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Speaker 1: Cobeza Devaca was one of the only survivors of a

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Speaker 1: shipwreck that stranded him on the Texas shore in the

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Speaker 1: fifteen twenties, but turned misfortune into one of the great

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Speaker 1: journeys in Western history. I'm dan Flores and this is

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Speaker 1: the American West, Cobza Devaka's fantastic journey after ten thousand years.

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Speaker 1: How would you into it that the world as you've

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Speaker 1: known it is about to change forever? Maybe you'd dream it,

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Speaker 1: which at one insightful moment in the fifteen hundreds, is

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Speaker 1: how a group of Native people located far inland on

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Speaker 1: today's Lake Superior first understood that everything was on.

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Speaker 2: The verge of shifting.

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Speaker 1: In this band of ojibwas a prophet had a dream

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Speaker 1: that disturbed him, and although he took a long time

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Speaker 1: analyzing and thinking about it, eventually he shared it. In

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Speaker 1: his dream, strange people with baffling customs had crossed the

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Speaker 1: big waters in canoes of giant size and landed on

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Speaker 1: the distant coasts.

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Speaker 2: He said.

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Speaker 1: They had pale skins and bushy hair on their faces,

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Speaker 1: and knives that were frightfully sharp.

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Speaker 2: What else, his listeners asked.

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Speaker 1: They also possessed long, black tubes the dreamer related, which

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Speaker 1: they pointed at animals and birds, and from which smoke

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Speaker 1: and a noise so terrific emanated that.

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Speaker 2: He was startled even in his dream.

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Speaker 1: In the version that has come down to us, the

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Speaker 1: dreamer didn't say what had befallen those animals and birds

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Speaker 1: when the smoke cleared.

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Speaker 2: And the den faded.

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Speaker 1: There's a good chance that by the time the Ojib

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Speaker 1: was since this impending alteration in their world, the unprecedented

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Speaker 1: newcomers were already probing at various parts of North America.

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Speaker 1: Fishermen and whalers from ports hundreds of miles across the

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Speaker 1: Great Eastern Ocean, which for so many centuries had isolated

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Speaker 1: America from the human history unfolding on Earth's largest land

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Speaker 1: mass had been sailing west to exploit outer banks, whaling

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Speaker 1: and fisheries. Already, by the fifteen twenties, far to the south,

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Speaker 1: there had been shipwrecks of the giant canoes on North

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Speaker 1: American coasts. By the fifteen eighties, the strange people with

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Speaker 1: hair on their faces and black tubes that spewed thunder

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Speaker 1: and smoke were coming ashore or up and down the coast,

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Speaker 1: wearing bizarre garments and speaking languages no one had ever

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Speaker 1: heard before. The natives tried to make sense of them.

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Speaker 1: Do you come for firewood to warm yourselves? Some of

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Speaker 1: them ask. There's a theory of how first contact between

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Speaker 1: cultures unfamiliar with each other unfolds. It bears a resemblance

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Speaker 1: to what's called biological first contact, when creatures wholly new

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Speaker 1: to a landscape, say mongoose is released in Hawaii, encounter birds,

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Speaker 1: and birds encounter them that have never seen one another before.

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Speaker 1: The theory goes that humans making first contact experience it

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Speaker 1: in two stages. In the initial stage, you can only

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Speaker 1: interpret someone standing before you through the history of knowledge

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Speaker 1: already in your head. They may be in strange or

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Speaker 1: no garb, vocalizing unintelligibly, gesticulating, or making expressions and body

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Speaker 1: language signals you can't decipher, but your reading of them

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Speaker 1: rests on how your culture has prepared you to see.

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Speaker 1: Misunderstandings at this stage can be epic. In the science

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Speaker 1: fiction classic The Sparrow, written during the five hundredth anniversary

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Speaker 1: of Europeans arriving in America, first contact with a civilization

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Speaker 1: among the stars happens when a scientific and religious order

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Speaker 1: on Earth receives a marvelous and beautiful auditory signal from space,

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Speaker 1: interpreting it as a musical tribute to the deity, Earth

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Speaker 1: dispatches a ship that includes a religious ambassador. Entrusted to

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Speaker 1: make first contact. He discovers that the gorgeous music that

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Speaker 1: lures Earthlings across vast distances are indeed poems sung into

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Speaker 1: space by a planet's beings who are joyous he has

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Speaker 1: come and expect joy from him. In first contacts second stage,

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Speaker 1: both sides produce a more realistic assessment of one another.

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Speaker 1: In the sparrow, Earth's ambassador realizes the songs that drew

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Speaker 1: him across space are not, in fact celebrations of God,

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Speaker 1: but tributes to lurid sexual encounters with the alien species.

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Speaker 1: Attracted by the song's oral splendor, the singers discover that

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Speaker 1: a celebrate jesuit from Earth doesn't react as they expected.

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Speaker 1: Five centuries ago, at the Outset, American natives and Old

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Speaker 1: Worlders widely misinterpreted one another and their motives or time.

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Speaker 1: They came to see one another with more discerning and

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Speaker 1: realistic eyes. In the next thousand years, we Earthlings may

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Speaker 1: have a chance to see first contact theory and action

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Speaker 1: if we encounter some new form of intelligence. For now,

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Speaker 1: the confrontations that took place in America and on Pacific

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Speaker 1: islands in the fifteen hundreds and sixteen hundreds are the

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Speaker 1: most instructive examples we have. In the Caribbean and on

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Speaker 1: Atlantic Gulf and Pacific shores, natives isolated from the rest

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Speaker 1: of humanity for fifteen thousand years now stood face to

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Speaker 1: face with Europeans and Africans on missions of discovery, exploitation, colonization,

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Speaker 1: and survival. The stakes for accurate mutual understanding could not

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Speaker 1: have been higher, but every encounter was filtered and mediated

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Speaker 1: by the information already in people's heads. The most famous

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Speaker 1: instance in American history was the conviction on the part

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Speaker 1: of the Aztec king Maktazuma zox coyotesen that the shocking

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Speaker 1: appearance and technological wizardry of the Spaniard Hernan Cortes was

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Speaker 1: a fulfillment of a prophecy that their culture hero Quetzikotl

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Speaker 1: would one day return from the sky. There are other

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Speaker 1: remembrances from North America. On first encountering Europeans, the New

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Speaker 1: England Abenakis believed they were seeing the cannibal giants of

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Speaker 1: their ancient stories. Witnessing strange newcomers apparently unharmed by strange

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Speaker 1: afflictions devastating their own villages, Native peoples in Virginia concluded

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Speaker 1: that Europeans were the spirits of their own dead come

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Speaker 1: back to life.

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Speaker 2: Those misses were far from a one way street. Encountering

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Speaker 2: American natives.

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Speaker 1: Europeans also struggled once they figured out America was not

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Speaker 1: Asia but a new, unsuspected continent. They had to decode

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Speaker 1: their religious and cultural beliefs that neither the continent nor

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Speaker 1: its inhabitants were supposed to exist, as did these people

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Speaker 1: they called Indians. Europeans of the age interpreted the world

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Speaker 1: through religion. In their case of religion that had spread

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Speaker 1: during the Roman Empire's colonization efforts throughout Europe one thousand

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Speaker 1: years earlier, the Judeo Christian tradition sprang from Middle Eastern

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Speaker 1: agricultural and herding origins. Its first caused deity resembled a human,

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Speaker 1: and he presided over Earth from somewhere in space. Springing

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Speaker 1: from a highly localized beginning, this religion had nothing to say.

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Speaker 2: About the wider world.

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Speaker 1: Europeans now confronted America, its peoples, its often bizarre new animals,

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Speaker 1: were entire new mysteries. Ransacking that religious story. For clues,

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Speaker 1: Europeans could come up with only one a reference in

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Speaker 1: the first volume of their sacred text, the Old Testament,

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Speaker 1: and it's in Kings seventeen six to ten. Lost tribes

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Speaker 1: that had left the Middle East were never heard of

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Speaker 1: in the known world again and never returned. It was

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Speaker 1: well into the eighteen hundreds before the idea that Indians

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Speaker 1: must be descendants of Old World hebrew speakers crashed on

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Speaker 1: the rocks of reality. But reality didn't prevent the American

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Speaker 1: born religion of Mormonism from emerging out of the puzzlement

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Speaker 1: of first contact.

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Speaker 2: With this idea still intact.

