Background

• 1535: Pedro de Mendoza establishes a settlement at Buenos Aires.
• 1536-1537: After an initial period of peace the natives of the area attack the settlement and wage war against the Spanish settlers.
• 1537: Pedro de Mendoza the governor of the settlement sails for Spain. He appoints Juan de Ayolas as lieutenant governor to rule in his absence. Ayolas is away on an exploring expedition and it is not known whether he is still alive. Domingo de Irala serves as interim governor.
• 1537: Pedro de Mendoza dies at sea on the ship Magdalena. The Magdalena stops at the Azores while Cabeza de Vaca is there awaiting the safety of a Portuguese convoy before continuing on to Spain.
• 1541: Settlers at Buenos Aires abandon the site and move to the settlement of Asuncion on the Paraguay River.

Background Material on Cabeza de Vaca's Return to Spain
and his Negotiations with the King for a New Commission

• July 1536: End of Cabeza de Vaca's sojourn among the natives of Mid-North America. Cabeza de Vaca and the other three survivors of the Narvaez expedition are welcomed to Mexico City by Hernan Cortez and Antonio de Mendoza, the Viceroy of New Spain. Mendoza wanted the four to go back to the North with an expedition for making further exploration. Cabeza de Vaca and the others decline. Later Estabanico joins Coronado's expedition and is killed by the natives.
• October 1536: Cabeza de Vaca is ready to sail for Spain but the ship he is to travel on is destroyed in a storm.
• April 1537: Cabeza de Vaca sails for Spain.
• July 1537: Cabeza de Vaca's ship arrives in the Azores where it is saved from a French privateer by Portuguese warships.
• August 1537: Cabeza de Vaca arrives in Spain.
• November 1537: Cabeza de Vaca reports to the House of Trade (Casa de Contratacion) in Seville.
• 1538-1540: Cabeza de Vaca arranges for an audience with the King of Spain, Charles I, and makes a secret report to the King on the potential wealth of the area of Mid-North America which he visited. It is reputed that Cabeza de Vaca indicated that he saw some signs of mineral wealth but that he emphasized the productivity of the land. The King offers him the opportunity to lead an expedition to explore northeast North America. Cabeza de Vaca turns down the offer.

Time Line of Cabeza de Vaca's Expedition
to the Rio de la Plata Province

• March 1540: The King offers Cabeza de Vaca the leadership of an expedition to take supplies to the colony in the Rio de la Plata region of South America. The colony is in difficult circumstances. The Governor died and his designated successor is missing and possibly dead on an exploratory expedition. Cabeza de Vaca is to take a mission of about four hundred people to relieve the colony of its shortages. If the missing Governor-designate is determined to be dead then Cabeza de Vaca is to be the governor of the colony. If the missing Governor-designate is alive Cabeza de Vaca is to be the Lieutenant Governor. Separate from the matter of the governorship Cabeza de Vaca is given by King the control of the island of Santa Catalina off the coast of what is now Brazil for twelve years. This is to compensate Cabeza de Vaca for the funds he must invest in outfitting the expedition. Cabeza de Vaca agreed to invest at least eight thousand ducados. His salary was to be two thousand ducados per year.
• March to September 1540: Cabeza de Vaca outfits three ships for his expedition. He spends fourteen thousand ducados, much of it borrowed. Some of the cost is borne by Pedro Dorantes, a man appointed by the King to be the factor or merchant for the expedition.
• July 1540: The King grants Cabeza de Vaca's request that lawyers and attorneys be prohibited in the province of Rio de la Plata for ten years.
• September to December 1540: The ships are ready for sailing but have to await fair winds.
• December 1540 to March 1541: Voyage from Cádiz to South America with a stop at the Canary Islands where Cabeza de Vaca acquired a fourth ship for the expedition and another stop at the Cape Verde Islands.
• March 1541: Expedition arrives at Santa Catalina Island, an island off the coast of Brazil. At that time the island was under the control of Spain but a later partition of South America put it under Portuguese control and it is now Brazil's Santa Catarina Island. Cabeza de Vaca had been given the control of this island for twelve years by the King of Spain as a way to compensate for Cabeza de Vaca's expenses in outfitting the expedition.
• March 1541: Cabeza de Vaca lands the people, supplies and livestock of the expedition on Santa Catalina Island.
• April 1541: Cabeza de Vaca makes the acquaintance of two Franciscan friars who had come to Rio de la Plata in 1538, Bernardo de Armenta and Alonso Lebrón. These two would play a significant role in Cabeza de Vaca's future.
• May 1541: Cabeza de Vaca learns from refugees from Buenos Aires that that settlement had been attacked by natives and seventy of the survivors had evacuated the settlement and moved to Asunción, up the Paraguay River at a more defensible site. Subsequently the rest of the survivors also fled to Asunción. Cabeza de Vaca also learned that Ayolas, the designated governor of Rio de la Plata province, had been killed by natives while on an expedition. This meant that Cabeza de Vaca was the official governor of the province.

