The Journey of Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca and His Companions From Florida to the Pacific, 1528-1536 Page: 35 of 253

ALVAR NUNEZ CABEZA DE VACA

signified to us that in that province we
would find everything we held in esteem.
They said that in Apalachen there was
plenty.
So,taking them as guides,we started, and
after walking ten or twelve leagues, came
to anotlier village of fifteen houses, where
there was a large cultivated patch of corn
appeared to the Commissary and friars that these
were idolatries, so the Governor had them burnt.
There were also found pieces of shoes and canvas
(lienzo), of cloth and some iron, and inquiring
of the Indians they told us by signs that they had
found it in a vessel that had been lost on this
coast and in that bay."
The text of Oviedo discriminates between the
origin of these objects and that of the gold, which
it says the Indians declared that there was none
in the country, but at Apalache, very far away.
The first edition always has either Apalachen or
Palachen. Oviedo (p. 615) justly blames the
friars for having burnt the bodies: "Since the
boxes and other indications might have led them
to think that they were the bodies of Christians,
and so it is stated in the second relation, that they
learned from Indians that these dead people had
been Christians." The Relacion (p. 270) men-
tions briefly the bodies, and also states that gold
was found in the province of Apalache.
The shipwreck mentioned may allude to the
loss, in 1526, of one of the two vessels in which
Lucas Vazquez de Ayllon made his unlucky
voyage to Chicora. This vessel was lost at the
mouth of the "Rio Jordon" Herrera (Historia
general,