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Speaker 1: With so little to go on, Europeans, seeing tattooed Americans

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Speaker 1: wearing odd hairstyles, clothing fashion from the skins of strange animals,

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Speaker 1: and feathers from unfamiliar birds, drew on the memories of

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Speaker 1: their religious traditions and history. This was how European pagans,

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Speaker 1: whose nature religions Christianity had long ago defeated, once looked

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Speaker 1: and acted, so the conclusion came readily. These were people

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Speaker 1: who had never heard of the deity Old worlders called Jesus.

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Speaker 1: They apparently regarded animals as sacred and godlike. They believed

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Speaker 1: in sexual freedom for both men and women. They thought

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Speaker 1: women had the same rights to divorce that men had. Therefore,

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Speaker 1: the newcomers concluded these Indians must be disciples of the

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Speaker 1: supernatural force, the colonists believed a source of evil. If

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Speaker 1: Indians embraced animal deities and trees and nature and had

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Speaker 1: never heard of Jesus, then in the Christian worldview, the

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Speaker 1: only other option was Satanic worship. European and American teachers

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Speaker 1: of religion spent the next three hundred years attempting to

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Speaker 1: banish the devil from the new world. First contact theory

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Speaker 1: predicts these kinds of wide misses cultural misconstructions based on

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Speaker 1: the idea that truth is found in one's own belief system,

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Speaker 1: but with more experience with one another, evidence based conclusions

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Speaker 1: eventually replaced most predetermined reactions. Spending time among Europeans, native

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Speaker 1: people realized the newcomers were, not, after all, a realization

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Speaker 1: of their storied traditions and prophecies. They were merely a

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Speaker 1: group of ordinary humans previously unknown who for some reason

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Speaker 1: possessed interesting and effective tools that possibly could provide new

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Speaker 1: ways of controlling the world. By the sixteen twenties and

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Speaker 1: sixteen thirties, as native people watched the newcomers struggle to

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Speaker 1: learn their languages and saw them appear helpless living off

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Speaker 1: the land, savvy observers formed a different impression, one of

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Speaker 1: them a highly intelligent and widely traveled huron Or when

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Speaker 1: a headman named Canderock, who debated the Jesuits who were

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Speaker 1: attempting to convert his people to Christianity, apparently traveled to Europe.

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Speaker 1: Candierok later appeared as native antagonists in a widely read

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Speaker 1: seventeen to oh three book about the relative merits of

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Speaker 1: Native and European world views, wherein he concluded that while

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Speaker 1: Europeans possessed many remarkable technologies as of people, they seemed

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Speaker 1: generally dim witted, greedy, and ignoble. In this second stage,

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Speaker 1: European conclusions about the natives soon enough settled on a

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Speaker 1: new assessment as well. Native religions might matter to members

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Speaker 1: of the European clergy, who would stubbornly continue efforts at

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Speaker 1: converting tribal people to Christianity for centuries, but in the

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Speaker 1: larger game that was now a foot in North America.

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Speaker 2: The worldview of the natives.

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Speaker 1: Wasn't nearly as important as their obvious interest in Old

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Speaker 1: World technological marvels Europeans were unloading on American shores. The

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Speaker 1: more experiences Europeans had with Native people, the more they

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Speaker 1: concluded that, like themselves, Indians were self interested and therefore rational.

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Speaker 2: First Contact Stage two now.

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Speaker 1: Revolved around a new question, exactly what were these Indigenous

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Speaker 1: Americans willing to trade for a transformative technology. Cabeza Devaka,

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Speaker 1: the shipwrecked Spaniard who would lead a small group of

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Speaker 1: survivors on a fantastic trans west overland journey in the

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Speaker 1: mid fifteen thirties. It was the first transcontinental crossing of

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Speaker 1: America ever by an Old worlder, offers one of history's

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Speaker 1: best examples of the wild misunderstandings of first contact. Over

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Speaker 1: the years, I've read Alvar Nunez Cabeza Devaka's Relacion at

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Speaker 1: least five times, and I've never gotten over the since

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Speaker 1: that none of the better known journeys of Western exploration

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Speaker 1: equals the tale this one tells. I can't think of

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Speaker 1: another real life American adventure story that outdoes it. Coronado, Lewis,

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Speaker 1: and Clark Fremont, at least on all his trips except

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Speaker 1: for one, even John Wesley Powell going down the Grand Canyon,

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Speaker 1: all remained far more in control of their circumstances than

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Speaker 1: Cobza Devaka and his comp canyons did. Those other Western

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Speaker 1: explorers were never forced by fates into the kind of

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Speaker 1: Joseph Conrad Heart of Darkness world Cabeza Devaka faced among

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Speaker 1: the many literally undecipherable nations of the interior of America five.

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Speaker 2: Hundred years ago.

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Speaker 1: No one else in early American letters enacted the classic

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Speaker 1: shaman's journey from the known to the unknown and back

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Speaker 1: again the way Kabeza Devaka said he did. His was

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Speaker 1: a completely singular experience, and a part of Earth Europeans

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Speaker 1: hadn't even known existed three decades earlier. Washed up on

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Speaker 1: the southern shores of the New Continent, Devaka wondered if

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Speaker 1: the people's Spaniards were calling Indians were in fact rational beings.

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Speaker 1: The Gulf Coast peoples he was a regarded their dreams

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Speaker 1: as more real than waking reality was. The Spaniards discovered

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Speaker 1: that if the native's dreams you had committed some offense.

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Speaker 1: The dream itself was sufficient evidence of guilt. When he

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Speaker 1: finally returned to civilization to tell his tale of almost

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Speaker 1: a decade spent among native people, Devakia argued that the

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Speaker 1: tribes of the American Southwest had allowed him safe passage

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Speaker 1: because they were convinced the Europeans were wizards who could

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Speaker 1: cure the sick and bring back the dead, and Devaka

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Speaker 1: had not attempted to disabuse them of those notions.

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Speaker 2: What kind of man was this?

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Speaker 1: One of the best modern editors of Cobeza Devaka's Relasion

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Speaker 1: or Relation describes Devaka as an honest, modest, and humane

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Speaker 1: man who underestimated, rather than exaggerated, the many strange things

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Speaker 1: that came under his notice. That is, this, editor continues,

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Speaker 1: if we accept the account of his marvelous healings, by

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Speaker 1: which he means if we actually believe this part of

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00:17:13,119 --> 00:17:18,959
Speaker 1: the man's story. Anticipating some pushback, Devoca himself tells us that,

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Speaker 1: better than to exaggerate, I have lessened in all things

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00:17:24,160 --> 00:17:32,040
Speaker 1: in the story I tell. When he left his hometown

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00:17:32,160 --> 00:17:37,159
Speaker 1: in southern Spain in fifteen twenty seven, Alvar Nunez cabes A,

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00:17:37,200 --> 00:17:41,600
Speaker 1: Devaka never imagined himself the future author of a North

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Speaker 1: American first contact chronicle. Born just before Columbus stumbled into

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Speaker 1: the Americas in fourteen ninety two. Devaka curiously bore his

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Speaker 1: mother's last name from an ancestor who'd guided a Spanish

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Speaker 1: army through a mountain pass he'd marked with the head

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00:18:00,480 --> 00:18:04,120
Speaker 1: of a cow. The family must have been an important one,

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00:18:04,160 --> 00:18:08,760
Speaker 1: for somewhere Devaca acquired a well rounded education. He also

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Speaker 1: had good contacts. King Charles himself had made Devaca treasurer

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Speaker 1: of a major expedition to the southern coast of North America,

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Speaker 1: no small thing, it turned out. A good head for

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00:18:21,480 --> 00:18:29,440
Speaker 1: figures was wasted on the Pedro Narvaus expedition to colonize Florida. Narvas,

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00:18:29,760 --> 00:18:33,760
Speaker 1: with whom Cavesa Debaca sailed, had petitioned for a grant

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Speaker 1: somewhere in America, and without once consulting the tribes who

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Speaker 1: lived there, And one of those acts of astonishing colonial

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00:18:42,119 --> 00:18:47,600
Speaker 1: era arrogance, the Spanish crown had given Narvas North America,

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Speaker 1: from Florida south to Tampico, Mexico. The colonizing party set

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Speaker 1: out in five vessels from San Lucar de Barrameda in

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Speaker 1: June fifteenth, twenty seven, six hundred strong, but reduced to

241
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Speaker 1: three hundred after a storm and desertions in Santa Domingo.

