ons of most of the Spanish conquistadors towards the natives of the Americas. Cabeza de Vaca's attitudes towards the natives, according to Howard, is a result of his eight-year sojourn among the natives from 1528-1536 after the failure of the Narvaez expedition and his reaction to the abuses by other conquistadors attempting to subjugate natives according to Spanish law. Howard offers his analysis of Cabeza de Vaca's policies on primary sources relating to the Narvaez expedition and the colonization of Rio de la Plata.
- Lee, Kun Jong. "Pauline Typology in Cabeza de Vaca's Naufragios." Early American Literature 34 (1999): 241-62.
- Lee explores the religious iconography implemented throughout Cabeza de Vaca's account of his eight-year estrangement from European society. The original report, dubbed the "Joint Report," was written by the four survivors of the Narváez expedition and later enhanced by Cabeza de Vaca based upon his own spiritual journey titled Naufragios. Although the authority in the matter, Oviedo, in charge of discerning what occurred in the past eight years, preferred the Joint Report, he also added his own brand of mystical upon his retelling. Both recollections, Lee notes, are soaked in Biblical allegory and medieval legend. The study of popular literature from the 16th century may prove to be very relevant if critics of Cabeza de Vaca wish to dissect his symbolizations, according to Lee, especially Pauline typology. He quotes Peter Wild as the first to recognize Cabeza de Vaca likening himself not only to Jesus (a common criticism), but to Saint Paul as well. Both Cabeza de Vaca and Paul underwent very intense religious conversions or, more specifically, integrations during journeys through foreign lands. Lee takes this idea deep into the heart of Mexico, where a "born-again" Cabeza de Vaca will come to be, in his own mind, the first apostle of the New World. Lee hopes to contrast the Pauline corpus with the Naufragios in order to prove the former's influence over the latter.
- McGann, Thomas. "The Ordeal of Cabeza de Vaca." American Heritage (December 1960): 78-82.
- McGann outlines in detail the ill-fated Narváez expedition, whose five boats and six hundred men met their fate off the coast of Florida. After landing in Cuba, Captain Pánfilo de Narváez set sail towards Florida with three hundred men in search of gold, but he found only hostile natives and new diseases. After a period of starvation, the party decided to build boats out of horsehide and, God willing, make it back to Cuba. Unfortunately for the dwindling population of sailors, hurricane winds and wood rot led to the drowning of most of the expedition, including Narváez himself. Before his end, Cabeza de Vaca's wrote of an altercation involving the number of healthy men on Narváez's boat versus the sick and dying on Cabeza de Vaca's. Despite his pleas, Narváez refused to trade any men, or even tie the rafts together. That was the last Cabeza de Vaca ever saw of the captain. Several days later, their vessel crashed off the coast of Texas. All subsequent attempts to escape and reach the Spanish settlements in Mexico failed, and the survivors were forced to winter on the island. Of all the men who made it to Texas, only four would survive the eight-year period between estrangement and rescue. Cabeza de Vaca, after separating from his crew, began to integrate into Indian society and traveled among various native tribes throughout the Mexican outback.
- Mueller, Roseanna. "Two Unofficial Captive Narratives: Gonzalo Guerrero's Memorias and Cabeza de Vaca's Naufrigios." Latin America and Its Literature. Ed. Maria Elena De Valdes, Mario Valdes, and Richard Young. New York: St. John's UP, 1995.
- Mueller's essay is a comparison of Cabeza de Vaca's 1542 Relacion and the recently discovered Gonzalo Guerrero's 1511 Memorias. She focuses on how these works explore the issues of acculturation and cross-cultural encounters. Mueller suggests that both narratives "break" with the "colonialist enterprise" and "echo the voice of the other" (22). Both narrati