Lafayette (LA) Daily Advertiser, January 26, 1999

Indians on Bad Luck Island may have been Attakapas

But the mosquitoes were 'of three sorts'

by Jim Bradshaw

Linguists have found that Attakapas dialects were spoken at least from Vermilion Bay and lower Bayou Teche on the east, to Galveston Bay and the Trinity River in Texas, and may have extended west from there.

Cabeza de Vaca said that two tribes occupied the island. He called one the Hans and the other Cahaoques. He described the natives as tall and browns skinned. They handled the bow and arrow well, and were food-gatherers, not farmers. The men went naked, but had "one of their nipples bored from side to side, and some had both, wearing a cane in each. ... They have under the lip also bored, and wear in it a piece of cane the breadth of half a finger" The women covered themselves partially with moss, and "damsels" wore deerskins.

These Indians lived on Bad Luck Island from October to February, gathering roots and fish. The rest of the year, they returned to the mainland to find other food. When cold weather made it impossible for them to dig or to fish, they just went hungry.

"From October to the end of February every year," Cabez de Vaca wrote in his account of his journey, "which is the season these Indians live on the island, they subsist on the roots I have mentioned, which the women get from under water in November and December. Only in these two months, too, do they take fish in their cane weirs. When the fish is consumed, the roots furnish the one staple. At the end of February the islanders go into other parts to seek sustenance, for then the root is beginning to grow and is not edible.

"Three months out of every year they eat nothing but oysters and drink very bad water," he continues. 'Wood is scarce; mosquitoes, plentiful. The houses are made of mats; their floors consist of masses of oyster shells. The natives sleep on these shells -- in animal skins, those who happen to own such."

Cabeza de Vaca said there were mosquitoes of three sorts, all abundant in every part of the region. They poison and inflame and, through most of the summer exasperated us. For protection, we encircled ourselves with smudge fires of rotten and wet wood."

The natives were impressed with the Spaniards. De Vaca was a tall, brawny man with a red beard. Esteban was almost certainly the first black man the Indians had ever seen (and maybe the first in North America). The survivors took advantage of the situation and acquired a reputation as medicine men.

"Our method," De Vaca wrote, "was to bless the sick, breathing on them, and recite a Pater Noster and an Ave Maria, praying with all earnestness to God Our Lord that He would give them health and influence them to make us some good return."

Even though their "medicine" was respected, De Vaca and his companions were treated practically as slaves. They were forced to carry water, cut and haul wood, and do other work around the camp. They lived with the tribe until 1533, when, finally, the four Spanish survivors decided to walk for their lives.

In September, "naked as their mothers bore them," they began the trek toward Mexico. Harvard historian Samuel Eliot Morion describes their journey in his book, "The European Discovery of America: The Southern Voyages." The four survivors, Morion writes, "had become medicine of great repute, and that is what saved them. From September 1533, picture them ... Walking barefoot from one village to another over the parched Texas plains; the massive red-haired Cabeza de Vaca in the lead, followed by the black Esteban, Captain Derontes his legal master, and Captain Castillo. And usually behind but accompanying them, came hundreds of natives of the Last village who joyfully informed those of the next one ... that the peerless quartet were mighty healers. ... Each native escort plundered the poor huts of the new hosts; but this did not seem to be resented, as the hosts promised themselves to steal it all back shortly, with interest."

Cabeza de Vaca and his three companions finally arrived in Mexico City on July 13, 1536, almost eight years from the time their boats were destroyed.

From Mexico, Cabeza de Vaca returned to Spain where he wrote his semi-official report to the king, called Le Relacion que Dio Alvar Nuñez Cabeca (sic) de Vaca de lo Acaescido en las Indias en la Armada Donde Iva por Govenador Panphilo (sic) de Narvaez, which was published in 1542. He was given the post of governor of the La Plata region of Argentina, but apparently did not do well there. His men rebelled against him in 1543, took him prisoner, and sent him to Spain. He was held in captivity there for eight years, but was eventually returned to grace and lived out his life in Seville with a modest pension from the crown.