242
00:19:09,000 --> 00:19:13,080
Speaker 1: Somewhere off the Gulf coast of Florida, the entire fleet

243
00:19:13,359 --> 00:19:17,479
Speaker 1: was sunk by what was most likely a hurricane. The

244
00:19:17,520 --> 00:19:22,240
Speaker 1: survivors managed to assemble a flotilla of small craft to

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Speaker 1: push westward along the Gulf shore, but at Narvas's insistence,

246
00:19:28,200 --> 00:19:31,919
Speaker 1: what remained of the expedition became an every man for

247
00:19:32,040 --> 00:19:33,200
Speaker 1: himself disaster.

248
00:19:34,119 --> 00:19:35,080
Speaker 2: At some point.

249
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Speaker 1: During this dark time, the tiny vessels passed the Mississippi's

250
00:19:39,359 --> 00:19:45,760
Speaker 1: mouth and finally crashed on an island they called Malhatto Misfortune,

251
00:19:46,320 --> 00:19:52,560
Speaker 1: probably today's Galveston Island, on the coast of Texas. Here

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00:19:52,600 --> 00:19:57,080
Speaker 1: they found themselves among people they called the Capokes and

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Speaker 1: the Hans, large and well formed natives whose occupation of

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00:20:02,119 --> 00:20:06,960
Speaker 1: the island was only seasonal. Eighty two Spaniards were shipwrecked

255
00:20:07,040 --> 00:20:11,120
Speaker 1: on this island in November of fifteen twenty eight. By

256
00:20:11,160 --> 00:20:15,560
Speaker 1: the spring of fifteen twenty nine, only fifteen of them

257
00:20:15,720 --> 00:20:25,840
Speaker 1: were left. Some members of the Spanish party had been

258
00:20:26,040 --> 00:20:31,040
Speaker 1: sick since their approach to Florida. Devaka would describe in

259
00:20:31,080 --> 00:20:35,600
Speaker 1: his relace on what happened next After this, the natives

260
00:20:35,720 --> 00:20:39,920
Speaker 1: were visited by a disease of the bowels, of which

261
00:20:40,040 --> 00:20:41,280
Speaker 1: half their number died.

262
00:20:41,720 --> 00:20:44,040
Speaker 2: They conceived that we had destroyed them.

263
00:20:44,840 --> 00:20:47,399
Speaker 1: But because some of the Spaniards were dying of the

264
00:20:47,440 --> 00:20:51,840
Speaker 1: same affliction, the native Shamans on the Gulf shore finally

265
00:20:51,920 --> 00:20:58,040
Speaker 1: resisted this explanation on Golf Shores almost exactly five centuries ago,

266
00:20:58,600 --> 00:21:02,520
Speaker 1: this first meeting of your Europeans and Western Indians was

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00:21:02,640 --> 00:21:08,159
Speaker 1: becoming an inexplicable and epic disaster. Six hundred settlers aboard

268
00:21:08,200 --> 00:21:11,560
Speaker 1: five sailing ships had initially set out from Mexico on

269
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Speaker 1: the Narvas expedition. Now four years later, by the end

270
00:21:15,080 --> 00:21:20,200
Speaker 1: of the year fifteen twenty nine, three Spaniards, one African,

271
00:21:20,720 --> 00:21:24,880
Speaker 1: and no ships remained, and in the country where these

272
00:21:24,920 --> 00:21:28,320
Speaker 1: survivors still lived, native people.

273
00:21:28,240 --> 00:21:30,520
Speaker 2: Now were dying by the thousands.

274
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Speaker 1: Nor As Devaka renders, it was this continent Europeans had

275
00:21:37,080 --> 00:21:42,560
Speaker 1: barely touched, a revered virgin land with exotic animal and

276
00:21:42,680 --> 00:21:47,359
Speaker 1: bird life in staggering abundance, which English, Dutch and French

277
00:21:47,400 --> 00:21:52,320
Speaker 1: observers would describe a century later. Spaniards like Cabesa Devaca

278
00:21:52,359 --> 00:21:57,280
Speaker 1: were in America earlier, and for both native people and wildlife,

279
00:21:57,680 --> 00:22:02,160
Speaker 1: those few decades between the fifteen and the sixteen twenties

280
00:22:02,520 --> 00:22:06,640
Speaker 1: were more critical than anyone new As the dwind Lan

281
00:22:06,760 --> 00:22:11,040
Speaker 1: cadri of shipwrecked old whirlers had struggled earlier in their

282
00:22:11,119 --> 00:22:15,080
Speaker 1: sodden horse eyed rafts from Tampa Bay to Galveston. In

283
00:22:15,119 --> 00:22:18,480
Speaker 1: the months after their fifteen twenty eight shipwreck, they found

284
00:22:18,520 --> 00:22:24,240
Speaker 1: a different America than later Europeans would as their expeditions

285
00:22:24,359 --> 00:22:28,680
Speaker 1: collapsed in the Gulf of Mexico. The Spaniards had rummaged

286
00:22:28,720 --> 00:22:33,280
Speaker 1: the coast for cornfields, fan palms, and whatever wildlife they

287
00:22:33,320 --> 00:22:36,919
Speaker 1: could find. Amazingly, there didn't seem to be much, and

288
00:22:37,000 --> 00:22:40,159
Speaker 1: the animals and birds they saw largely were made up

289
00:22:40,200 --> 00:22:44,080
Speaker 1: of creatures the Spaniards to recognize from Europe. There were deer,

290
00:22:44,280 --> 00:22:49,400
Speaker 1: bears and lions, along with rabbits, hares, and civet martins.

291
00:22:50,040 --> 00:22:54,000
Speaker 1: An animal with a pocket on its belly dismayed the Europeans,

292
00:22:54,000 --> 00:22:56,919
Speaker 1: who had never seen a marsupial before, But then the

293
00:22:56,960 --> 00:22:59,840
Speaker 1: American possum would puzzle colonists for the next one hundred

294
00:22:59,840 --> 00:23:03,840
Speaker 1: and five fifty years. The Gulf coast lagoons did hold

295
00:23:04,000 --> 00:23:09,120
Speaker 1: vast numbers of birds. They saw geese, ducks, herons, flycatchers,

296
00:23:09,160 --> 00:23:12,560
Speaker 1: and quail in great numbers, along with many different birds

297
00:23:12,560 --> 00:23:16,680
Speaker 1: of prey soaring above the waters. But the wild creatures

298
00:23:16,720 --> 00:23:20,360
Speaker 1: they saw weren't numerous enough to feed them. They ended

299
00:23:20,440 --> 00:23:24,960
Speaker 1: up killing and eating all their surviving horses to keep

300
00:23:25,000 --> 00:23:29,360
Speaker 1: themselves alive, both along the Gulf shore and later in Texas.

301
00:23:29,600 --> 00:23:34,679
Speaker 1: Kabeza Devaka's account seemed to portray a pre contact America,

302
00:23:35,280 --> 00:23:40,000
Speaker 1: many thousands of years old and densely enough populated that

303
00:23:40,240 --> 00:23:44,359
Speaker 1: wildlife at this point in history was scarce. The so

304
00:23:44,480 --> 00:23:49,320
Speaker 1: called Virgin soil epidemics caused by dozens of diseases introduced

305
00:23:49,320 --> 00:23:52,639
Speaker 1: from the Old World, was in the future and about

306
00:23:52,680 --> 00:23:57,520
Speaker 1: to change all that, slashing America's native population from nearly

307
00:23:57,680 --> 00:24:00,880
Speaker 1: five million to fewer than a million just.

308
00:24:00,840 --> 00:24:02,080
Speaker 2: A few decades away.

309
00:24:04,760 --> 00:24:09,800
Speaker 1: Cabesa Devaca and the dwindling Spanish survivors were almost certainly

310
00:24:10,040 --> 00:24:15,040
Speaker 1: advance agents of that change. But meanwhile, the natives they

311
00:24:15,080 --> 00:24:21,320
Speaker 1: were among enslaved and sometimes executed them. Likely the Capokes

312
00:24:21,359 --> 00:24:25,160
Speaker 1: and the Hans were various bands of the coastal hunter gatherers,

313
00:24:25,160 --> 00:24:29,720
Speaker 1: today known as the Kronkowas. According to Devacas or Lasion,

314
00:24:30,000 --> 00:24:34,160
Speaker 1: the Spanish survivors were among bands of natives who regularly

315
00:24:34,280 --> 00:24:37,960
Speaker 1: seem short of food for three months of the year.

