America's Hidden History: Untold Tales of the First Pilgrims, Fighting Women, and Forgotten Founders Who Shaped a Nation Paperback Read Online Free PDF

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    of Florida to an eventual rendezvous with the army—although where this rendezvous would actually take place was never established. Lacking experienced pilots, the men on the ships soon became hopelessly disoriented and headed back to “New Spain” (Mexico), giving up Narváez and his army for lost.
    Narváez was lost. He was leading his troops inland, moving north, roughly parallel to Florida’s Gulf coast. Their horses and heavy armor were poor choices for negotiating swamps filled with alligators, poison-ous snakes, and mosquitoes in Florida’s tropical heat and humidity.
    Relentless in the hope of finding an empire of gold, they recklessly hacked through the wilderness without competent guides or a sense of direction. The Indian encampments they discovered were often empty of both people and maize, as the natives had the good sense to disappear at the first sight of Europeans. Still, Narváez pressed on, spurred by the fact that the few Indians they captured all told tales of bigger villages with more food and the gold that the Spaniards seemed to care for more than anything. “Apalachee” is what the Spaniards thought the Indians called this kingdom. All of these desperate, hungry, and sick conquistadors must have had visions of another gold-encrusted city like Tenochtitlán. But they had fallen for a common trick. Telling the Spanish that the grass was greener in the next neighborhood was an excellent tactic that few Spaniards ever figured out.
    After months of debilitating tropical illnesses and constant skirmishes with Indians, and completely demoralized by their failure to find gold or food, the expedition reached the sea at what is now Pensac-ola Bay. With no sign of the three ships that were supposed to rendezvous with them, the survivors of this disastrous foray made a desperate decision. They would build boats and sail to Mexico by hugging the shoreline of the Gulf of Mexico.
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    America’s Hidden Hi Ç ory With incredible ingenuity, they melted down stirrups and nails, scrounged bits of leather and deerskin, and wove strands of palmetto fiber to create five flimsy boats, tarred with some pine pitch and rigged with sails improvised from their shirts. Holding nearly fifty men each and hardly seaworthy, this patchwork flotilla set sail in late September—“with none among us having any knowledge of the art of navigation,” Cabeza de Vaca noted in supreme understatement. Caught in bad weather and buffeted by the powerful currents produced where the Mississippi River enters the Gulf of Mexico, the overloaded boats were quickly separated. Narváez and most of his men were never seen again. Fewer than a hundred survivors washed up on the shore of an island that Cabeza de Vaca called the Isle of Misfortune—most likely Galveston Island, off the coast of Texas. It was here that Cabeza de Vaca spent the winter, and the band of survivors was soon reduced to fifteen, some of them resorting to cannibalism to survive. Finally, Cabeza de Vaca found himself alone, except for the natives who eked out a harsh life on the coast.
    After years of wandering as a self-described trader in shells and itinerant medicine man, Cabeza de Vaca learned of three other “Christians,” including the Moroccan Estevanico. Together, they set out for New Spain (Mexico). When Cabeza de Vaca and his three companions emerged from the mountains on Mexico’s Pacific coast after eight years, much had changed in Spain’s American empire. Another great civilization had been discovered and devastated in Peru. Led by Pizarro in a conquest stunning in its cruelty, the men who swept into the land of the Inca captured cities and found mines filled with vast wealth, and Spanish galleons were soon sailing for Spain laden with gold and silver. Among Pizarro’s lieutenants was conquistador Hernando de Soto. When Cabeza de Vaca finally reached Spain, hoping | 26 \
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    that he