Why Did Cabeza De Vaca Survive

Cabeza De Vaca: How did he survive?

In the spring of 1527, many people left from the port of Seville, New Spain, to explore the New World. They set out for Northeastern Mexico, but they accidentally landed near modern-day Tampa Bay. 300 men were ordered off of the ships, and after two months the remaining men arrived at Apalachee Bay with little food and no ships. The number of men decreased day by day, until there were only four men left. Soon, the goal became survival more than anything. Stranded far, far away from his home in New Spain, Cabeza de Vaca had to live on a minimum of materials to use. How did he survive? Cabeza De Vaca survived because he had medical knowledge, learned to eat what was available, and had good communication skills.
Cabeza de Vaca survived was because he had good medical knowledge. Once, when he was with the Indians, they brought someone to him. “Here they brought me a man, and they told me that a long time ago he had been wounded through the right shoulder with an arrow.” (Document C) They asked Cabeza if he could heal the man, and he did. “With a deer bone

This helped cabeza de Vaca get through many struggles of being in a new place. Some of these are communicating with others, knowing how to get help, knowing other people, and how to find food. He was able to talk to other people he didn’t know, because he was new to the place. This also helped him in getting to know more about the Indians there. By having his own medical knowledge of how to perform operations might help him so that in the case of an emergency, he will know what to do. Since Cabeza had the idea of drinking water stored in hollowed-out horse-leg containers, he did not have to drink salty water from the ocean. These surviving skills that Cabeza de Vaca used helped him navigate his way across oceans and wide ranges of