In the final words of his letter to the King of SpainCabeza de Vaca makes clear
that his expedition did not reap
gold nor did it
conquer a people or new land.
Instead,
Cabeza de Vaca
discovered
his humanity and what
matters most in life.
Once an elite Spanish citizen...
Cabeza de Vaca
lost everything.
Haniel Long wrote that
Cabeza de Vaca's story
is the tale of what
we can and cannot do
when we must
do something or die.
Cabeza de Vaca
learned that we humans...
in particular we who are
members of wealthy,
civilized cultures...
do not need everything
we believe we need
to survive.
He writes:
It is second nature to us.
Each nobleman and alcalde and villager
is an avenue that leads us to this way
of talking;
we can admit it privately...
can we not?
If a man need a cloak,
we do not give it to him
if we have our wits about us;
nor are we to be caught
stretching out our finger
in aid of a miserable woman.
Someone else will do it, we say.
Our communal life dries up our milk:
we are barren as the fields of Castile.
We regard our native land as a power
which acts of itself,
and relieves each of
exertion...
If one lives where all suffer and starve,
one acts on one's own impulse to help.
But when plenty abounds,
we surrender our generosity,
believing that
our country
replaces us each and several.
This is not so,
and indeed a delusion.
On the contrary
the power of maintaining life in others,
lives within each of us,
and from each of us
does it recede when unused.
These words written
by the hand of
Nunez Cabeza de Vaca
in the 1500's.
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