Narváez expedition

The Narváez expedition was a Spanish attempt to install Pánfilo de Narváez as adelantado (governor) of Florida during the years 1527 – 1528.

The crew initially numbered about 600. Making stops along the way to Florida on Hispaniola and Cuba, the expedition experienced a hurricane among other storms, Indian hostility, and the eventual death of all but four of its men.

The survivors were Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, notable for writing of the ill-fated expedition, Alonso del Castillo Maldonado, Andrés Dorantes, and the Moorish slave Estevanico.

Departure from Spain

In early 1527, Pánfilo de Narváez left Spain as head of a royal expedition of about 600 men commissioned to occupy the mainland of North America.

Arrival in Florida

After their fleet was battered by a hurricane off the shore of Cuba, the expedition secured a new boat and departed for Florida. In March 1528, they landed near what is now Tampa Bay, which Narváez, claimed as the lawful possession of the Spanish empire.

Narváez decides to split his land and sea forces

Despite this confident declaration, the expedition was on the verge of disaster. Narváez's decision to split his land and sea forces proved a grievous error, as the ships were never able to rendezvous with the land expedition.

The land party struggles to survive

The land party soon overstayed its welcome with the Apalachee Indians of northern Florida by taking their leader hostage. Expelled and pursued by the Indians, suffering from numerous diseases, the surviving members of the expedition were reduced to huddling in a coastal swamp and living off the flesh of their horses. In late 1528, they built several crude rafts from trees and horse hides and set sail, hoping to return to Cuba.

A second hurricane dumps the survivors on the Gulf Coast

Storms, thirst and starvation had reduced the expedition to about eighty survivors when a hurricane dumped Cabeza de Vaca and his companions on the Gulf Coast near what is now Galveston, Texas. For the next four years Cabeza de Vaca and a steadily dwindling number of his comrades lived in the complex native world of what is now East Texas.

Four survivors finally reach fellow Spaniards

By 1532, only three other members of the original expedition were still alive -- Alonso del Castillo Maldonando, Andrés Dorantes de Carranca, and Estevan, an African slave. Together with Cabeza de Vaca, they now headed west and south in hopes of reaching the Spanish Empire's outpost in Mexico, becoming the first men of the Old World to enter the American West. The precise route of the survivors is not clear, but they apparently traveled across present-day Texas, perhaps into New Mexico and Arizona and through Mexico's northern provinces.

In July 1536, near Culiacán in present-day Sinaloa, the survivors finally met fellow Spaniards on a slave-taking expedition. As Cabeza de Vaca records, his countrymen were "dumbfounded at the sight of me, strangely dressed and in the company of Indians. They just stood staring for a long time."