The General must have heard the story, for it was discussed widely. It was the last report of his venture, and it reminded its hearers of the tales of Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, by which the venture had been conceived.
Some years later other news of the river was talked about in Mexico. A certain group of twenty ships had left Veracruz for Cuba and Spain with the spring sailings of 1553. They touched at Havana and sailed again, but were blown from their course by a furious storm that drove them almost all the way back across the Gulf of Mexico. Only three of the ships ever got to Spain, one returned to Veracruz, and the remainder were lost at sea or wrecked on the Gulf Coast. Three hundred survivors, including five Dominican friars, found themselves ashore without food and poorly clad. They started to march on foot to the south following the coast, hoping to reach the Pánuco and safety. To protect their large company of men, women and children the only arms they had were two crossbows. Indians soon discovered the toiling procession and followed it making little attacks. Crossing a stream, the fugitives lost their crossbows, and now the Indians knew the strangers to be defenseless. Two days later they captured two Spaniards and took away their clothes, sending them back naked to their friends.
What did this mean? Did it mean that the Indians, naked themselves, resented anyone else clothed? The Spaniards thought so, and in confusion and desperation all stripped themselves naked and left their clothes for the Indians to find. But the sacrifice of modesty was useless, for the attacks continued, and many people fell from Indian arrows, illness, despair, until there were only two hundred left. They came along the coast to the mouth of a large river. It was the Rio de las Palmas. On the near bank they found a canoe and used it to help ferry some of the company across, while the Indians attacked in great fury. It was a running fight which continued on the other bank, for the Indians crossed over also leaving many dead and wounded Spaniards behind.
Among these were two badly wounded Dominican friars, Fray Diego de la Cruz and Fray Hernando Méndez. They saw the party vanish along the misty beach to the south and resolved to recover from their wounds and remain on the River of Palms to find and convert the Indians who lived on its banks in little villages. When they could, the two friars returned to the northern bank of the river to start their mission, but Fray Diego could not go on. He lay down in weakness. Fray Hernando gave him the Last Sacraments and, when he died, buried him on the bank of the river, and went on his way.
Up the river he met another survivor, a man named Vásquez, and later the two met a third, a Negress. In spite of her shame at their common nakedness, they joined forces and went along the river digging for roots. Fray Hernando was growing weaker from his wounds, and they fed him what they could, but he died and they buried him. The Negress was killed by Indians. Vásquez left the river to overtake his retreating companions.
Meanwhile the two Dominican fathers were missed among the party of exhausted and hurrying Spaniards along the beaches. The other three friars turned back to find them, accompanied by two sailors. They returned to the cross of the river, found the same canoe as before, and climbed in to paddle upstream. Coming to two small islands where they would feel safe resting for a while, they touched shore on one to land, when the islands sank with commotion, capsizing the canoe and throwing the men into the river. They then saw with astonishment that the islands reappeared, and were two whales, which swam down the river toward the sea. The Spaniards swam to another island which was real, and on it fell exhausted. The next day they contrived a raft out of driftwood, crossed to the south bank, and set out from the Rio de las Palmas to overtake the party moving south on the shore. After they joined their countrymen, all faced another hard Indian attack in which many more were killed, including two of the three remaining Dominicans. The remaining one, Fray Marcos de Mena, survived to reach Mexico City, and to tell this tale.
If the General heard it, it was the last story he ever heard out of the wilds. He had never regained his health, and he died an old man in his forty-fourth year on the night of September 22, 1554, and was buried in the church of Santo Domingo in the city of Mexico.
14.
The River of May
In the autumn of 1568 the Rio de las Palmas was crossed somewhere in its lower reaches near the sea by three destitute men who were walking to the northeast. They were David Ingram, Richard Browne and Richard Twide, English sailors who had come to the New World with the fleet of Captain Sir John Hawkins. At Veracruz where six English ships had put in for refuge from storm and a haven for overhaul, they had done battle with Spanish vessels in the roadstead. Only two English ships escaped. One, captained by a certain Francis Drake who would richly fulfill a later opportunity for revenge, sailed directly for England. The other, under Hawkins, overloaded with survivors, bore north along the Gulf Coast and at their own request landed one hundred and fourteen men on the beach thirty miles above Tampico, and then stood out to the long voyage across the Atlantic.
The shore party were attacked by Indians, and presently divided, one group going north, another south. The northern marchers lost more men through attack, and others through faintness of heart that made some turn back to overtake those moving southward, and still others who abandoned themselves to the countryside. The three who came to the river referred to it as the River of May, where “the ground and countrey is most excellent, fertile and pleasant,” more so than country they had already crossed, “for the grasse of the rest is not so greene, as it is in these parts, for the other is burnt away with the heate of the Sunne. And as all the Countrey is good and most delicate, having great plaines, as large and as fayre in many places as may be seene, being as plaine as a board.…”
They examined trees and bushes, identifying many, and tasting the bark of one which bit like pepper, and seeing “a great plentie of other sweete trees” to them unknown. Of all, the fruitful palm tree yielded most interest, for it carried “hayres on the leaves thereof, which reach to the ground, Whereof the Indians doe make ropes and cords for their Cotton beds, and doe use the same to many other purposes.” Further, “The which Tree, if you picke with your knife, about two foote from the roote, it will yeelde a wine in color like whey, but in taste strong and somewhat like Bastard, which is most excellent drinke. But it will distemper both your head and body, if you drinke too much thereof.…” The palm tree gave not only drink but meat, since “the branches of the top of the tree, are most excellent meat raw, after you have pared away the bark.” Finally, the useful and beautiful tree could save life, for “Also there is a red oyle that commeth out of the roote of this tree, which is most excellent against poisoned arrowes and weapons: for by it they doe recover themselves of their poysoned wounds.”
As for “Tempests and other strange monstrous things in those partes,” the sailor saw it “lighten and Thunder in sommer season by the space of foure & twentie houres together,” and concluded that the cause for this was the heat of the climate. They saw “Furicanos,” and “Turnados,” with “a Cloud sometime of the yeere seene in the ayre, which commonly turneth to great Tempests,” and again, “great windes in maner of Whirlewindes.”
They crossed the great River of May whose gulf land they saw so clearly, and went on their way until a year after the beginning of their misadventure they arrived at New Brunswick, having walked the whole shape of the American coast from Mexico east and north. In 1569 they were safe again in England.
15.
Four Enterprises
For