de Vaca devoted most of his post-exile life to the second edition of his narrative Accounts of the Disaster, which was published in 1555 and included his sojourn to Paraguay. He died soon thereafter, within a year of his appointment as Chief Justice.

Cabeza de Vaca’s accounts, as well as information provided by other Europeans who travelled the region in the late 1600s and early 1700s, consistently describe the presence of temporary villages composed of wickiup-like structures of various sizes. Village sizes in the Gulf Coastal Plain, as reported by Cabeza de Vaca, ranged from a few huts to those with 50 to a 100 dwellings. Villages reported by Henri Joutel, who crossed the Post Oak Savannah in east-central Texas in the late 1680s, ranged from 3 huts and 15 people, to 25 huts with several families each, to 40 huts, and some as large as 200–300 huts with 1000–1200 inhabitants. It is noteworthy that Cabeza de Vaca is well known for the high regard he selectively had for some Indian groups encountered in Texas, as well as for his avid criticism of the cruelty his fellow Christians demonstrated in subjugating and enslaving the native people he met in northwestern Mexico. His respect, no doubt, stemmed from knowing that it was by the grace of the Indians he encountered all along the way that he survived at all. It also seems likely that Cabeza de Vaca and his fellow trekkers survived and occasionally prospered, in no small measure, because they successfully demonstrated their respect for the native people with whom they lived. In a food-rich land where many of his Old World compatriots nonetheless had already died of starvation, Cabeza de Vaca seems to have learned quickly, albeit not necessarily enjoyably, to respect the peoples’ food-getting ingenuity. The Yguazes, for example, lived in a relatively root-rich homeland (the lower Guadalupe River basin) and frequented the tuna-rich South Texas heartland. Yet, from time to time they subsisted on spiders, ant eggs, worms, lizards, salamanders, wood, ground bones, earth, and deer dung. Of them, Cabeza de Vaca wrote “I believe truthfully that if in that land there were rocks, they would eat them."

European chroniclers, whether explorers, clergyman, travelers, or settlers, who wrote about Texas during the colonial era almost always derived their knowledge about native lifeways from observations made during passing encounters with Indians. In marked contrast, Cabeza de Vaca and his fellow survivors were participant-observers who lived with, and as, Texas Indians, day in and day out for just under seven years. From their writings and Oviedo’s interpretations, however, these “noblemen” clearly thought of themselves as “being slaves of the Indians.” As an anthropologist and veteran Peace Corps volunteer of interior Brazil, I might term their experience more charitably as “living with the locals under difficult circumstances.” In describing how the surviving castaways ended up living with different groups along the coast and inner Gulf Coastal Plain, Oviedo wrote:

"And there they were taken as slaves, [the Indians] making use of them more cruelly than a Moor would, because besides being naked and barefoot along the coast (which burnt during the summer) their work was nothing else but to carry loads of firewood and water and everything else that the Indians needed, naked as they were and pulling canoes through those overflowed places [aneguados] in such hot weather…. As they [the Christians] were noblemen and good men and inexperienced in such a life, it was necessary that their patience be as great [as] and equal to the hardships and sorrows in which they [the Indians] had them, in order to suffer so many and such unbearable torments." -Oviedo (Krieger 2002:269-270).

The survivors' accounts are replete with statements about being cold and hungry, on the verge of starvation, going days without eating anything at all. They complained bitterly about being mistreated by many of the groups in whose custody they were held. The very fact, however, that the four men not only survived but prospered from time to time hints that some of what they reported should be read as figures of speech rather than taken literally. Today for example, some folks might well note, after an overnight springtime or fall camping trip somewhere in the middle San Antonio River valley that they “nearly froze to death” even though the temperature was well above freezing. To write about eating nothing but dried mullet, bitter roots, or even sweet tunas several weeks at time, might be well be the equivalent of my own carping as a Peace Corps volunteer when I complained that all I ever ate was manioc in one form or another when, in fact, my diet was much more varied.

For men accustomed to tailored clothing, walking about the Texas landscape in the middle of the Little Ice Age, sparsely clad or naked, it probably seemed very cold indeed. As reported by Oviedo, “the north [wind] blows in winter, when even the fish freeze, inside the sea, from the cold” and a single day would bring “snow and hail.” Indeed, fish kills due to extreme winter cold fronts are well documented along the Texas coast today. For the “noblemen” to work like native women or enslaved Moors must have felt like slavery indeed. Estevan, of course, probably had a rather different perspective on slavery. Ironically, it is because of Estevan’s status as a slave to the Spanish that we can only ponder what might have been learned about South Texas foodways directly from him.

