Brutal journey: Cabeza de Vaca and the epic first crossing of North America

Description

Continent to call his own -- Company gathers -- Across the ocean sea -- Into the gulf -- Requirement -- Tocobaga's charnel house -- Leaving safety harbor -- Across the Withlacoochee -- Sound of flutes -- Land of the Apalachee -- Chest-high in hell -- Into the gulf ... again -- Father of waters -- Castaways -- Isle of bad fortune -- Figueroa's attempt -- News from Malhado -- Traveling salesman -- Pecans and prickly pears -- Burning bush -- Traveling medicine show -- Six hundred hearts of deer -- Peace in the valley -- Lost in the new world.;[This book] tells the story of an army of would-be conquerors, bound for glory, who landed in Florida in 1528. But only four of the four hundred would survive: eight years and some five thousand miles later, three Spaniards and a black Moroccan wandered out of the wilderness to the north of the Rio Grande and into Cortes's gold-drenched Mexico. The survivors brought nothing back other than their story ... They had become killers and cannibals, torturers and torture victims, slavers and enslaved. They became faith healers, arms dealers, canoe thieves, spider eaters. They became ... whatever it took to stay alive.-Back cover.