There were very few murderous military leaders in the history of war on this planet greater than the Spanish Conquistadors. Arrogant, powerful, and driven by a lust for gold and silver, they made the heaven of the sixteenth century in the New World pure hell for the people who lived there. The Aztec, Inca, and Maya peoples lacked the armor, weaponry, horses, organizational skills, and martial discipline of the warriors from across the sea. Francisco Pizarro even used highly trained, vicious dogs trained for battle to attack the Incans during conflicts. The use of snarling, one-hundred-pound beasts darting swiftly and nimbly through the ranks was unfamiliar and positively frightening to the natives, placing them at an additional disadvantage.
There were few regrets among the Europeans after the battle ended predictably in their favor, as they wiped the native blood off their swords. To the conquistadors and the rank-and-file in their armies, the indigenous peoples of the New World were inferior to them in every way: physically, intellectually, morally, and spiritually. There were many who held the rank of conquistador: Pedro de Alvarado, Vasco Núñez de Balboa, Francisco Vázquez de Coronado, and Hernán Cortés, to name just a few. Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca had received his royal charter to conquer likewise, but God had other plans for him. Instead of murdering the natives, he healed them—often miraculously. Instead of starving them into submission, he shared their hunger and whatever scraps of food he had collected for himself. Instead of grinding them into the dirt, he lifted them up. This is his story of his journey and how his life changed forever.
Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca of Spain was a hidalgo, which refers to a person born into nobility. While his family held a lower rank in this category, Cabeza had the opportunity to climb the ladder to a successful career. His parents died early in his life, and by the age of nineteen, Álvar himself had become a warrior who sullied his sword against the French, as he reminded his king upon his return to Spain more than a decade after his memorable experiences in Texas and beyond:
I was at the battle of Ravenna in 1512. Between dawn and sunset that day perished a thousand score. Young as I was, Ravenna taught me something of how easy it is to tear asunder and destroy a man, body and spirit. In the days that followed, in my first desolate confrontation with slaughter, I saw a far-off light and heard a far-off strain of music. Such words serve as well as any— for what words can describe a happening in the shadows of the soul?
Eventually, the far-off light he described disappeared, and the distant melody ceased in his life, though it would someday return under much different circumstances. More on this near the end of this article.
In June 1527, at the age of 35, de Vaca left for the New World as the Royal Treasurer on the ill-fated Pánfilo de Narváez expedition to the southern region of Florida. As quickly as he arrived in the West Indies, the ships were beset by vicious storms. Men on shore had to travel in groups with their arms locked to keep from blowing away. Even so, two were blown away, and when their bodies were found, they were unrecognizable because of the effects of the storm. When they did arrive in Florida, they wandered more or less aimlessly and indecisively for months as they tried to explore the new land and establish relations with the indigenous peoples.
Storms tossed them to and fro along the western coast of Florida as the last boats disappeared. Narváez himself disappeared into the sea, perhaps within sight of land. In de Vaca’s own words:
Day after day tide and wind washed us out to sea and then washed us in to land, along a dazzling and uncertain coast. From thirst, and from the exposure to the frightful sun, our four hundred became forty. Who knows what was lost in these boats? Another Magellan, another Camoëns, another Cervantes, another St. John of the Cross . . .?
Food was scarce except for perhaps the rotting carcass of a horse. These arrogant and powerful warriors were now reduced to starving madmen.
No one has so sympathetic an imagination as your Majesty. You will understand what I am not telling you; that I saw men jump overboard, mad from thirst and sun. That I saw them swell and die slowly in delirium, heard their words and songs pour out the pitiful contents of their minds. That I saw men gnaw corpses. And that these were Spanish gentlemen.
It is curious to have so graphic a lesson in what life may become. We had been a proud band, relying on our united strength, our armor, and our horses. Slowly our strength diminished, until nothing that we had in common remained to help any of us.
Even the hungry natives at that point put aside their grievances with the foreign invaders. Recalled de Vaca:
The Indians found us as naked as they were, and our barge gone, and in tears. They sat beside us and cried, too. I cried all the harder, to think people so miserable had pity for us.
