Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca (born in 1507 with Sherry of Frontera, died towards 1559 with Seville) was a Spanish explorer American continent.

Officer in the forwarding of Pánfilo de Narváez, it was one of the four survivors of a shipwreck. He explored current the Texas, the west and the center of the Mexico while going during nearly six years between the area where is currently the American city of Galveston and that of Mexico City.

Resulting from a noble family, he was the son of a native explorer of Large Canarie. Its first forwarding towards the the Indies proceeded in what became today the south of the the United States and the north of the Mexico: enlisted in the forwarding of Pánfilo de Narváez in Florida (1527), it was one of the four survivors who, during eight years, lived among the Indians by exerting trade and reboutage. After a long voyage towards the west, they renewed contact with the Spaniards with Sinaloa (Mexico) in 1536. It is during this voyage that it joins together the first ethnographic observations on native-born people of the Gulf of Mexico which were published in 1555 under the title of Naufragios (Shipwrecks) .

Cabeza de Vaca turned over to Spain in 1537 and obtained that one entrusted the government of the to him Río of Plata. In order to perennialize it, it started in 1540 its second voyage which led it to the south of the American continent. He discovered the falls of the Iguazú, explored the course of the river Paraguay and subjected some indigenous tribes. It entered quickly in conflict with the Spanish colonists established before who, carried out by Domingo Martínez de Irala, rejected the authority of the governor and his projects to organize the colonization of the territory while forgetting to conquer the chimerical treasures told by the local legends. The rebels raised in 1544 (rebellion comuneros ) and returned Cabeza de Vaca to Spain, shown abuse of power following the repression of the dissidents (as the fire of Asunción in 1543). The Conseil of the Indies sent it in exile to Oran in 1545. It was pardoned later eight years and was established with Seville as a judge.

See too

• Conquistador
• History of the United States
• History of Mexico

External bonds

• http://www.inconquistador.com, delivers of Jean-Claude Martin on Cabeza de Vaca