On September 22, 1528, having eaten all but one of their horses, they set sail for Mexico. The shallow, overloaded rafts each held about fifty men and their meager supplies. The water bags made from horses’ legs rotted within a day or two, leaving the men without fresh water, and the only food remaining was a little dry maize. Estévanico and his master, Dorantes, shared a raft with another company captain, Alonzo del Castillo Maldonado, and 48 men from their two commands.

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‘So great is the power of need,’ wrote Álvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca, the expedition’s treasurer, ‘that it brought us to venture out into such a troublesome sea in this manner, and without any among us having the least knowledge of the art of navigation.’ To compensate for their lack of seamanship, the travelers tried to keep their craft within sight of land. But, weak from hunger, thirst, and exposure, the men could do little more than let the barges drift with the wind and current. When, toward the end of October, they reached the strong current that flows from the Mississippi River into the Gulf of Mexico, it became impossible for the boats to stay together. One by one they were destroyed; some were wrecked against the shore, others–including Narváez’s own vessel–drifted out to sea and vanished.

Dorantes’ craft capsized, but all aboard made it safely to a nearby island, where they joined the survivors from the raft commanded by Cabeza de Vaca, whom the local natives had fed and sheltered. So pathetic were the strangers that the Indians’sat down with us and all began to weep out of compassion for our misfortune . . . .’ Despite the natives’ show of kindness, the Spaniards worried that they would become the victims of some ritualistic sacrifice. Instead, they were treated’so well that we became reassured, losing somewhat our apprehension of being butchered.’

An attempt to retrieve Dorantes’ capsized boat failed, and the two groups of castaways were forced to spend the rest of the winter on the island, which they nicknamed Malhado, or Misfortune. Of the 80 men cast ashore, only 15 survived until spring. Gripped by hunger, one group of Spaniards shocked their comrades and their native hosts when in desperation they ate the flesh of those who had died.

In April 1529, Andrés Dorantes gathered the survivors of his boat, including Estévanico and Castillo, and crossed to the mainland, leaving Cabeza de Vaca and his men behind. Captured by natives considerably less friendly than those on the island, Dorantes’ party spent the next six years doing heavy labor and enduring the taunts and blows of their captors. Five men who tried to escape were shot with arrows and killed; others died of cold and hunger, until only Estévanico, Castillo, and Dorantes remained.

Back on the island, Cabeza de Vaca had continued to live with the natives, working as a servant and then a trader, dealing in shells, beads, ochre dye, hides, and other commodities. He made no attempt to escape from Malhado Island, he later reported, because the only other survivor from his party–Lope de Ovieda–could not be convinced to leave. When he was finally able to persuade Ovieda to go in search of fellow Christians, Cabeza de Vaca ‘took him away, and carried him across the inlets and through four rivers on the coast, since he could not swim.’

Eventually, after six years of separation, Cabeza de Vaca met up with the other remnants of Narváez’s expedition–Dorantes, Castillo, and Estévanico. The four men exchanged such news as they had gleaned from occasional encounters with other survivors, gradually putting together a picture of the fate of their comrades.

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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