A trail of tears
Then, one day, the chief of the tribe holding de Vaca and his companions prisoner (possibly the chief of one of the Coahuiltecan tribes) sent for de Vaca. The chief told de Vaca that his son was at the point of death and wanted de Vaca to heal his son or forfeit his life if the son died.
“That power we had felt flowing in us and through us could not, in the nature of things, be acutely conscious of us as individuals. It must come rather as wind comes to the trees of a forest, or as the ocean continues to murmur in the seashell it has thrown ashore.”
The three Spaniards and the Moor had hoped to avoid an incident like this. Alonso del Castillo had a profound sense of sin in his life and was afraid that God would not save the child because of Castillo’s sins. But now, their lives were on the line. De Vaca describes the child (who, in some accounts, is referred to only as a member of the tribe) as having no pulse, being motionless, with eyes rolled back in their sockets. The Spaniards, along with the Moor and the tribal natives, all thought the child was dead. Led by de Vaca, three or four of them blessed the child in the name of the Trinity and asked that God restore the child to life and health. They also breathed on the child, a custom practiced by the tribal shamans. However, Castillo’s father was a physician in Spain, and it is possible that Castillo, as a child,
had seen his father attempt to ventilate a patient with a compromised airway, which may have inspired this idea. They laid hands on the child while reciting the Paternoster and Ave Maria, earnestly praying to God for the child’s recovery.
The first miracle
In any event, the child did recover; the Spaniards received credit from the tribe, though de Vaca gave credit to God. As a result, they became celebrities within the tribe and among other surrounding tribes, who brought their sick to them for healing. De Vaca was knowledgeable about medicinal herbs, which they undoubtedly used when it seemed beneficial, but as they healed more and more people, some of the healings became increasingly profound. At one point, de Vaca and Castillo performed the first surgery in America by extracting an arrowhead lodged in a Native American’s chest. The patient survived and recovered. Not everyone they prayed for survived or recovered, but many did.
The four decided to walk to the Pacific coast, where Spain had a garrison, not realizing it was at least 1,400 miles away. As they journeyed across the country, word of their success as healers preceded them, and at times, several thousand natives traveled with them. Imagine such a procession! Some historians have called this a migration. The fact that the four strangers came from the east, where the sun rises, was not lost on the Indians as well. Every single day, more people asked for blessings from them while some followers dropped out of the procession and others joined.
It was de Vaca’s intention to find a Spanish garrison as he moved westward and southward. Eventually he reached a Spanish outpost in Culiacán, Sinaloa, not far from the Gulf of California, and from there he traveled to Mexico City in 1536. You can imagine the shock of his countrymen to find him in the company of hundreds of faithful natives from many different North American tribes. The Spanish soldiers and slave hunters tried to use de Vaca as bait or a lure to help them gather as many able-bodied souls as conviently as possible, but de Vaca would have none of it. He shortly returned to Spain and was posted to South America, where he had only marginal success. It was as if his heart was elsewhere. Eventually he was accused of misadministration and returned to Spain in chains. However, he was acquitted of the charges.
Later in life
Later in life Cabeza de Vaca would speak of how his ministering to the poor and his prayers for the infirm created a mutual affinity with them, perhaps through the shared suffering, even as battle creates a band of brothers. He recalled years ago while pausing to rest on his trek across the country a conversation he had with Dorantes:
I said to Andrés, “If we reach Spain, I shall petition His Majesty to return me to this land, with a troop of soldiers. And I shall teach the world how to conquer by gentleness, not by slaughter.” “Why then a troop of soldiers?” asked Dorantes, smiling. “Soldiers look for Indian girls and gold.” “Perhaps I could teach them otherwise.” “They would kill you, or tie you to a tree and leave you. What a dunce you are, Alvar Núñez!”
What better the contrast between the Kingdom of Spain (America today) and the Kingdom of Heaven than this brief conversation?