Frontispiece from the 1555 version of La Relación, Cabeza de Vaca’s account of his journey and struggles in Texas and Mexico. Image courtesy of the Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin. The noblemen received considerable assistance from Estevan, “the black” who was owned by Dorantes and apparently knew more about geography, distances, and directions than his colleagues, and he was more effective in communicating with Indians they met on their long trek.

Emperor Charles V of Spain.

Ant eggs, deer dung, and lizards were among the many foods eaten by the Yguaze Indians of south Texas, whose resourcefulness earned Cabeza de Vaca’s respect. As he noted, “I believe truthfully that if the land were rocks, they would eat them.” Photo credits, left and right, John C. Abbott Nature Photography; center, Susan Dial. In a food-rich land where many of his Old World compatriots nonetheless had already died of starvation, Cabeza de Vaca seems to have learned quickly, albeit not necessarily enjoyably, to respect the native peoples’ food-getting ingenuity.

Cabeza De Vaca, traveling "naked and barefoot" in South Texas, as interpreted by artist Ted DeGrazia. Throughout this exhibit, the artist's remarkable paintings provide colorful reconstructions of scenes from the journey. Featured in "DeGrazia Paints Cabeza de Vaca" (University of Arizona Press), the images are made available courtesy of the DeGrazia Foundation.

Learning From Cabeza De Vaca

After living with them more than a year, Cabeza de Vaca decided to flee from the “Indians of the island.” From his perspective, flight was the best course of action, given “the great amount of work that they gave me and the ill-treatment that I received from them…[and]…because among many other tasks, I had to dig out the roots for food, under the water, and among the canes that were in the soil, and from this my fingers were so worn down….” In moving inland, Cabeza de Vaca exchanged his island life as a root digger and burden carrier for that of a “merchant” based among the Charruco, a group of mainland hunter-gatherers whose homeland probably encompassed portions of the lower reaches of the Brazos and Colorado rivers. For nearly six years he made his living as trader, working up and down the coast for more than 100 miles and as far inland. Life as a trader was “good for me, because going about in it I had freedom to go where I wanted and was not obliged to anything and was not a slave, and wherever I went they treated me well and gave me food, out of regard for my merchandise. And most of all because as I went about I was seeking out by what way I was to go later on.”

It is interesting that Oviedo reported that Cabeza de Vaca spent five and half years as root digger and burden carrier. Oviedo’s intent may have been only to document that Cabeza de Vaca worked hard most of the time he was in the custody of coastal groups, regardless of his role as a trader.

It was when the trekkers were in the custody of mainland groups that they became acquainted with more diverse foodways: gathering and baking nopalitas and tunas as well as digging and baking endemic geophytes.

Cabeza de Vaca trading with the Indians, as interpreted by Ted DeGrazia. Drawing courtesy of the DeGrazia Foundation. Inset, a sampling of trade goods described in the accounts. Drawing by Jack Johnson.

It was when Cabeza de Vaca, Dorantes, Castillo, and Estevan were in the custody of mainland groups on the outer Gulf Coastal Plain that they became acquainted with more diverse foodways of the South Texas heartland: gathering and baking nopalitos and tunas as well as digging and baking endemic geophytes. During the summer, prickly pear products provided the bulk of the subsistence for these groups. For most of the winter, they relied on roots, some of which were few in number and difficult to dig; others were reported as being bitter or causing flatulence. Mainland groups, including those known as the Yguazes and Mariames lived in mat-covered dwellings similar to those used by coastal-oriented groups. So too did the Avavares and other groups who inhabited the inner Gulf Coastal Plain. In response to the local availability of diverse food supplies, these rancherías were moved from place to place, within a given resource area, as often as every two or three days. Residential moves among many fishing-oriented coastal groups were much less frequent given the comparative productivity of fishing grounds and shellfish beds within their homelands.

The Yguazes, Mariames, and neighboring groups often used surround fires to take deer, occasionally 200-300 at a time, from along the rivers and the adjacent savannahs. On one occasion, 60 hunters reportedly took 500 deer in eight days. Often, however, none were killed. Mice were taken from along the rivers as well where they occurred in “great abundance.” According to Oviedo, “All of this is little [in amount] because they walk along the river the whole of winter up and down, and down and up, never stopping searching for food.”

Native peoples sometimes hunted deer using “surround” fires. Hunters, carrying torches and weapons, lit grass fires and drove the animals into herds. This strategy allowed them to dispatch their prey in large numbers. Drawing by Ted DeGrazia, courtesy of the DeGrazia Foundation.

While deer seem to have been abundant on the Gulf Coastal Plain, at least in some places and at some times of the year, bison or “cows” in Cabeza de Vaca’s parlance were rare sights indeed.

