1528 – Shipwrecked Spanish conquistador Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca becomes the first known European to set foot in the area that would become Texas. Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca (Jerez de la Frontera, c. 1488/1490 – Seville, c. 1557/1558) was a Spanish explorer of the New World, one of four survivors of the 1527 Narváez expedition. During eight years of traveling across the US Southwest, he became a slave, trader and shaman to various Native American tribes before reconnecting with Spanish colonial forces in Mexico in 1536. After returning to Spain in 1537, he wrote an account, first published in 1542 as
La Relación ("The Relation," or in more modern terms "The Account," which in later editions was retitled Naufragios ("Shipwrecks"). Cabeza de Vaca has been considered notable as a proto-anthropologist for his detailed accounts of the many tribes of American Indians that he encountered. In 1540 Cabeza de Vaca returned to the Western Hemisphere, appointed adelantado of the Río de la Plata in present-day Argentina, where he was supposed to re-establish the settlement of Buenos Aires. Unsuccessful, he also came into conflict with the dominant official in the region, Domingo Martínez de Irala, who had him arrested in 1544 for poor administration. Cabeza de Vaca was transported to Spain for trial in 1545. Although his sentence was eventually commuted, he never returned to the Americas. He died in poverty in Seville.