316
00:24:38,359 --> 00:24:43,680
Speaker 1: Devaka says everyone ate nothing but oysters. Deer and other

317
00:24:43,760 --> 00:24:47,439
Speaker 1: wildlife were so scarce that it seemed an accident that

318
00:24:47,600 --> 00:24:52,080
Speaker 1: anyone possessed a deer skin. Many times, Cabesa Devaca wrote,

319
00:24:52,200 --> 00:24:56,040
Speaker 1: I was three days without eating. The fat season was

320
00:24:56,080 --> 00:24:58,920
Speaker 1: when the tunas of the prickly paar of cactus were ripe,

321
00:24:59,520 --> 00:25:03,960
Speaker 1: but that's season lasted only three months. Southern Texas in

322
00:25:04,000 --> 00:25:08,000
Speaker 1: the fifteen twenties seemed a long way from a New

323
00:25:08,040 --> 00:25:14,439
Speaker 1: World Eden. Slowly, their situation began to change. By the

324
00:25:14,520 --> 00:25:17,760
Speaker 1: time there were down to only four A pair of

325
00:25:17,840 --> 00:25:23,400
Speaker 1: developments allowed the final surviving castaways to escape their lives

326
00:25:23,480 --> 00:25:29,520
Speaker 1: as slaves. First, Cabeza Devaca said, I set to trafficking,

327
00:25:30,080 --> 00:25:34,280
Speaker 1: by which he meant that he became a trader, exchanging

328
00:25:34,400 --> 00:25:40,399
Speaker 1: skins ochre for paint, flint for points, seashell and conscience,

329
00:25:40,880 --> 00:25:44,760
Speaker 1: and a fruit like a bean of the highest value

330
00:25:44,800 --> 00:25:48,840
Speaker 1: among them, which they used as a medicine and employ

331
00:25:49,200 --> 00:25:55,240
Speaker 1: in their dances and festivities. That new occupation exposed him

332
00:25:55,320 --> 00:25:59,720
Speaker 1: to a larger world inland of the coasts, and, as

333
00:25:59,720 --> 00:26:05,439
Speaker 1: a result of a classic first contact misunderstanding and tragic circumstances,

334
00:26:05,480 --> 00:26:11,919
Speaker 1: early Europeans unwillingly released across America. All four Old worlders

335
00:26:12,280 --> 00:26:16,320
Speaker 1: discovered now that in the eyes of the natives, they

336
00:26:16,560 --> 00:26:18,880
Speaker 1: were becoming sacred beings.

337
00:26:31,240 --> 00:26:32,240
Speaker 2: It happened this way.

338
00:26:33,520 --> 00:26:37,440
Speaker 1: The ill Spanish castaways who'd made it to Texas had

339
00:26:37,480 --> 00:26:42,879
Speaker 1: obviously infected the local natives. As English colonists would discover

340
00:26:43,000 --> 00:26:48,280
Speaker 1: a century later, every town the Europeans visited suddenly seemed

341
00:26:48,320 --> 00:26:53,320
Speaker 1: to suffer from mysterious afflictions the native Shamans could not cure,

342
00:26:54,280 --> 00:26:58,800
Speaker 1: but as Indians continued to die while the remaining group.

343
00:26:58,520 --> 00:26:59,879
Speaker 2: Of castaways did not.

344
00:27:00,000 --> 00:27:05,639
Speaker 1: But word of that strange circumstance began to spread. The

345
00:27:05,800 --> 00:27:11,000
Speaker 1: native conclusion was that the Spaniards must be wizards and healers.

346
00:27:11,760 --> 00:27:15,720
Speaker 1: As Cobza Devaca would write it, they wished to make

347
00:27:15,800 --> 00:27:22,879
Speaker 1: us physicians without examination or inquiring for diplomas. At first,

348
00:27:22,880 --> 00:27:26,400
Speaker 1: Devaka insists, we laughed at what they did.

349
00:27:26,320 --> 00:27:29,280
Speaker 2: Telling them it was folly that we knew not how

350
00:27:29,359 --> 00:27:29,760
Speaker 2: to heal.

351
00:27:31,040 --> 00:27:35,080
Speaker 1: Then, seeing the change reaction to them, they fell silent

352
00:27:35,480 --> 00:27:36,080
Speaker 1: and did.

353
00:27:35,920 --> 00:27:36,879
Speaker 2: What was necessary.

354
00:27:37,920 --> 00:27:42,560
Speaker 1: Somewhere near the present day city of San Antonio, Texas,

355
00:27:42,600 --> 00:27:47,320
Speaker 1: in fifteen thirty five, Cobza Devaca did what was necessary,

356
00:27:47,600 --> 00:27:51,400
Speaker 1: and so he claimed, at least, brought a dead man

357
00:27:51,720 --> 00:27:57,920
Speaker 1: back to life. After that, he wrote, we all became physicians,

358
00:27:58,680 --> 00:28:03,120
Speaker 1: and that saved them. Hearing from inland groups that there

359
00:28:03,119 --> 00:28:06,919
Speaker 1: were Christians like them far to the west and the south,

360
00:28:07,600 --> 00:28:13,960
Speaker 1: the four of them, Cabeza Devaca Andres Durantes, Alonzo Maldonado,

361
00:28:14,040 --> 00:28:17,199
Speaker 1: whose father in Spain actually was a doctor, and the

362
00:28:17,400 --> 00:28:23,360
Speaker 1: African Estevan were able to perform the first transcontinental crossing

363
00:28:23,480 --> 00:28:29,320
Speaker 1: of North America by Old worlders. Unfortunately, much of it

364
00:28:29,440 --> 00:28:34,600
Speaker 1: became a blur for them. Even three centuries later. Large

365
00:28:34,640 --> 00:28:38,280
Speaker 1: areas of the southwest that they traveled were still unknown

366
00:28:38,400 --> 00:28:43,280
Speaker 1: to map makers. A common passage in Devaka's account reads.

367
00:28:43,520 --> 00:28:46,240
Speaker 2: We left there and traveled through.

368
00:28:46,360 --> 00:28:50,360
Speaker 1: So many sorts of people of such diverse languages, the

369
00:28:50,560 --> 00:28:54,800
Speaker 1: memory fails to recall them. He did recall that on

370
00:28:55,120 --> 00:29:00,000
Speaker 1: their entering native towns, the residents rejoiced over the famous healers,

371
00:29:00,160 --> 00:29:04,800
Speaker 1: hoisting them like heroes and carrying them without letting us

372
00:29:04,840 --> 00:29:09,000
Speaker 1: put our feet to the ground. The tribes they travel through,

373
00:29:09,200 --> 00:29:14,080
Speaker 1: he concluded, were all very fond of romance. In town

374
00:29:14,200 --> 00:29:17,800
Speaker 1: after town, the inhabitants would line up by the hundreds

375
00:29:18,040 --> 00:29:21,880
Speaker 1: to be touched and cured. Words spread ahead of them

376
00:29:22,120 --> 00:29:24,520
Speaker 1: that they were the children of the Sun.

377
00:29:25,120 --> 00:29:27,959
Speaker 2: As they moved through an increasingly.

378
00:29:27,400 --> 00:29:31,479
Speaker 1: Desert landscape, they were soon accompanied by a retinue of

379
00:29:31,640 --> 00:29:35,920
Speaker 1: four thousand or more natives, attentive to their every need.

380
00:29:41,160 --> 00:29:45,480
Speaker 1: What Cobza Devaka conveys in his remarkable first contact account

381
00:29:46,000 --> 00:29:49,160
Speaker 1: is the state of a Native America that had been

382
00:29:49,280 --> 00:29:54,080
Speaker 1: richly inhabited for ten thousand years. It's the story of

383
00:29:54,120 --> 00:29:58,200
Speaker 1: a truly historic moment in time. In it, America is

384
00:29:58,280 --> 00:30:01,000
Speaker 1: not a virgin of any sort. The part of the

385
00:30:01,040 --> 00:30:05,400
Speaker 1: continent they traveled through was brimming with people. As a result,

386
00:30:05,480 --> 00:30:09,560
Speaker 1: it was not always brimming with other kinds of life.

