d defeat the Moors in a surprise attack. Alhaja and his descendants were awarded with the title of "Cabeza de Vaca." Recent scholarship has discounted the Alhaja story and traces Alvar Nunez's lineage to thirteenth century Spanish nobleman Inez Perez Cabeza de Vaca. The actual history of the name's origin is unknown.
 Little is known about Cabeza de Vaca's early life, but scholars believe that he was involved in military service to four dukes of Medina Sidonia from 1503 to 1527. Cabeza de Vaca in 1527 received a royal appointment as treasurer and second in command of the Panfilo Narvaez expedition to conquer and govern Florida. Cabeza de Vaca's duties as treasurer included collecting royal revenues (about one-fifth of all income), keeping accounts of financial transactions, paying the royal officials their salaries, and sendngi regular reports of the expedition to the Emperor Charles V.
 The Narvaez expedition left Sanlucar de Barrameda, Spain on June 17, 1527. Two ships were lost in a hurricane off the coast of Trinidad, which Cabeza de Vaca relates in detail in his narrative. Four ships commandeered by Narvaez narrowly escaped the storm. After wintering in Cuba, the Narvaez expedition set out with four ships and five hundred men for Florida. In April 1528 the fleet sailed into Tampa Bay. After friendly contact with natives in Florida, Narvaez ordered the expedition to leave the ships and march inland to explore the land and look for gold. Cabeza de Vaca cautioned Narvaez against the inland march, but Narvaez ignored Cabeza de Vaca's warnings. The land force set out with three hundred men on May 1, 1528. Narvaez's decision to split his sea and land forces sealed the fate of the expedition. The ships sailed out of the Bay but were never seen or heard from again.
 The expedition found no gold and little food, was ravaged by disease, and was forced to survive by eating its horses. After several hostile skirmishes with natives, the group marched overland to Apalachee Bay, built makeshift rafts, and sailed into the Gulf of Mexico in an attempt to reach Panuco, Mexico. Cabeza de Vaca and a small group of survivors were separated from Narvaez and eventually landed on what is now Galveston Island, Texas. The small band of survivors were captured by natives and the rest of Cabeza de Vaca's Relacion recounts how he and three other survivors (Andres Dorantes, Alonso Castillo, and Estebanico) began a journey across the Southwestern United States and northern Mexico.
 In 1536, after a journey of eight years of contact with a variety of native people including the Karankawas, Caddoes, Atakapan, Jumano, Concho, Pimas, Mariames, and Avavares tribes, the survivors encountered the Spanish settlement of San Miguel De Culican on the Sinalo River in Mexico. During his journey, Cabeza de Vaca in Relacion reports that he lived as a slave, a trader, and a shaman among the native peoples. Relacion, written to the Spanish crown, contains an appeal for tolerant treatment of the native peoples. Cabeza de Vaca, Dorantes, and Castillo journeyed to Mexico-Tenochtitlan and reported the fate of the Narvaez expedition in a dispatch to the Emperor and the Audiencia in Santo Domingo. Cabeza de Vaca returned to Spain in the autumn of 1537.
 The account of the failure of the Narvaez expedition and the travels of the four survivors is detailed in Cabeza de Vaca's 1542 Relacion and a now lost document known as the Joint Report, a thirty page summary of the failed expedition written by Cabeza de Vaca, Dorantes, and Castillo in 1536 in Mexico-Tenochtitlan. A version of the lost Joint Report can be found in a work by Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdes written in 1539. Cabeza de Vaca wrote his account in Castile between 1537 and 1540.
 When Cabeza de Vaca returned to Spain in 1537 following his experiences in North America, he attempted to secure a royal commission from Emperor Charles V to command an expedition to Florida. He went to the royal court at Vallodolid between November 8 and December 24, 1537, to present his credentials in hope of securing the commi