Chronicle of the Narvaez Expedition (Penguin Classics) by Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca

Author:Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca [de Vaca, Alvar Nunez Cabeza]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2002-06-25T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

What Happened to Us on the Isle of Misfortune

ON THE ISLAND I have spoken of they wanted to make medicine men of us without any examination or asking for our diplomas, because they cure diseases by breathing on the sick, and with their breath and their hands they drive the ailment away. They summoned us to do the same in order to be at least of some use. We laughed, taking it as a joke, and said that we did not understand how to cure people.

Thereupon they withheld our food to compel us to do what they wanted. Seeing our obstinacy, an Indian told me that I did not know what I was talking about when I claimed that what he knew was useless, because stones and things growing in the field have their virtues, and he, with a heated stone, placing it on the stomach, could effect cures and take away pain, so that we, who were wiser men, surely had greater power and virtue.

At last we found ourselves in such straits that, no longer fearing any additional punishment, we had to do it. Their manner of curing people is as follows: when one is ill they call in a medicine man, and after they are well again not only do they give him all they own, but even things they strive to obtain from their relatives. All the medicine man does is to make a few cuts where the pain is located and then suck the skin around the incisions. They cauterize with fire, believing it to be very effective, which through my own experience I also found to be true. Then they breathe on the spot where the pain is and believe that by doing this the disease goes away.

The way we treated the sick was to make the sign of the cross over them while breathing on them, recite a Pater Noster and Ave Maria, and pray to God, our Lord, as well as we could to give them good health and inspire them to treat us well. Thanks to his will and the mercy he had upon us, as soon as we made the cross over them, all those for whom we prayed told the others they were cured and felt well again. They treated us well in return for having done this, and would rather be without food themselves in order to give it to us, and they gave us hides and other small things. So great was the lack of food that I often went three days without eating anything at all, which was their situation as well. It seemed to me impossible for life to go on, although I afterward suffered still greater hunger and deprivation, as I shall recount later.

The Indians who were keeping Alonso del Castillo, Andrés Dorantes, and the others who were still alive, being of another language and stock, had gone to feed on oysters at another point of the mainland, where they remained until the first of April.

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