387
00:30:09,600 --> 00:30:13,480
Speaker 1: As the Healers and their followers moved westward, they left

388
00:30:13,520 --> 00:30:17,360
Speaker 1: the America most like Europe and entered the more Asian

389
00:30:17,600 --> 00:30:21,120
Speaker 1: like part of the continent. Here three kinds of deer

390
00:30:21,840 --> 00:30:25,959
Speaker 1: mule deer and elk now joined. Whitetail deer appeared and

391
00:30:26,040 --> 00:30:30,840
Speaker 1: became more numerous. One evening, locals brought the healer's five

392
00:30:31,040 --> 00:30:35,920
Speaker 1: dressed deer apiece. There were also burly creatures the Spaniards

393
00:30:35,960 --> 00:30:40,720
Speaker 1: called wild cattle, which their informants said sometimes migrated from

394
00:30:40,760 --> 00:30:41,800
Speaker 1: a northerly direction.

395
00:30:42,200 --> 00:30:43,320
Speaker 2: All the way to Florida.

396
00:30:44,160 --> 00:30:48,200
Speaker 1: Cabesa Devaca only saw these new and unfamiliar creatures three times.

397
00:30:48,680 --> 00:30:53,000
Speaker 1: They had small horns and flocky coats. He said, some

398
00:30:53,240 --> 00:30:58,480
Speaker 1: were tawny and coloring, others were black. The next Spaniard

399
00:30:58,520 --> 00:31:02,040
Speaker 1: to write a description of buffalo, Pedro Castaneda of the

400
00:31:02,080 --> 00:31:06,959
Speaker 1: Coronado Expedition, added intriguing additional details about this new animal.

401
00:31:07,360 --> 00:31:09,400
Speaker 2: They had manes like lions, he.

402
00:31:09,400 --> 00:31:13,440
Speaker 1: Said, they carried their tails over their backs like scorpions,

403
00:31:13,960 --> 00:31:16,440
Speaker 1: and they were as numerous as fishes in the sea.

404
00:31:17,640 --> 00:31:21,160
Speaker 1: So populated was the America these Spaniards.

405
00:31:20,720 --> 00:31:23,160
Speaker 2: Moved through that they stayed.

406
00:31:22,800 --> 00:31:27,560
Speaker 1: In towns virtually every night of their journey, But of

407
00:31:27,640 --> 00:31:31,959
Speaker 1: the villages they visited only among the cattle hunters, the

408
00:31:32,000 --> 00:31:35,280
Speaker 1: most southerly peoples who lived among the buffalo. Did the

409
00:31:35,320 --> 00:31:38,840
Speaker 1: Spaniards get a sense of American natives, who lived very

410
00:31:38,880 --> 00:31:43,040
Speaker 1: well off a great surplus of wild animals. This cow

411
00:31:43,160 --> 00:31:47,920
Speaker 1: nation seemed rich, with many skins to gift. They had

412
00:31:48,040 --> 00:31:52,440
Speaker 1: nothing they did not bestow. Cobeza Devaka said, one of

413
00:31:52,480 --> 00:31:57,000
Speaker 1: the Spaniards Dorante's, traveled farther north and found himself among

414
00:31:57,080 --> 00:32:02,040
Speaker 1: the farming masters of the Southwest, the Pueblo, descendants.

415
00:32:01,400 --> 00:32:02,760
Speaker 2: Of the Chaco and Empire.

416
00:32:03,560 --> 00:32:07,600
Speaker 1: These, he said, lived in the fixed dwellings of civilization.

417
00:32:08,520 --> 00:32:12,720
Speaker 1: That line in Cabaz Devacco's account would spin off events,

418
00:32:13,160 --> 00:32:17,000
Speaker 1: ultimately leading to the founding of the Spanish Southwest and

419
00:32:17,160 --> 00:32:21,960
Speaker 1: luring a steady stream of incoming Old World settlers to

420
00:32:22,120 --> 00:32:28,680
Speaker 1: places like Arizona, New Mexico, and California. Eventually, the Spaniards

421
00:32:28,720 --> 00:32:33,040
Speaker 1: reached the west coast of Mexico, where frontier troops rescued

422
00:32:33,080 --> 00:32:39,240
Speaker 1: them In present Sonora, the European influence was immediately noticeable.

423
00:32:39,800 --> 00:32:45,520
Speaker 1: The lands became vacant and native people scarce, and where

424
00:32:45,560 --> 00:32:50,280
Speaker 1: they were not, Spanish slave hunters rode the Indians down.

425
00:32:51,000 --> 00:32:56,600
Speaker 1: Devaca concludes his Relacion with the wonderful evocation of the

426
00:32:56,680 --> 00:33:01,719
Speaker 1: shaman returning groggily from his journey through a strange world

427
00:33:02,080 --> 00:33:07,520
Speaker 1: that seemed less real by the moment. Other Europeans were

428
00:33:07,560 --> 00:33:11,800
Speaker 1: astonished at the sight of me so strangely habited as

429
00:33:11,840 --> 00:33:15,360
Speaker 1: I was, he said, And in company with Indians, they

430
00:33:15,400 --> 00:33:19,000
Speaker 1: stood staring at me a length of time, so confounded

431
00:33:19,200 --> 00:33:22,720
Speaker 1: that they neither hailed me nor drew near to make

432
00:33:22,760 --> 00:33:26,360
Speaker 1: an inquiry. These four had lived through one of the

433
00:33:26,440 --> 00:33:30,840
Speaker 1: contact period's most harrowing experiences. What might seem a grand

434
00:33:30,880 --> 00:33:35,080
Speaker 1: adventure to us now from another perspective was a tragedy

435
00:33:35,200 --> 00:33:39,160
Speaker 1: on an operatic scale. At the heart of Kabesa Devaka's

436
00:33:39,160 --> 00:33:43,640
Speaker 1: account are stories of native people growing sick and dying

437
00:33:43,680 --> 00:33:48,160
Speaker 1: of contagions his fellow Europeans had unleashed among them.

438
00:33:48,760 --> 00:33:50,560
Speaker 2: Yet everywhere these.

439
00:33:50,400 --> 00:33:54,040
Speaker 1: Agents of the Old World traveled, they were among native

440
00:33:54,080 --> 00:33:57,960
Speaker 1: people who treated them the true source of so much

441
00:33:58,120 --> 00:34:02,960
Speaker 1: death and grieving, not as pariahs of the apocalypse, but

442
00:34:03,080 --> 00:34:09,320
Speaker 1: as holy saviors. As reward for his tribulations, Cabeza Devaca

443
00:34:09,400 --> 00:34:13,320
Speaker 1: was appointed governor of the Rio de la Plata in Brazil,

444
00:34:14,360 --> 00:34:18,080
Speaker 1: but he suffered the outcome so many Spanish colonial officials

445
00:34:18,160 --> 00:34:22,640
Speaker 1: underwent in the Americas, charged with crimes by arrival, and

446
00:34:22,800 --> 00:34:25,239
Speaker 1: arrested and removed from office in.

447
00:34:25,160 --> 00:34:26,279
Speaker 2: Fifteen forty three.

448
00:34:27,400 --> 00:34:31,680
Speaker 1: Cabesa Devaca passed away in fifteen fifty seven, after his

449
00:34:31,800 --> 00:34:35,279
Speaker 1: relacion had gone through two editions and had made him

450
00:34:35,360 --> 00:34:40,359
Speaker 1: famous in Spain and its colonies. As for his companions

451
00:34:40,400 --> 00:34:44,760
Speaker 1: Maldonado and Dorantes, they found wives and married and settled

452
00:34:44,800 --> 00:34:48,600
Speaker 1: down with stories that intrigued all who heard them for

453
00:34:48,680 --> 00:34:53,000
Speaker 1: the rest of their lives. And Esteban in a demonstration

454
00:34:53,280 --> 00:34:56,520
Speaker 1: of how truly fleeting the fame that had carried them

455
00:34:56,560 --> 00:35:02,320
Speaker 1: across the continent could be. In fifteen thirty, Esteban guided

456
00:35:02,360 --> 00:35:08,480
Speaker 1: the Franciscan Padre Marcus Deniza into the American Southwest in

457
00:35:08,640 --> 00:35:14,839
Speaker 1: search of rumored cities of gold. Outside the walls of Hawiku,

458
00:35:15,360 --> 00:35:19,640
Speaker 1: the first Zuni village they came to in today's western

459
00:35:19,640 --> 00:35:24,000
Speaker 1: New Mexico, they must have encountered natives who were farther

460
00:35:24,120 --> 00:35:30,919
Speaker 1: along in their first contact experiences. Outside those walls, they

461
00:35:30,960 --> 00:35:37,840
Speaker 1: put Esteban to death, apparently for falsely impersonating a shaman.

