Dorantes told Cabeza de Vaca that he had attempted to convince Castillo and Estévanico to join him in trying to escape from the natives and head toward the Spanish settlements in Mexico, but they had refused. Their experience with the rafts had apparently unnerved them; there would be rivers to cross, they protested, and since neither of them could swim, they preferred to remain where they were. But by mid-September 1535, with Cabeza de Vaca having added his persuasive talents to Dorantes’, the two holdouts finally agreed to attempt a getaway.

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At first the four men traveled cautiously, fearful of being followed and murdered by natives. Then something happened that improved their circumstances dramatically. Natives, struck by the unusual appearance of the travelers, concluded that these men must possess magical powers. Soon after their escape, Estévanico and the three Spaniards met men who asked to be cured of severe headaches. “As soon as [Castillo] made the sign of the cross over them and recommended them to God,” Cabeza de Vaca recounted in his report to the Spanish king, “at that very moment the Indians said that all the pain was gone.”

The “treatment” having worked, others came to the strangers seeking similar cures. Fearful of what would happen should his efforts fail, Castillo surrendered the role of chief healer to Cabeza de Vaca, who soon was faced with a real challenge–a man who, to all appearances, was already dead. Cabeza de Vaca prayed over the man, and as if by a miracle, the man recovered. “This caused great surprise and awe,” according to Cabeza de Vaca, the equally incredulous healer, “and all over the land nothing else was spoken of.”

Predictably, this astonishing incident caused word of the castaways’ healing powers to spread like wildfire. An admiring escort followed the men from village to village. They were showered with gifts–food, deer skins, cotton blankets, and valuable trinkets such as coral beads, turquoises, arrow-shaped emeralds, and a large copper rattle embossed with the figure of a human face–which they shared with their followers. As their reputation grew, the healers were treated with ever-increasing honor and called the “children of the sun.” Their patients became so numerous that all four men had to serve as healers, and their reputations were so solid that when someone died, the people assumed that the deceased had somehow offended the healers and deserved his fate.

Having acquired some fluency in six native languages, which they supplemented with sign language, the travelers generally made themselves understood “as if they spoke our language and we theirs,” Cabeza de Vaca claimed. But it was Estévanico who did most of the talking, since, in order to preserve their influence and authority, the three Spaniards seldom spoke directly with the natives. The young Moor was “in constant conversation” with the local people, finding out in what direction the party should travel, by what names the towns and tribes were called, and any other information that the Spaniards thought might be helpful.

At length, Dorantes and the others, along with their Indian followers left the coast, traveling inland across what is now Texas and northern Mexico until they were within a few days’ journey of the Pacific Ocean. Here they began to hear news of their own people, until in April 1536, they encountered a group of Spanish soldiers who were in the area on a slave-raiding expedition. The meeting between the castaways–dressed as their followers were in skins and carrying large gourds, decorated with feathers as signs of their office–and their fellow countrymen proved rather awkward. The latter were, to the dismay of the four “healers,” as interested in capturing the travelers’ native entourage as they were in hearing the tale of their adventures. Before moving on, Cabeza de Vaca extracted promises that the Indians would be allowed to live in peace.

Dorantes and the other survivors soon arrived at Culiacán, on the west coast of Mexico, where Spanish authorities gave them a warm welcome and questioned them closely about the country through which they had passed. There had been much speculation lately in New Spain (Mexico) about the Seven Golden Cities of Cíbola, said to be located north of the Sonoran Mountains, where the streets were paved with gold and the walls were studded with precious stones. Dorantes offered to lead an expedition to explore this northern region, but his proposal came to nothing. In 1539, however, Don Antonio de Mendoza, the first viceroy of New Spain, authorized a reconnaissance expedition to Cíbola under the leadership of a Franciscan priest named Marcos de Niza. Because of his familiarity with the people in the Sonoran region, Estévanico received an appointment as Fray (Brother) Marcos’s translator and guide.

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