• September 1541: Cabeza de Vaca decides to travel overland to reach the surviving settlement of Rio de la Plata province, Asunción.
• October 1541: The expedition leaves Santa Catalina Island.
• November 1541: Cabeza de Vaca with 250 soldiers, 25 horses and a variety of other groups including some soldier's wives, native carriers and the two Franciscan friars enters the interior by way of the valley of the Itabucu River north of the island. The expedition's reception by the natives was peaceful because Cabeza de Vaca traded for the supplies the expedition needed from the natives. He treated the natives fairly and punished expedition members who tried to treat them otherwise. He gave gifts to the chiefs and gained their confidence. The natives of the region spoke dialects of the Guaraní language, the same language as those of Santa Catalina Island.
• January 1542: The expedition reaches the Iguazú River, a tributary of the Paraná River.
• March 1542: Cabeza de Vaca and his expedition arrive in Asunción. Some expedition members who were ill had been left at the Igauzú River near the Falls.

Background on the Political Situation
in the Rio de la Plata Province
at the Time that Cabeza de Vaca
Assumes the Governorship

The name of the river, Rio de la Plata (the River of Silver), came from Spanish observation of silver articles possessed by the natives of the region. However this silver was silver that raiding bands of natives from the region brought back east from the Andean Empire of the Inca. The Spanish thought there was sources of silver in the territory and hence the river was named River of Silver.

The port city of La Ciudad de la Santa Maria del Buen Aire (The City of Saint Mary of the Good Air) was established in 1536 by a large expedition led by Pedro de Mendoza. Mendoza served as governor until 1537 when due to ill health he left the colony and set sail for Spain. Enroute he died. When he left he designated as lieutenant governor, Juan de Ayolas. But Ayolas was away on an entrada, an expedition, up river looking for precious metal and his fate was unknown. Several prominent citizens, the most important of which was Domingo de Irala, took control of the government in lieu of an official governor. Irala and the others governed several years and established another settlement on the Paraguay River which was named Asunción. Irala was a capable but sinister figure in the events that transpired after the King of Spain sent Cabeza de Vaca to rule if Ayolas was determined to have been killed.

When the natives of the region around the settlement, which later came to be known as Buenos Aires, attacked Irala and the other leaders decided to move to the more defensible site at Asunción. A group of about one hundred was left to defend the settlement but this group left Buenos Aires shortly thereafter and joined the first refugees at Asunción. The Spanish settlement of Buenos Aires ceased to exist until it was re-established in 1580.

Under Irala and the other leaders the natives in the region around Asunción were exploited for the benefit of the Spanish. There was no attempt to change the natives' practice of selling war captives into slavery or the practice of cannibalism. Another native practice that created problems was that of giving away women to cement tribal alliances. These women were given to the leaders of other tribes or to the Spanish when they became important in the power structure of the region. Soon any leader that did not refuse the gift of women would soon have a harem of dozens of native women. When Cabeza de Vaca came to Asunción he set about to curb cannibalism, slavery and the concubinage as well as to regulate the trade between the Spanish and the natives.

