Estevanico

of Azamor

at the mouth of the Oum er Rbia River

Province, Doukkala

Dorantes’s slave, with Captain Castillo

and myself Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca

named in honor of Alhajahad

grandson to the conqueror of Canaria,

four far from a tribe, lost

band of followers, at once

master and slave, trader and healer

lost, after shipwrecks, having starved,

our thirst so great we drank salt

as foretold by the Muslim woman from Hornachos

We sought war and gold and souls

among the barbarians, burned their villages,

then separated, lost, but in the end escaped

by the mercy en la pasión de nuestro redentor Jesucristo

to tell the tale of the Seven Cities of Cíbola

             The hunger and thirst we endured

the people always cured, whatever they had they gave

us, warmed us by their fires, sheltered us

             People who mourned their dead children

for a year, each morning before sunrise,

the whole clan wept, noon and at daybreak,

household didn’t eat for three months,

so deep is their mourning for their children

             People of the bison, men naked, women

and elders clothed in deerskin, the land parched,

maizeless, they boiled their water with hot stones, we

headed into the setting sun, following the maize road,

surviving each day on a handful of deer fat,

crossed the river, to the people who only ate polvos

de paja, powders of grass, for four months of the year,

they gave us flour and squash and frijoles and cotton

mantles, we crossed the medranos, the people

gave us beads and coral and emerald arrowheads

             We saw women in lengths of cotton, closed

with ties in the front, half-sleeves of buckskin

that touched the ground, and wearing shoes

The people sought our blessings, thought

we came from the sky, Estevanico

speaking for us, as we passed

through a great number of diverse languages,

we knew six, but found a thousand differences

            We were fed on the hearts of deers,

some feared and fled from us, the people

having been chained by the ones who came before us,

the ones we sought so feverishly to tell them

No more killing

No more chains, please

Do no more harm, Holy Majesty,

the wretched and disastrous end

we suffered on account of our sins