(Excerpt from The Adventures of Cabeza de Vaca: Conquistador in Two Worlds)
After forced to become healers in Southern Texas, Cabeza de Vaca and his Christian brethren thrive.
When the Malhado take us us in, we are as weak as scurvied sailors. The Indians care for us, share food and shelter. When we begin to recover, their chief tells me, “You are of no use to us.”
He demands we become healers. “Blow on the wounds. Lay hands on them.” I scoff, complain that we are not doctors and it’s not medically sound. The chief stomps out, raising his bow and arrow to shoot a squirrel. It drops from the cypress as if struck by God.
After that, the tribe withholds our meals. Each day our starvation canoe drifts further out. As my dark heart beats and cries for the loss of my Spanish home, my heart of light saves me from freefall. I must consider my crew and our survival. If we practice Indian shamanism, we lose our souls. If we refuse to perform their ritual, we starve.
I retreat to the edge of camp to weigh our options. Animal cries and the rush of night wind are as loud as armies in battle, so loud I hear nothing from the camp though I do smell the camp’s frying meat and corn, cloaking me in the new odor of death. Never again will I forget the wilderness is as hungry as I am. Striving to endure may have kept us alive but has it made us safe? How much do I risk by Indian faith healing?
The next day, I enter the tent of a hot, sweating man who clutches his stomach and spits words like musket bullets. Unable to distinguish the gibberish of fever from language beyond knowing, I put my hands on his chest and blow on them. “Bless you, my son,” I say, then recite the Lord’s Prayer, followed by an Ava Maria. I pray for my patient to live so that Christians do not die. I pray for permission to plant seeds of faith: “Heal this man, so he can become Christian.”
The following morning, he strides out and proclaims himself well. He gives me an animal blanket, precious shells, and a red cedar bow better than anything I own. Two days later, I wake to a crackling fire with roasting rabbit. Men in deerskin loincloths and women with moss skirts curve around my tent like hands in prayer.
Is this land of want also a land of becoming? Has God let me live so I can imagine more?