Cabeza de Vaca's curbing of slavery hit hard at the source of income of the established Spanish leaders such as Irala. They were dependent upon cheap slave labor on their farms.

The matter of the native women was more complicated. The women served not only as concubines but as laborers. The Spanish men had many mestizo children from these women and they did not want these families taken away from them by the new governor, Cabeza de Vaca. Cabeza de Vaca was determined to end this concubinage for a variety of reasons. It was not just immoral in itself. There was the additional problem that these harems contained closely related women such as sisters or mothers and daughters. This was against the canon law of the Church and was looked upon by Cabeza de Vaca as comparable to incest. Additionally the immorality of the Spanish men created a problem when natives were converted to Christianity and were told they could have only one wife. The natives were sensitive to the hypocrisy of the Spanish with their many concubines.

It is not surprising that Cabeza de Vaca faced a touchy political situation when he commenced his rule of the Spanish colony.

Return to the Time Line of Cabeza de Vaca's
Expedition to the Rio de la Plata Province

• April 1542: Cabeza de Vaca issues his first edicts for the governance of the colony. These included:
  1. The Spanish were to treat the natives fairly. This meant that the Spanish were not to take natives possessions by force but were instead to trade for what they want. Likewise the natives were not to be forced into labor and they were to be paid for the labor they performed.
  2. Native women who were close relatives were not to live under the control of the same Spanish man.
  3. Natives, especially women, were not to be traded or sold without a special license.
  4. No one was to sell metal objects that could be used as weapons, such as machetes and daggers, to the natives. Damaged and useless weapons such as swords or crossbows were to be turned over to the Governor.
  5. Spaniards were not to go to natives' dwellings without the approval of the Governor.
  6. Any sale of natives' land or dwellings to a Spaniard had to be reviewed by the Governor for fairness.
• Cabeza de Vaca's edicts were of his own devising but they corresponded to the New Laws promulgated from Madrid. Cabeza de Vaca's appointment was connected to the agreement of his ideas concerning the treatment of the natives with the thinking that was emerging within the King's circle. Later the New Laws significantly reduced royal revenues and provoked rebellion in Peru. There was a subsequent reaction in the King's circle against the philosophy of humane treatment for the natives of the Spanish Empire and this backlash affected the royal perception of Cabeza de Vaca's rule in Rio de la Plata province.
• April 1542: Cabeza de Vaca decreed that the natives were to stop eating human flesh. Warfare among the natives led to captives and these captives could be eaten or sold as slaves. Cabeza de Vaca asserted that he would make war against those who did not obey this edict. Opponents of Cabeza de Vaca pointed out that his attempt to suppress slavery worked against his campaign to end cannibalism.
• July 1542: A punitive expedition of two hundred Spanish soldiers, a dozen horsemen and ten thousand Guaraní warriors under the command of Cabeza de Vaca set out from Asunción against the Guaycurúes, a tribe that refused to make peace with the Spanish and the Guaraní. The expedition achieved a victory but stopped short of destroying the military power of the Guaycurúes. Cabeza de Vaca hoped a display of military prowess by the Spanish would convince the Guaycurúes to make peace with the Spanish.
• April-September 1542: Cabeza de Vaca tried to achieve peaceful relations with the Agaz tribe. After initial conflict that killed many Agaz warriors their leaders agreed to peace. But the Agaz leadership never intended to live in peace with the Spanish. Instead they signed an agreement to live in peace in order to have time to prepare for renewed war. When the Agaz attacked the Spanish and their allies Cabeza de Vaca put them down by force and captured a dozen Agaz warriors. These he had hanged on the basis that they agreed to peace and then betrayed their pledge.