462
00:35:42,560 --> 00:35:42,960
Speaker 2: So Dan.

463
00:35:43,040 --> 00:35:48,560
Speaker 3: In this episode, you're describing the incredible adventure of Kabeesa

464
00:35:48,600 --> 00:35:49,240
Speaker 3: de Vodka.

465
00:35:51,040 --> 00:35:53,200
Speaker 4: But before we get into the argument.

466
00:35:53,719 --> 00:35:56,839
Speaker 3: That you outline in this as it relates to sort

467
00:35:56,880 --> 00:35:59,760
Speaker 3: of first contact, I want to just take a minute

468
00:36:00,239 --> 00:36:05,080
Speaker 3: to acknowledge or marvel at the fact that this story

469
00:36:05,320 --> 00:36:07,960
Speaker 3: has even been passed down to us.

470
00:36:08,560 --> 00:36:08,840
Speaker 2: Yeah.

471
00:36:08,920 --> 00:36:10,080
Speaker 4: Right, it's one of those.

472
00:36:11,680 --> 00:36:16,759
Speaker 3: It's one of those historical episodes that's that for No,

473
00:36:17,000 --> 00:36:20,279
Speaker 3: there's there's so many reasons why these guys could have

474
00:36:20,440 --> 00:36:22,440
Speaker 3: or should have died along the way and then we

475
00:36:22,480 --> 00:36:27,040
Speaker 3: wouldn't have any knowledge of this. But in the end,

476
00:36:27,200 --> 00:36:31,960
Speaker 3: the information that resulted from it gives this sort of

477
00:36:32,000 --> 00:36:36,320
Speaker 3: unprecedented insight into pre contact North America.

478
00:36:36,840 --> 00:36:37,960
Speaker 2: Yeah, it really does.

479
00:36:38,120 --> 00:36:43,400
Speaker 1: I mean, most of our early accounts of America from

480
00:36:43,840 --> 00:36:48,520
Speaker 1: say the Dutch or the English, even the French, are

481
00:36:48,680 --> 00:36:55,319
Speaker 1: from seventy eighty years later. And one of the problems

482
00:36:55,640 --> 00:37:02,080
Speaker 1: with that is that those accounts from a sixteen hundred,

483
00:37:02,320 --> 00:37:08,640
Speaker 1: sixteen twenty from the Plymouth settlement, those give you an

484
00:37:08,719 --> 00:37:14,440
Speaker 1: idea of North America as this mythic virgin continent that

485
00:37:14,640 --> 00:37:20,719
Speaker 1: is just brimming with wildlife and riches of all kinds,

486
00:37:20,840 --> 00:37:27,759
Speaker 1: and has in fact a small native population that in

487
00:37:27,800 --> 00:37:32,440
Speaker 1: some respects the later European rivals seem to almost ignore.

488
00:37:33,120 --> 00:37:36,960
Speaker 1: I mean, it's as if they they believe, and some

489
00:37:37,040 --> 00:37:39,920
Speaker 1: of them actually make this argument that God has sort

490
00:37:39,920 --> 00:37:44,479
Speaker 1: of scoured the landscape of the indigenous people to make

491
00:37:44,680 --> 00:37:49,120
Speaker 1: way for these Europeans to settle the Americas, and what

492
00:37:49,200 --> 00:37:53,480
Speaker 1: kabza Evaca allows you to see as a corrective to

493
00:37:53,560 --> 00:37:57,680
Speaker 1: that is what North America looked like seventy or eighty

494
00:37:57,719 --> 00:38:02,200
Speaker 1: or one hundred years earlier, before there had been any

495
00:38:02,280 --> 00:38:06,400
Speaker 1: large scale introduction of European diseases, which were the agents

496
00:38:06,440 --> 00:38:09,640
Speaker 1: that had wiped out so much of the native population.

497
00:38:10,120 --> 00:38:13,160
Speaker 1: So he's there, I mean, and as the story goes,

498
00:38:13,160 --> 00:38:17,040
Speaker 1: it's clear he's an agent of some of those infections.

499
00:38:17,080 --> 00:38:20,480
Speaker 2: But he's there at a time prior.

500
00:38:20,200 --> 00:38:24,640
Speaker 1: To what we usually get an account of from particularly

501
00:38:24,640 --> 00:38:26,439
Speaker 1: from the English a century later.

502
00:38:27,960 --> 00:38:31,719
Speaker 3: And he describes at one point you mentioned that it

503
00:38:31,760 --> 00:38:36,200
Speaker 3: seems as though almost every night they're staying in towns. Yeah,

504
00:38:36,320 --> 00:38:42,359
Speaker 3: while traveling on foot. And to the modern imagination, you

505
00:38:42,360 --> 00:38:43,839
Speaker 3: look at that part of the country and you think

506
00:38:43,840 --> 00:38:46,000
Speaker 3: it would be difficult to achieve that in the twenty

507
00:38:46,040 --> 00:38:49,719
Speaker 3: first century if you're traveling by foot. But he's describing

508
00:38:49,760 --> 00:38:53,480
Speaker 3: a landscape that's sort of alien to our historical imaginations.

509
00:38:53,760 --> 00:38:56,439
Speaker 1: Yeah, we tend to think of, you know, America as

510
00:38:56,480 --> 00:38:57,960
Speaker 1: being lightly populated.

511
00:38:58,120 --> 00:38:58,480
Speaker 2: I mean, what.

512
00:39:00,080 --> 00:39:03,120
Speaker 1: Demographic scholars have sort of figured out over the last

513
00:39:03,480 --> 00:39:08,719
Speaker 1: thirty or so years is that prior to contact, North

514
00:39:08,760 --> 00:39:12,920
Speaker 1: America had a population of native people that was probably

515
00:39:12,920 --> 00:39:15,680
Speaker 1: getting pretty close to about five million north of the

516
00:39:15,719 --> 00:39:18,440
Speaker 1: Rio grand So, including what is now the United States

517
00:39:18,480 --> 00:39:21,440
Speaker 1: and Canada. And that's of course a part of the

518
00:39:21,440 --> 00:39:26,200
Speaker 1: world where we have well over four hundred million people now,

519
00:39:27,640 --> 00:39:31,400
Speaker 1: But nonetheless, the population had grown to almost five million

520
00:39:32,200 --> 00:39:35,200
Speaker 1: north of the settlements of the Indian settlements in Mexico.

521
00:39:36,560 --> 00:39:39,440
Speaker 1: And what we also know is that in the wake

522
00:39:39,760 --> 00:39:45,680
Speaker 1: of these disease epidemics, the native population of that same

523
00:39:45,800 --> 00:39:51,040
Speaker 1: region dropped to about nine hundred thousand people. So these

524
00:39:51,080 --> 00:39:56,640
Speaker 1: disease epidemics, it's one of the great human disasters of

525
00:39:56,760 --> 00:39:59,520
Speaker 1: all history. In fact, a lot of scholars refer to

526
00:39:59,560 --> 00:40:03,520
Speaker 1: it as the Great Dying. They think that the Americas

527
00:40:03,560 --> 00:40:07,400
Speaker 1: probably had one sixth of the world's population of people

528
00:40:08,680 --> 00:40:13,040
Speaker 1: at about the time that Europeans arrived and ended up

529
00:40:13,200 --> 00:40:17,600
Speaker 1: losing somewhere between eighty five and ninety five percent of

530
00:40:17,640 --> 00:40:23,439
Speaker 1: that population as a result of the exposure of these

531
00:40:23,520 --> 00:40:26,080
Speaker 1: American natives who have been isolated from the rest of

532
00:40:26,120 --> 00:40:29,439
Speaker 1: the world for fifteen thousand years. And what that meant

533
00:40:29,520 --> 00:40:32,839
Speaker 1: was they had been isolated from all these diseases that

534
00:40:32,880 --> 00:40:35,960
Speaker 1: had emerged in the Old world in Europe and Asia

535
00:40:36,040 --> 00:40:39,640
Speaker 1: and Africa that had come about as a result of

536
00:40:39,680 --> 00:40:44,200
Speaker 1: the domestication of animals. Most of our major diseases are

537
00:40:44,280 --> 00:40:49,160
Speaker 1: the result of living in close contact with domesticated hogs

