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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.
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