"Cows come this far and I have seen them three times and have eaten of them and I think they are about the size of those of Spain. They have small horns, like Moorish cattle, and very long hair, wooly [merino] like a rug [bernia]. Some are dark brown and others black and in my opinion they have better and richer flesh than those from here [Spain?]. From those that are not as large the Indians make robes [mantas] to cover themselves and from the large ones they make shoes and round shields [rodellas]. These [the bison] come from toward the north…" -Cabeza de Vaca (Krieger 2002:196).

Fish were a key resource on the outer Gulf Coastal Plain during the spring, if and when the rivers flooded. Sometime during the late summer, the mainland groups, along with the Fig People from farther south along the coast, moved to extensive and productive tuna grounds located some 30-40 miles south of San Antonio (according to Krieger) for 50-60 days. It was probably the most enjoyable time of the year and the people took advantage of the opportunity to eat their fill of sweet tunas “day and night” and enjoy side-dishes of land snails.

Bison (or "cows," as Cabeza de Vaca termed them) were rarely seen by the trekkers, although various native people were observed wearing robes and shoes made from their skins.

Prickly Pear Grounds

There has been considerable debate about the location of the prickly-pear tuna grounds first visited by Cabeza de Vaca and his fellow trekkers. As noted, Alex Krieger places the major tuna ground visited by Cabeza de Vaca and his traveling companions during the initial phase of their South Texas sojourn some 30-40 miles south of San Antonio, in southern Atascosa and northern McMullen counties. Thomas N. Campbell, who was also very knowledgeable about Cabeza de Vaca’s route, located this particular tuna ground about 100 miles south of San Antonio, in central Jim Wells County and vicinity. This location is also favored by many of today’s students of Cabeza de Vaca. Interestingly, Campbell’s location of choice corresponds with Krieger’s alternate location near Alice, Texas. Both Krieger and Campbell located the second major tuna ground—where the trekkers overwintered with the Avavares—a few miles south of the Nueces River in northern Webb and Duval counties.

Regardless of where one places these tuna grounds, it is evident to anyone familiar with greater South Texas that prickly pear grows in abundance throughout much of the region. Cabeza de Vaca reported that the best of times for the region’s native people were when the sweet tunas ripened, as there was plenty for all and various bands gathered for the harvest and held trade fairs as well. He added that “there are many kinds of tunas and among them some are very good, although to me they all seemed so and hunger never gave me time to choose, nor to reflect on which were better.” Henri Joutel, an officer of the ill-fated French colony on near Matagorda Bay in the late 1600s was not as impressed as Cabeza de Vaca about the goodness of tuna; he noted only that “these fruits do not have much taste; they are in several shapes, sizes and colors.” Botanists today also distinguish several species and varieties of prickly pear that grow in the region.

As discussed in later, different parts of the prickly pear plant were eaten at different times of the year. In the springtime, the young pads or nopalitos (i.e., stems) were at their best. A ubiquitous presence of prickly pear pollen in human coprolites (dehydrated feces) recovered from rock shelters in the lower Pecos area indicates that the flowers, or more likely the flower buds, were relished as well. Green tunas, while perhaps not a favorite per se, were eaten regularly during the summer when food was otherwise quite scarce. It was, however, the sweet, ripe, purple-colored tunas that were clearly the favored foodstuff during the fall.

Cabeza de Vaca observed that there were “many kinds of tunas and among them some are very good, although to me they all seemed so and hunger never gave me time to choose, not to reflect on which was better.” In many cases, potable water was scarce at the tuna grounds, such that the trekkers and presumably their hunter-gatherer hosts quenched their thirst with the juice of the sweet fruit. The trekkers reported that they collected and drank juice from prickly-pear tuna in a “trench that we made in the earth” and that they did this “for lack of other vessels.”

His comments about a “lack of other vessels” might well be taken as an indication that these particular Coahuiltecans did not make much use of pottery. Elsewhere in the text, however, he provides ample evidence for the presence of ceramic vessels among Coahuiltecan groups throughout South Texas. In reference to all of the groups with whom he was familiar, from Galveston Island to the middle Nueces River valley, he noted that they made a “drink” from leaves of a holly-like or live-oak-like shrub, he reported that “they roast it [leaves] in some vessels” and then they “fill the vessel with water and thus keep it over the fire and when it has boiled twice they pour it into a dish [vasija] and cool it with half a gourd.” This passage indicates that pottery vessels were in regular use at residential encampments, albeit not necessarily taken on logistical forays to gather ripe tuna. That pottery was in regular use along the coast is also implied by Cabeza de Vaca’s comment, mentioned earlier, about one of his men having stolen an olla from an Indian’s home on Galveston Island. There is abundant archeological evidence of native pottery along the coast, and it occurs inland across most of South Texas as well, albeit less abundantly.