538
00:40:49,200 --> 00:40:56,240
Speaker 1: and chickens and ducks and cattle and horses, I mean, smallpox, influenza,

539
00:40:56,680 --> 00:41:00,560
Speaker 1: all these common diseases are part of a domestic, cicated

540
00:41:00,680 --> 00:41:06,240
Speaker 1: kind of agricultural model. And North America and South American

541
00:41:06,440 --> 00:41:09,440
Speaker 1: native people had never been exposed to these diseases, so

542
00:41:09,960 --> 00:41:13,880
Speaker 1: they really get taken out by what scholars refer to

543
00:41:13,920 --> 00:41:18,960
Speaker 1: as the virgin soil epidemics. And this Cobzo Devaka story

544
00:41:19,840 --> 00:41:22,600
Speaker 1: gives you a kind of an insight on the ground

545
00:41:23,160 --> 00:41:26,239
Speaker 1: as to not only what America was like before these

546
00:41:26,280 --> 00:41:31,839
Speaker 1: disease epidemics swept like a conflag conflagration across the landscape,

547
00:41:31,960 --> 00:41:39,240
Speaker 1: but also how native people reacted to these very first

548
00:41:39,719 --> 00:41:43,200
Speaker 1: Europeans that they saw, and that was very much a

549
00:41:43,280 --> 00:41:45,520
Speaker 1: kind of a classic first contact story.

550
00:41:46,120 --> 00:41:50,399
Speaker 4: Yeah, and this a lot of your argument in.

551
00:41:50,360 --> 00:41:55,480
Speaker 3: This episode is about the nature of first contact. Yeah,

552
00:41:57,400 --> 00:42:01,719
Speaker 3: and you you explain a sort of a two stage

553
00:42:02,480 --> 00:42:09,440
Speaker 3: model where there's this attempt by both parties to understand

554
00:42:09,520 --> 00:42:12,759
Speaker 3: one another in the context of what they already know,

555
00:42:14,160 --> 00:42:17,160
Speaker 3: and and and then at some point it becomes clear

556
00:42:17,200 --> 00:42:18,960
Speaker 3: that's not that's not the case.

557
00:42:19,000 --> 00:42:22,640
Speaker 2: But you you've.

558
00:42:22,280 --> 00:42:24,640
Speaker 3: Drawn some science fiction as well to sort of explain

559
00:42:25,080 --> 00:42:27,960
Speaker 3: or help help us understand what's going on.

560
00:42:28,120 --> 00:42:31,440
Speaker 4: And so, just broadly speaking.

561
00:42:32,480 --> 00:42:35,080
Speaker 3: In terms of like thinking about history in terms of models,

562
00:42:36,320 --> 00:42:38,560
Speaker 3: how like how useful do you find that?

563
00:42:38,719 --> 00:42:39,720
Speaker 4: I mean, it helps.

564
00:42:39,760 --> 00:42:42,480
Speaker 3: I think it gives us a very clear understanding of

565
00:42:42,480 --> 00:42:46,120
Speaker 3: what's happening on the ground during all of this chaotic interaction.

566
00:42:46,320 --> 00:42:49,799
Speaker 3: But there's also like a very messy reality of the

567
00:42:49,840 --> 00:42:53,560
Speaker 3: past that not everything happens the same way. So I

568
00:42:53,640 --> 00:42:55,000
Speaker 3: kind of wonder if you could just speak to that

569
00:42:55,040 --> 00:42:56,879
Speaker 3: in terms of the big picture. How you think about

570
00:42:56,960 --> 00:43:00,319
Speaker 3: using models like this in your historical.

571
00:43:00,200 --> 00:43:03,240
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, this is definitely a model of first contact.

572
00:43:03,239 --> 00:43:06,480
Speaker 1: It's a theory of how first contact works, which essentially

573
00:43:06,600 --> 00:43:11,880
Speaker 1: argues that when two completely different cultures confront one another

574
00:43:11,880 --> 00:43:15,600
Speaker 1: for the first time, I mean, in the initial sort

575
00:43:15,600 --> 00:43:19,640
Speaker 1: of interactions, the only way you have of evaluating the

576
00:43:19,920 --> 00:43:25,279
Speaker 1: other is from what's already in your head. And this

577
00:43:25,920 --> 00:43:32,319
Speaker 1: American Old World or versus Indigenous Native American kind of

578
00:43:33,280 --> 00:43:37,399
Speaker 1: confrontation is a really great look at how that work,

579
00:43:37,520 --> 00:43:41,919
Speaker 1: because we do have some examples from both sides sort

580
00:43:41,960 --> 00:43:45,319
Speaker 1: of how the native people look at I mean very

581
00:43:45,400 --> 00:43:49,520
Speaker 1: and it's obviously a varied kind of interpretation depending on

582
00:43:49,840 --> 00:43:53,279
Speaker 1: what your culture is telling you, but we have some

583
00:43:53,440 --> 00:43:56,719
Speaker 1: examples of how Native people looked at Europeans, and then

584
00:43:56,760 --> 00:44:00,000
Speaker 1: also what the Europeans brought that was in their heads

585
00:44:00,160 --> 00:44:04,200
Speaker 1: where they tried to interpret these people who shouldn't actually

586
00:44:04,239 --> 00:44:09,279
Speaker 1: even exist. This continent shouldn't exist, These people shouldn't exist,

587
00:44:09,360 --> 00:44:13,920
Speaker 1: So how do we explain who they are? And those

588
00:44:14,080 --> 00:44:22,120
Speaker 1: kinds of settings and those periods, those pregnant moments, I

589
00:44:22,160 --> 00:44:27,240
Speaker 1: think are just rife with the possibility of huge misses.

590
00:44:27,280 --> 00:44:29,320
Speaker 1: And one of the reasons I wanted to tell that

591
00:44:30,080 --> 00:44:33,480
Speaker 1: science fiction story about the sparrow, and the sparrow was

592
00:44:33,719 --> 00:44:36,640
Speaker 1: written by a woman who was very definitely writing her

593
00:44:36,800 --> 00:44:40,279
Speaker 1: novel at the time of the five hundredth anniversary of

594
00:44:40,320 --> 00:44:43,520
Speaker 1: the arrival of Columbus in the Americas because she wanted

595
00:44:43,520 --> 00:44:46,560
Speaker 1: to write a novel about first contact and sort of

596
00:44:47,320 --> 00:44:49,080
Speaker 1: delve into this particular model.

597
00:44:50,200 --> 00:44:50,880
Speaker 2: I think it's.

598
00:44:50,840 --> 00:44:57,360
Speaker 1: Probably a good novelistic analogy of how big the misses

599
00:44:57,800 --> 00:45:01,320
Speaker 1: can be. And then over time, and this model argues

600
00:45:01,480 --> 00:45:05,040
Speaker 1: people settle out and began to learn more about one

601
00:45:05,040 --> 00:45:09,560
Speaker 1: another and start making more realistic appraisals of what the

602
00:45:09,719 --> 00:45:14,080
Speaker 1: other group is like. But it, I mean, you're exactly right,

603
00:45:14,160 --> 00:45:18,319
Speaker 1: it's messy. It proceeds in different at different speeds in

604
00:45:18,400 --> 00:45:21,480
Speaker 1: different places. And I think the outcome, for example, of

605
00:45:22,040 --> 00:45:26,160
Speaker 1: Stevan's journey into New Mexico at the end of this

606
00:45:26,280 --> 00:45:31,440
Speaker 1: story is an example of so that kind of information

607
00:45:31,640 --> 00:45:35,400
Speaker 1: is proceeding more quickly for the Zoonies maybe than it

608
00:45:35,560 --> 00:45:38,200
Speaker 1: was for some of these interior people in what is

609
00:45:38,239 --> 00:45:39,000
Speaker 1: now Texas.

610
00:45:39,320 --> 00:45:44,239
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think what's so interesting about that episode is

611
00:45:45,840 --> 00:45:48,960
Speaker 3: the way the group had survived during the whole course

612
00:45:49,000 --> 00:45:54,160
Speaker 3: of this journey was by quote unquote impersonating a shaman.

