Cabeza de Vaca left Spain to explore the New World on a 1527 expedition. He was second in command of nearly 600 men, but only he and three others survived the treacherous weather, exotic diseases, and attacking indigenous people. Cabeza de Vaca survived eight straight years of wandering through the America's southwest by becoming a medicine man to the natives. In the events of this memoir, he recounts how he helped resuscitate a man, and suddenly "all over the land nothing else was spoken of."