After the tuna season, the Yguazes and Mariames along with other mainland and inland groups in South Texas returned to their homeland along the lower reaches of the Guadalupe and San Antonio Rivers and vicinity where, in good years, they were able to subsist on pecans for two months. Pecans were often ground together with unidentified “little grains” but nothing in the accounts attests to cooking techniques. It is clear, however, that pecans were among regional staples wherever they grew in abundance. With the arrival of winter the root food season came into full swing.

A field of large prickly pear plants south of San Antonio, no doubt similar to the extensive tuna grounds where Cabeza de Vaca and his companions labored. Photo by Susan Dial.

Various views of Texas prickly pear (Opuntia lindheimeri): top left, the plant in bloom with flowers and buds; top right, close-up of the year’s new prickly pear “pads,” or nopilitos, that provided an important food source from spring through late summer; bottom, close-ups of unripe (left) and ripe red prickly pear fruit (right) known as “pears” or tunas. These served as the quintessential South Texas staple during the late summer and early fall.

Pecans, growing in abundance along the southern reaches of the San Antonio and Guadalupe Rivers, were regional staples of south Texas native groups.

Native women digging plant bulbs in south Texas. Described as very hard workers by Cabeza de Vaca, the women likely knew the locations of the most prolific food-plant patches and could find food even in winter months when the above ground portions of the plants had died back and disintegrated. Cabeza de Vaca's observation that some areas appeared to have been trampled by cattle may, in fact, have been a dug-over root field. Drawing by Jack Johnson. Identifying the Root Foods In spite of the obvious importance of root foods in aboriginal South Texas and vicinity, little attention has been given to determining which plants sustained the people there for much of the year. By drawing upon what is known about the distribution of and cooking techniques associated with geophytes on the Gulf Coastal Plain and elsewhere, it is certainly possible to eliminate some species and suggest others as likely candidates. It is also reasonable to assume that baking in an earth oven for two days required stone heating elements (i.e., hot rocks) to maintain high temperatures for prolonged periods and thereby render these as-yet-unidentified roots digestible. Some geophytes along with other foods, including nopalitos, shellfish, fish, and game animals, do not require prolonged baking and are readily cooked in rockless ovens and on/in open-air hearths. But many geophytes require extended baking.

Agave and sotol, which were critical resources on the Edwards Plateau to the west, can be ruled out because they do not grow well, if at all, anywhere on the Gulf Coastal Plain north of the Rio Grande. Eastern camas or wild hyacinth (Camassia scilloides) is a potential candidate, and charred bulbs have been recovered from archeological sites as far south as along the San Marcos River. But two things argue against it being among the principal roots of South Texas: (1) San Antonio is at the extreme southeastern limit of its distribution; and (2) it becomes sweet, with a decidedly molasses taste, after being oven baked for two days. Oviedo wrote that the roots on which inland groups depended were “very few” and Cabeza de Vaca noted that women were compelled to walk miles from their villages to find enough to eat. Other things being equal, these statements would seem to mean that the roots were few and far between, deeply buried or encased in hard sediments. On the other hand, these comments may be among the figures of speech or perhaps testimonies to what “noblemen” considered unpleasant work. The point here is that for geophytes to have been seasonal staples for so many people over such a vast region implies that the effort was compensated by the return.

Among the geophytes that grow in considerable abundance in South Texas are two lily-family plants: onions (Allium sp. ) and false garlic (Northoscordum bivalve). Charred bulbs from these plants have been recovered from the remains of earth ovens with rock heating elements at archeological sites in adjacent regions. These particular geophytes are likely to sustain long-term, systematic exploitation: (1) they grow abundantly in bottomlands and uplands; (2) they are readily dug from sandy or moist silty or clayey soils; and (3) root grounds are often in proximity to the raw materials necessary to prepare foods cooked in earth ovens with rock heating elements, namely cook-stone raw material, fuel, green-plant packing material, and water. Several species of onions grow in densities of 50 or more plants per square meter, as does false garlic.

If onions were among the staples, however, we might well expect Cabeza de Vaca to have referred to them by name—cebolla—insofar as onions were probably used throughout Europe at that time and have a distinctive odor, as is known to anyone who has ever walked through a patch of wild onions. Moreover, onions baked for many hours are rendered somewhat sweet, certainly not bitter. I do not known whether their consumption in quantity would lead to flatulence, but “gas” is a well-known by product of baked western camas bulbs and camas, another lily-family plant, is closely related to onions. False garlic, in its raw state is odorless and has an acrid taste. From my own home-kitchen experiment, I know that after being baked for eight hours or so in an electric oven, false garlic bulbs, which are whitish in color, turn brownish and “sweeten up” somewhat, although most folks would probably say they remain rather bitter. As such, I count them among the prime contenders for the Cabeza de Vaca “bitter root award. "






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Leonard Kubiak
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