613
00:45:55,400 --> 00:45:59,279
Speaker 3: And that's what allowed them to travel freely and be

614
00:45:59,360 --> 00:46:03,920
Speaker 3: welcomed to my different communities. And then ultimately what Estevan

615
00:46:05,000 --> 00:46:13,160
Speaker 3: is killed for is the transgression of quote unquote impersonating

616
00:46:13,160 --> 00:46:15,719
Speaker 3: a shaman. So there's you can see here in these

617
00:46:15,719 --> 00:46:20,000
Speaker 3: two different stages, in these two different contexts, the same

618
00:46:20,040 --> 00:46:22,080
Speaker 3: actions bring about different results.

619
00:46:22,480 --> 00:46:23,239
Speaker 2: Yeah they do.

620
00:46:23,400 --> 00:46:27,759
Speaker 1: And yeah, and you know, one of the just kind

621
00:46:27,760 --> 00:46:32,520
Speaker 1: of crazy aspects of this story is that these four

622
00:46:32,640 --> 00:46:36,839
Speaker 1: survivors from this huge expedition, I mean, the expedition that

623
00:46:37,239 --> 00:46:39,480
Speaker 1: the four survivors come from has started out with six

624
00:46:39,600 --> 00:46:43,719
Speaker 1: hundred people in five ships, and only four of them

625
00:46:43,880 --> 00:46:47,440
Speaker 1: end up alive after about three or four years, and

626
00:46:48,360 --> 00:46:53,520
Speaker 1: they sort of accidentally discover that the way to not

627
00:46:53,719 --> 00:46:58,360
Speaker 1: only live amongst all these native people, but to travel

628
00:46:58,680 --> 00:47:01,360
Speaker 1: because they've heard that the west there are.

629
00:47:01,280 --> 00:47:03,000
Speaker 2: People like them.

630
00:47:03,239 --> 00:47:07,240
Speaker 1: The way to get there and make this transcontinental crossing

631
00:47:07,680 --> 00:47:12,040
Speaker 1: is to do so as healers, as shamans, as physicians,

632
00:47:12,080 --> 00:47:16,279
Speaker 1: as Coveza Devaka's account puts it. And what's kind of

633
00:47:16,320 --> 00:47:20,600
Speaker 1: crazy about it is that the diseases they're healing are

634
00:47:20,640 --> 00:47:23,840
Speaker 1: the ones that they themselves have brought to the people.

635
00:47:24,239 --> 00:47:29,080
Speaker 1: And so this population of the interior of the southwest

636
00:47:29,320 --> 00:47:34,200
Speaker 1: of native people is they're all completely being struck down

637
00:47:34,520 --> 00:47:39,640
Speaker 1: by diseases their shamans can't cure. And what strikes them

638
00:47:39,680 --> 00:47:45,600
Speaker 1: about these Europeans and the African Estevan is they seem

639
00:47:45,640 --> 00:47:48,200
Speaker 1: to be immune. And so if they're immune to this

640
00:47:48,360 --> 00:47:51,719
Speaker 1: while everybody else is being taken out, then they must

641
00:47:51,760 --> 00:47:55,840
Speaker 1: be special and physicians. And so that's in effect the

642
00:47:55,880 --> 00:47:59,600
Speaker 1: story of how Covesavaca and his three companions managed to

643
00:47:59,600 --> 00:48:04,560
Speaker 1: do the first European trans continental crossing in American history

644
00:48:04,600 --> 00:48:07,440
Speaker 1: and finally get back to their compatriots.

645
00:48:07,000 --> 00:48:11,200
Speaker 3: And you make putting in that context of a transcontinental crossing.

646
00:48:11,400 --> 00:48:14,600
Speaker 3: You make the case at some point in this that

647
00:48:15,719 --> 00:48:21,760
Speaker 3: Devoka's journey surpasses Lewis and Clark and John Wesley Powell

648
00:48:21,840 --> 00:48:27,640
Speaker 3: and all of these cross continental journeys that are maybe

649
00:48:28,280 --> 00:48:30,200
Speaker 3: come to mind more immediately when you think about the

650
00:48:30,239 --> 00:48:35,600
Speaker 3: American West. What specific qualities do you think about this

651
00:48:35,719 --> 00:48:39,920
Speaker 3: episode make it stand out. It's there's like the loss

652
00:48:39,920 --> 00:48:44,880
Speaker 3: of control that they experience. There's this cultural immersion aspect

653
00:48:44,920 --> 00:48:49,120
Speaker 3: to it. It's also sort of a psychologically it seems

654
00:48:49,160 --> 00:48:54,400
Speaker 3: like a very strange transformation that they go through. I

655
00:48:54,480 --> 00:48:56,839
Speaker 3: just wonder what your big takeaways are from this when

656
00:48:56,840 --> 00:49:01,360
Speaker 3: you think about what stands out the most about Devoka's travels.

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00:49:01,000 --> 00:49:03,640
Speaker 1: I think all those things you just mentioned. I mean,

658
00:49:04,239 --> 00:49:09,799
Speaker 1: unlike John Wesley Powell or Lewis and Clark, Devaka and

659
00:49:09,840 --> 00:49:14,680
Speaker 1: his companions are their journey is out of their control

660
00:49:15,120 --> 00:49:21,160
Speaker 1: for most of the time they're in North America, so

661
00:49:21,239 --> 00:49:25,680
Speaker 1: they're not on top of what's happening the way. For example,

662
00:49:25,760 --> 00:49:28,480
Speaker 1: Lewis and Clark are with I mean Meriwether, Lewis setting

663
00:49:28,480 --> 00:49:31,759
Speaker 1: out every morning and knowing we're going to go this

664
00:49:31,920 --> 00:49:36,239
Speaker 1: many miles and we're looking for this particular landmark, and

665
00:49:36,280 --> 00:49:39,520
Speaker 1: all of that competitve of Vaka and his companions. For

666
00:49:39,560 --> 00:49:44,319
Speaker 1: one thing, the continent is completely unknown in front of them.

667
00:49:44,440 --> 00:49:48,400
Speaker 1: They have no idea what it's like, how big it is,

668
00:49:49,480 --> 00:49:52,440
Speaker 1: how far you have to go to finally get to

669
00:49:53,040 --> 00:49:56,640
Speaker 1: other Spaniards that the Indians tell them are far to

670
00:49:56,680 --> 00:49:59,680
Speaker 1: the west. And I think another aspect of it is

671
00:49:59,719 --> 00:50:03,600
Speaker 1: that they're the four survivors of a group that served

672
00:50:03,640 --> 00:50:05,320
Speaker 1: out six hundred strong.

673
00:50:05,760 --> 00:50:08,400
Speaker 2: And so I mean Lewis and Clark.

674
00:50:08,640 --> 00:50:11,120
Speaker 1: You know, they lose one guy who has an app

675
00:50:11,440 --> 00:50:16,040
Speaker 1: an appendix rupture on the trip out, and they have

676
00:50:16,080 --> 00:50:18,800
Speaker 1: another couple of guys who one of them gets shot

677
00:50:18,880 --> 00:50:24,880
Speaker 1: through the buttocks in a hunting accident. But there's nothing

678
00:50:25,160 --> 00:50:30,200
Speaker 1: like losing almost everybody, where only a very tiny percentage

679
00:50:30,239 --> 00:50:33,359
Speaker 1: of people managed to survive. And then the other thing,

680
00:50:33,400 --> 00:50:36,720
Speaker 1: and you mentioned it as well, Randall, is in order

681
00:50:36,760 --> 00:50:40,879
Speaker 1: to survive, they have to become a part of the

682
00:50:40,920 --> 00:50:45,920
Speaker 1: cultures that they're intertwined with they have to to a

683
00:50:46,000 --> 00:50:52,960
Speaker 1: degree go native and join the worldview that they find

684
00:50:53,000 --> 00:50:59,279
Speaker 1: themselves within. And of course John Wesley Powell, John C. Fremont,

685
00:50:59,560 --> 00:51:02,360
Speaker 1: none of those people ever have to do anything like that.

686
00:51:03,760 --> 00:51:07,760
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's a it's a remarkable story. It's almost

687
00:51:08,360 --> 00:51:10,960
Speaker 3: too good to be true. Uh So, it was fun

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Speaker 3: chatting with you about it.

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00:51:12,520 --> 00:51:15,840
Speaker 1: I can't wait till somebody does a movie with Antonio Banderas,

690
00:51:15,920 --> 00:51:16,360
Speaker 1: no doubt.

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00:51:16,560 --> 00:51:20,640
Speaker 3: Oh that'll be a that'll be a blockbuster, no kidding.

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Speaker 4: Thanks Dan,