• October 1542: Cabeza de Vaca sends an exploratory expedition, an entrada, up the Paraguay River from Asunción. The entrada consisted of about ninety Spaniards and many native allies. It was commanded by Captain Domingo de Irala. One of the native guides for the expedition was a chief of a subtribe of the Guaraní, Aracaré who was secretly intent upon destroying the mission. While the Spanish were traveling in hostile country Aracaré would set fires to alert the natives of the presence of the entrada. Aracaré also persuaded the other guides to abandon the Spanish to leave them lost in hostile territory. Despite Aracaré's best efforts the Spanish made it back to Asunción.
• December 1542: Another expedition leaves Asunció and is attacked by Aracaré in the back country. Aracaré was declared a principal enemy and sentenced to death. When Aracaré was captured Cabeza de Vaca had him hanged.
• February 1543: A fire broke out at dawn in Asunción burning two hundred of the two hundred and fifty houses, leaving most of the Spanish settlers destitute, even naked. Cabeza de Vaca at his own expense gave them supplies. When the settlers started to rebuild they chose more fireproof structures, such as adobe.
• February 1543: Domingo de Irala returned to Asunción from his entrada and announced that he had been shown good routes inland away from the river. The natives had some gold and silver. He picked a site for a base for future exploration, which he called Puerta de los Reyes, the Port of the Kings. The reference to kings in this name is to the Biblical Magi, the three wise men from the east. He chose this name because he arrived there on January sixth, the day associated with the Magi.
• February-March 1543: Tabaré A brother of Aracaré, leads some of the Guaraní in rebellion against the Spanish. Cabeza de Vaca sends troops under Irala to put down the rebellion but he instructs Irala to do the least injury possible in doing so. After the rebellion was suppressed Tabaré and other chiefs sought peace with the Spanish.
• April 1543: Cabeza de Vaca forbids the further collection of a tax that Irala and the others had imposed when they controlled the colony. The tax was called the quinto because it was one fifth of the earnings and possessions of the settlers. The quinto was supposed to be levied only on the precious metals and gems that were acquired in the colony. Since there was no precious metals or gems found Irala and the others imposed it upon anything of value in the colony. The former leaders of the colony such as Irala greatly resented Cabeza de Vaca taking away from them the quinto.
• June 1543: Cabeza de Vaca was ready to lead an entrada but had to deal with the flight of the two friars, Armenta and Lebron. These two resented the restrictions the Governor had imposed upon their relation with native women and girls. The friars fled with a large number of these native females who had been placed in their charge to learn Christianity. The parents of the girls were upset at the friars taking them away and complained to Cabeza de Vaca who sent troops to capture the friars. They were captureds a short distance from Asunción. The friars' entourage moved relatively slowly. The friars were brought back for questioning.
• June-July 1543: Legal hearings were held to uncover the nature of the plot against the Governor. Several of the royal officials who had ruled prior to Cabeza de Vaca's arrival confessed and lost their positions. But Cabeza de Vaca dealt with them leniently. Irala was not even charged even though Cabeza de Vaca knew him to be the ring leader. Cabeza de Vaca hoped by generosity to win the allegiance of Irala and the others.
• June-August 1543: Cabeza de Vaca planned his entrada. In his planning he listened to the suggestions of many of the Spaniards. Generally they advised caution. It was suggested that the entrada be divided into a number of units and that these units enter Puerta de los Reyes in stages so as to avoid disrupting the native populations of the area too abruptly. Cabeza de Vaca listened but decided to launch the entrada more quickly than was suggested.
• September 1543: Cabeza de Vaca's entrada leaves Asunción. He takes four hundred Spanish soldiers leaving two hundred in Asunción under the command of Captain Juan de Salazar. Along with the Spanish soldiers there were twelve hundred native allies traveling in 120 canoes. The entrada also took ten bergantinas (river boats) to carry supplies.
• October 1543: The entrada reached the outpost Candelaria. It was at Candelaria that the designated successor to Mendoza, Juan de Ayolas, and his eighty Spaniards had been killed by natives in 1538. Cabeza de Baca took great care to maintain good relations with the natives in the areas he was traveling through. He gave gifts to the chiefs and paid for any supplies he sought from the natives. Cabeza de Vaca tried to find the gold and silver Ayolas was said to have found. When he questioned natives on this matter they fled the area. Cabeza de Vaca sent troops to find them but the troops were unsuccessful. Cabeza de Vaca decided to continue up the river to Puerto de los Reyes.
