The History of the Americans

Welcome to the History of the Americans podcast episode 16.  This episode is called “Sidebar: Bringing it all Together.” In the History of the Americans podcast, a sidebar is an episode outside of the progression of the timeline, which at this writing has reached roughly 1536.  The purpose of this sidebar is to talk a bit about the show to date, and put the first thirty years of European exploration and conquest of the territory that is now the United States in context.  In other words, bringing it all together! Reference for this episode Alan Taylor, American Colonies: The Settling of North America

This episode is Cabeza de Vaca part 4, the final in the Cabeza de Vaca series. We recorded this episode on March 30, 2021 in Austin, Texas. The last time the remnants of the ill-fated Narvaez expedition landed on a coastal island somewhere near today’s Galveston, Texas and, thereby, “discovered” Texas.  Of the eighty or so alive at the end of Cabeza de Vaca 2, only three remained with our protagonist, Cabeza de Vaca, and would eventually make it back to New Spain.  It is now 1534, almost six years after the expedition landed in Tampa Bay, and the final four are heading south in search of Panuco, the northernmost outpost of New Spain under the authority of one of that era’s nastiest conquistadors, Nuno de Guzman. Selected references for this episode Andrés Reséndez, A Land So Strange: The Epic Journey of Cabeza de Vaca Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, The Account: Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca's Relacion, An Annotated Translation by Martin A. Favata and Jose B. Fernandez A New History of Old Texas Podcast by Brandon Seale Cabeza de Vaca resources online at Texas State University

We will no longer refer to the Narvaez Expedition in the title of the episode because, as you know if you listened to Episode 13, in late November 1528 schizz got seriously real. It could no longer be said that there was a Narvaez Expedition.  Panfilo de Narvaez himself was dead on a raft, adrift with two other corpses in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico, and his original landing party at Tampa Bay in April of that year had dwindled from 300 men and 42 horses to two rafts of 40 or so starving men, each crew unaware of the other, castaway on opposite sides of a barrier island near Galveston on the Texas Gulf coast.  Almost eight years would elapse before the final four of these roughly 80 wretches would reconnect with the bleeding edge of Spanish civil authority on the Pacific coast of Mexico. We recorded this episode on March 25, 2021, in New Orleans, Louisiana, and if you listen carefully you can hear the birdies of spring and a couple of trains whistling in the distance. Subscribe by email! Selected references for this episode Andrés Reséndez, A Land So Strange: The Epic Journey of Cabeza de Vaca Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, The Account: Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca's Relacion, An Annotated Translation by Martin A. Favata and Jose B. Fernandez A New History of Old Texas Podcast by Brandon Seale

This episode continues the shocking story of the doomed Narváez expedition and its almost unbelievable struggle to survive. In this episode, the expedition begins to unravel in Florida, and cooks up a crazy scheme to send 250 men across the Gulf of Mexico on rafts. All of this ends up with the "discovery" of Texas! And, of course, a lot of dead Spanish. Subscribe to The History of the Americans by email! Selected references for this episode Andrés Reséndez, A Land So Strange: The Epic Journey of Cabeza de Vaca Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, The Account: Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca's Relacion, An Annotated Translation by Martin A. Favata and Jose B. Fernandez Alex D. Krieger, We came Naked and Barefoot: The Journey of Cabeza de Vaca Across North America Gonzalo Fernandez Oviedo y Valdez and Harbert Davenport, “The Expedition of Pánfilo de Narváez,” The Southwestern Historical Quarterly David Ewing Duncan, Hernando De Soto: A Savage Quest in the Americas The route of the rafts across the Gulf (map on thehistoryoftheamericans.com): The route of the rafts across the Gulf of Mexico (credit Andrés Reséndez)

