NUNEZ CABEZA DE VACA, ALVAR

born c. 1490, , Extremadura, Castile [now in Spain] died c. 1560, , Seville, Spain Spanish explorer who spent eight years in the Gulf region of present-day Texas and whose accounts of the legendary Seven Golden Cities of Cbola probably inspired the extensive explorations of southern and southwestern North America by Hernando de Soto and Francisco Coronado. Nez was treasurer to the Spanish expedition under Pnfilo de Narvez that reached what is now Tampa Bay, Fla., in 1528. By September all but his party of 60 had perished; it reached the shore near present-day Galveston, Texas. Of this group only 15 were still alive the following spring, and eventually only Nez and three others remained. In the following years he and his companions spent much time among nomadic Indians. Though he found only the gravest hardship and poverty during his wanderings, by the time he encountered a party of Spanish raiders in northern Mexico in 1536 he was full of stories of the fabulous riches of a new Eldorado, the Seven Golden Cities of Cbola, lying somewhere beyond the regions he had passed through. He recounted his adventures in Naufragios . . . (1542; Shipwrecks . . .). He was later appointed governor of the province of Ro de la Plata, and from November 1541 to March 1542 he blazed a route from Santos, Brazil, to Asuncin, Paraguay. His power was usurped by a rebel governor, Domingo Martinez de Irala, who imprisoned him and had him deported to Spain (1545), where he was convicted of malfeasance in office and banished to service in Africa. His La Relacin y Comentarios . . . (1555), describing his journey from Santos to Asuncin, is a valuable geographic work.