A Field Guide to Getting Lost

In this chapter, Solnit uses captive narratives to explore the themes of transformation and metamorphosis. She opens with the 1527 story of the Spanish explorer Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca. After hearing a tale about gold and plenty north of modern-day Florida, Cabeza de Vaca followed the rumor. However, his journey was riddled with turmoil. He led two barges of men, losing one to a storm. The few that survived only lived because of the generosity of Indigenous communities. Cabeza de Vaca was captured and enslaved by a tribe in what is now Texas. When he escaped, he established a career as a tradesman, bringing red ochre and mesquite beans to different tribes. His party was welcomed by these communities, and he was hailed as a shaman.

Cabeza de Vaca was captured more than once. In his journals, he describes living naked and shedding his skin twice a year like a snake under the blistering heat of the sun. By the time Cabeza de Vaca met up with a group of Spaniards, he had become disillusioned with his old way of life:

He had gone about naked, shed his skin like a snake, had lost his greed, his fear, been stripped of almost everything a human being could lose and live, but he had learned several languages, he had become a healer, he had come to admire and identify with the Native nations among whom he lived; he was not who he had been (68).