This week we are kicking off perhaps the most unbelievable story of individual survival in all the History of the Americans, the disastrous Narváez expedition and the amazing journey of Cabeza de Vaca. In the spring of 1536, a group of Spanish horsemen were ranging north along the Pacific coast of Mexico, looking for Indians to capture for slaves in territory that the Spanish had neither settled nor explored. The horsemen encountered a group of Indians, but among them were three Spanish nobles and a black slave. The four were the last survivors of a disastrous expedition that had landed in Florida eight years before, and they had traveled across North America and now found themselves as the spiritual leaders of the first known mass religious movement in North America. In between they endured unbelievable suffering, and their survival is its own monument to human resilience. Over the next several episodes, we will recount this story, and look forward to its consequences. Selected references for this episode Andrés Reséndez, A Land So Strange: The Epic Journey of Cabeza de Vaca Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, The Account: Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca's Relacion, An Annotated Translation by Martin A. Favata and Jose B. Fernandez Alex D. Krieger, We came Naked and Barefoot: The Journey of Cabeza de Vaca Across North America Gonzalo Fernandez Oviedo y Valdez and Harbert Davenport, "The Expedition of Pánfilo de Narváez," The Southwestern Historical Quarterly

In this episode we venture back to Florida, and the first of several almost comically incompetent attempts by the Spanish to settle the area, including Ponce de Leon's second expedition in 1521, and the very ephemeral settlement of San MIguel de Gualdape under the "leadership" of Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón. We also explore the personal rivalry and indeed hatred among the leading players in the Spanish Caribbean of the early 1500s, and the implications for the Spanish exploration of the future United States. Selected references for this episode Andrés Reséndez, A Land So Strange: The Epic Journey of Cabeza de Vaca Douglas T. Peck, "Lucas Vásquez de Ayllón's Doomed Colony of San Miguel de Gualdape," The George Historical Quarterly Samuel Turner, "Juan Ponce de León and the Discovery of Florida Reconsidered," The Florida Historical Quarterly Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón

With the English looking for a northwest passage and the Spanish pressing in to Florida and up the Atlantic Coast, the French get in to the exploration game. French King Francis I gets his own Italian explorer, Giovanni da Verrazzano, and sends him on a mission to explore the Atlantic Coast of North America and search for a shortcut to Asia between Florida and Newfoundland. Along the way, all sorts of interesting things happen, and we learn the accidental origin of the name of the American State of Rhode Island. Selected references for this episode Cuomo finally fixes a 50-year-old typo The History of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, 50 Years After Its Construction Samuel Eliot Morison, The Great Explorers: The European Discovery of America Wikipedia

We now hasten to the first European exploration of the lands now constituting the United States, and that means the first sanctioned expedition to Florida in 1513 by Juan Ponce de Leon, and the legend of the Fountain of Youth. Florida would turn out to be enormously challenging, so it will still be more than fifty years before the first successful permanent settlement at St. Augustine. As discussed in the episode, there is some debate over Ponce's route, so the various maps available online differ in important respects. Here's one from 1913, which is as professional and on target as any that I found. CWCID Selected references for this episode Samuel Turner, "Juan Ponce de Leon and the Discovery of Florida Reconsidered" John McGrath, "Sixteenth-Century Florida in the European Imagination" T. Frederick Davis, "Ponce de Leon's First Voyage and Discovery of Florida"

Discover the profound consequences of the Columbian Exchange following Columbus's voyages. Explore how diseases devastated Indigenous populations while New World crops like maize and potatoes transformed diets in Europe. The fascinating connection of this exchange even extends to popular cocktails, revealing a blend of cultures. Dive into the dual nature of the Columbian Exchange, highlighting both the dark history of commodity cultivation and its lasting impacts on global food diversity and agricultural practices.

This is our last episode on Christopher Columbus. This time we discuss the voyage home, which required impressive seamanship in the context of delivering some of the most important news ever to travel by sea, and the spreading of that news once Nina and Pinta got back to Europe. Columbus's return trip from the western hemisphere was almost unbelievably dangerous, and as much a part of the miracle of his venture as the trip across to the west. Please refer to the show notes for the previous episodes at www.thehistoryoftheamericans.com for useful maps and references. I paced this one a little faster than the previous episodes. I'm interested in what you think of it, or whether you prefer a somewhat slower cadence. Reference for this episode Samuel Eliot Morison, The Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A Life of Christopher Columbus