• November 1543: The entrada reaches Puerto de los Reyes, a native agricultural community of about eight hundred dwellings. Despite Cabeza de Vaca's admonitions concerning the treatment of the natives incidents occurred. The friction with the natives of Peurto de los Reyes not only involved Spanish but the Guraní allies. Food was running short and natives were reluctant to sell what they had to the entrada.
• December 1543: Exploratory parties of about a hundred Spanish soldiers were sent out to locate tribes who could sell the Spanish the food they needed for the entrada. Cabeza de Vaca agreed to end the entrada but had to wait for the return of the exploratory parties.
• January 1544: One exploratory party brought back news of an area of abundant food and possible sources of gold and silver. Other parties in their areas of explorations found only natives determined to drive the Spanish out. Cabeza de Vaca decides to explore further the area of abundant food and possible precious metals. Flood waters prevented any immediate action on this decision. Furthermore most of the Spanish were ill and not in condition to undertake further exploration. Some natives, particularly the tribe known as Orejones (Big Ears) set about attacking the Spanish's Guaraní allies, believing that once the Spanish were deprived of their allies they would be easy prey.
• February 1543: Cabeza de Vaca justifies before the officials and clergy the necessity of going to war against the natives who have been attacking the Spanish and their allies. Moreover those who were guilty of killing and eating members of the entrada could be enslaved as punishment.
• March 1543: The flood water receded to a point where exploration could be undertaken, but one official, Felipe de Cáceres, the royal accountant, argued forcefully that the entrada should return to Asunción because the soldiers and the allies were too weak and sick for further exploration or even to stay at Puerto de los Reyes. Cabeza de Vaca agreed to the return, which itself was an arduous endeavor involving fighting the Guaxarapo tribe on the river. Cabeza de Vaca forbade the Spanish taking with them the women they acquired while on the entrada. Many of the officials were incensed at this order.
• April 1543: The entrada arrives at Asunción. Cabeza de Vaca is seriously ill. Near the end of April, some officials and about thirty Biscayans (Basques) and Cordobans invade Cabeza de Vaca's house and take him prisoner. They were let into the house by a Basque servant of Cabeza de Vaca. Cabeza de Vaca was marched through the streets to the dwellings of Garci Venegas and Alonso Cabrera where he was shackled and put under guard. Domingo de Irala, a Basque, was not among the officials arresting Governor Cabeza de Vaca, but was the leader of the regime which ruled the Province in the place of Cabeza de Vaca.
• April 1543 to March 1544: Cabeza de Vaca is held prisoner.
• March 1544: Cabeza de Vaca is sent on a bergatine (river boat) down river.
• April 1544: Cabeza de Vaca is placed on board a caravel. Unbeknownst to Cabeza de Vaca's captor some of Cabeza de Vaca's supporters had a document describing what had really happened hidden aboard the caravel for Cabeza de Vaca to use in his defense in Spain.
• July 1544: The carvel carrying Cabeza de Vaca lands in the Azores. There he is freed and takes another ship to Spain. In Spain Cabeza de Vaca goes to Madrid to have his case tried before the Council of the Indies.
• January 1546: The charges against Cabeza de Vaca are presented to the Council of the Indies. One of the charges was that Cabeza de Vaca had his own coat-of-arms displayed on his expeditions more prominently than those of the King.
• June to August 1546: Cabeza de Vaca presents witnesses in his defense.
• March 1551: The Council of the Indies reached its decision. Cabeza de Vaca was condemned to the loss of all of his offices in the government of Rio de la Plata Province and was not to return to the Indies on penalty of death. Furthermore he was to serve the King of Spain in Orán in North Africa at his own expense. Cabeza de Vaca appealed the decision on the basis of his age and hardship.
• April 1551: His exile to North Africa was rescinded and his banishment from all the Indies was limited only to Rio de la Plata province.
• circa 1559: Cabeza de Vaca dies destitute in Valladolid.