"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 narratives are reports of unsuccessful expeditions and chronicle the experiences of conquered conquistadors. Both Guerrero and Cabeza de Vaca function as interpreters of native cultures from an insider's perspective. Both narratives also reveal the difficulty of returning to the native culture. Cabeza de Vaca returned to Spain after his eight-year experience with a variety of native tribes, but Guerrero remained with the Mayans until his death. Mueller concludes by noting that both captivity narratives reflect an "attitude of tolerance and acceptance" of aspects of native culture (33).
- Nanfito, Jacqueline C. "Cabeza de Vaca's Naufrigios y Comentarios: The Journey Motif in the Chronicle of the Indies." Revista de Estudios Hispanicos 21 (1994): 179-87.
- Nanfito's essay suggests that the journey motif of Cabeza de Vaca's Relacion is a way to convey what she calls "nonspacial experiences" (179). Nanfito means that unlike many other chronicles of the New World that often function as guide books for travelers, Cabeza de Vaca's text uses the spatial elements as a metaphor of his spiritual journey. The spatial journey of Cabeza de Vaca is paralleled by a spiritual journey. The geographical account by Cabeza de Vaca of his eight years of interaction with the lands and natives of the Americas, according to Nanfito, is "simultaneously" tracing "the inner movement of his spiritual awakening" (180). Nanfito notes that the westward movement of Cabeza de Vaca in his travels is consistent with the notion in western thought that the West symbolizes "knowledge and spirituality in the symbolism of the Cosmos" (180). The journey motif, according to Nanfito, also serves as a way of representing Cabeza de Vaca's actual conquest of space through his adaptation as trader and shaman among the native tribes. Nanfito concludes that Cabeza de Vaca represents America in Relacion not only as a space for Spanish conquest but a place to be visioned with "the eyes of the heart" (187).
- Ortiz, Ann Massengill. The Prophetic Dimensions of the Naufrigi