“I wandered through many very strange lands, lost and naked. This is the only thing that a man who left there naked could bring back.”

In 1527, with hundreds of his countrymen, Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca sailed for the Gulf of Mexico. Their aim was “La Florida,” and their mission was conquest – to expand, and enrich, the Spanish Empire.

Their failure was abject. Only Cabeza de Vaca and three others survived – and only after an eight-year sojourn across what's now Texas and Northern Mexico. But the survivors experienced something no European had – Native American nomadic life. Cabeza de Vaca's “Chronicle” provides a fascinating glimpse into how indigenous peoples in ...