It was only when de Vacca returned to “civilization” that he was able to understand the corrupting, corrosive effects of established society. And de Vaca contrasts it better than I could:
At first I did not notice other ways in which our ancient civilization was affecting me. Yet soon I observed a certain reluctance in me to do good to others. I would say to myself, need I exert what is left of me, I who have undergone tortures in an open boat and every privation and humiliation among the Indians, when there are strong healthy men about me, fresh from Holy Church and from school, who know their Christian duty? We Europeans all talk this way to ourselves. It has become 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, your Majesty, can we not? If a man needs 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 Castilla. We regard our native land as a power which acts of itself, and relieves us each of exertion. While with the Indians I thought only about doing them good. But back among my fellow countrymen, I had to be on my guard not to do them positive harm. If one lives where all suffer and starve, one acts on one’s own impulse to help. But where 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. It is a concentrated power. If you are not acquainted with it, your Majesty can have no inkling of what it is like, what it portends, or the ways in which it slips from one.
I subscribe to an international neighborhood organization that groups members based on where they live. I have their app on my phone. People use the app to locate missing pets, ask for a plumber, advertise their business, ask questions of their neighbors, and so on. Occasionally, people ask for money. Not much money—maybe they just need twenty dollars until the end of the week, or they are out of cat food and have no way to get any, or they can’t afford diapers (nappies) for their baby. Sometimes, when it is cold, someone will ask for a hot cup of coffee and a small pastry. The cold, hungry person will type into the app where they are, whether McDonald’s or a similar establishment. Those willing to help contact that bistro and provide the person with a ten-dollar voucher charged to the Samaritan’s credit card.
People who respond to these requests fall into three categories. A few—a very few—do as asked. Many more are angered by this request for help. They repeat urban legends about the poor having expensive cars and pretending to be penniless. They hate beggars, viewing them as lazy in their eyes. I fall into the third category. In my spirit, I want to help, but often do not. These pleas fall on deaf ears and blind eyes. Sometimes I do help, but often I do not. I think, “They are not my responsibility.” But how would de Vaca reply if it were possible to ask him? Or do I even need to ask?
What of the lights and melodies Álvar Núñez reports?
The reference to ethereal light(s) and faint strains of music (including the sound of bells while de Vaca’s ship was being torn asunder by the violence of the hurricane) suggests that Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca shared a sense of transcendence experienced by other Christian mystics. These “otherworldly” experiences seem to occur when events in this reality overwhelm him, whether it is the carnage of battle at Ravenna or the fury of what must certainly have been a Category One storm. Other mystics, such as St. Teresa of Ávila and St. John of the Cross, saw similar lights. St. Cecilia, St. Francis of Assisi, St. Augustine, Julian of Norwich, Jeanne d’Arc, and even Dr. Martin Luther King reported hearing music or the voice of God or an angel when they reached a certain level of stress.
Skeptics are quick to dismiss this as nonsense. Perhaps the bells were church bells being driven by the wind? After all, the ship was at port, and there must have been churches nearby. This is a fair point. Others might speculate that these mystics had a borderline dissociative disorder or, at the very least, some form of autism. Yet, if being more embracing of humanity and humble before God—wanting to deliver people from the bondage of the body or the soul—are the hallmarks of a psychiatric disorder, then I wish I were similarly psychotic! Much of Scripture is based on the subjective experiences of people, including Jesus Himself. Who but Moses knew what God said to him at the summit of Mt. Sinai? How do we know the names of the children of Adam and Eve? And what went through the mind of the Apostle John at Patmos when he received the Revelation? Just as not every person is right-handed, not every person sees visions, as noted by Tanya Marie Luhrmann, Kara Weisman, and others note:
Spiritual presence events—the various anomalous, often vividly sensory, events which people attribute to gods, spirits, or other supernatural forces—do not happen for everyone. Within a religious community, people vary in how frequently they experience such events; there are deeply religious people who want to hear gods and spirits speak and cannot and atheists who report anomalous sensory events nearly indistinguishable from religious experiences.
Charity and compassion for others cannot be forced on people. You cannot make people of one race more embracing of other races by compelling them to attend sensitivity training or some other program. These virtues require a change in a person’s heart. It may be that some few people, such as a Mother Teresa or a Bill Gates, have a gift of selflessness, but that does not excuse the rest of us from not contributing what we can, given our relatively modest circumstances. There are, in fact, great rewards in the spirit when we help others. It is something akin to empowerment. But we have to take that first step to discover that for ourselves, as Álvar Núñez did himself. His was a voyage of discovery, no less than those of Columbus, Magellan, or Shackleton. But de Vaca discovered that the gold and treasure he once burned for was within his soul all along.
