slaying them by the chief who had taken Vaca in charge. If, argued this worthy, the white men could bring the disease upon the Indians, they could also surely have prevented their own people from dying. And "God our Lord willed that the others should heed this opinion and counsel, and be hindered in their design." So the Indians did not kill the Spaniards. But the notion that their mysterious refugees possessed supernatural powers was too pleasant to be given up. Now let those powers be used to cure sick Indians and banish the plague. As Vaca puts it, with his occasional sly touch of humor, "they wished to make us physicians, without examination or inquiring for diplomas." In vain he tried to laugh the savages out of their conviction. They replied that when stones and "other matters growing about the fields have virtue" then certainly "extraordinary men" must be more highly endowed. And if those extraordinary men would not heal, neither should they eat. This was cogent reasoning. After hungering for several days Vaca took the first step towards the remarkable career he was to follow later on as a Medicine Man. He had observed the Indian witch-doctors blowing upon their patients and passing their hands over them, frequently with successful results. And, devoutly

religious as he was, he knew that in his homeland the "prayer of faith" uttered by humble petitioners before the wayside shrines frequently wrought the recovery of the sick. Therefore, he seems to have reasoned, a blend of Indian and Christian faiths should be efficacious here. He says:

Our method was to bless the sick, breathing upon them and recite a Pater-noster and an Ave Maria, praying with all earnestness to God our Lord that he would give health and influence them to make us some good return. In His clemency He willed that all those for whom we supplicated should tell the others that they were sound and in health, directly after we made the sign of the blessed cross over them. For this the Indians treated us kindly; they deprived themselves of food that they might give to us, and presented us with skins and some trifles.

Scarcity of food continued so that sometimes Indians and white men went without eating for several days at a time. Presently an Indian guide, who had been bribed by a marten skin, departed westward along the mainland coast, taking with him all the Spaniards but three, Vaca, Oviedo, and Alaniz, who were too frail for travel. In the summer Vaca went with the Indians to the mainland foraging for food. The life he led was "insupportable," being practically that of a slave. One of his

duties was to dig out the edible roots from below the water and from among the cane. His fingers were so worn from this labor that "did a straw but touch them they would bleed"; and the sharp spikes of broken cane tore his naked flesh.

For nearly six years Vaca lived a slave among these Indians. He had long intended to escape and to set off westward "in quest of Christians"; for, somewhere towards the sunset, lay Pánuco, and, given bodily strength, a brave heart, and faith in God, a man might hope to reach it. But Vaca would not leave his two companions. Then Alaniz died; and Oviedo, however much "stouter" than the other Spaniards in the matter of climbing trees, was not of stout courage. He feared to be left behind and he would not go. Every winter Vaca returned to the island and entreated him to pluck up heart; and every spring Oviedo put him off, but promised that next year he would set out.

Vaca did not let time pass unimproved. To get rid of root-digging and sore fingers, he decided to enter the domain of commerce. He could begin with good prospects because the Indians of the mainland had already heard flattering reports of his skill as a Medicine Man. And perhaps he expected to fit himself for the journey down the coast

by acquiring a number of Indian dialects, by becoming a connoisseur of Indian staples and trinkets, and by learning from western tribes on their summer buffalo hunts in Texas some details of the country through which he must pass on his projected journey to Pánuco. Ordinary perils and hardships had lost their terrors for Vaca. Roving naked and barefooted like the tribesmen, his body had become inured to fatigues and to wind and weather; periods of famine had also prepared this erstwhile son of magnificence and luxury to cope with the barren wilderness when the day of escape he had waited for should come at last. He had learned to make the Indians' weapons and to use them in hunting, though, as he admits, he never developed the Indian's subtlety in trailing. He was so satisfactory as a servant, indeed, that his masters were content to have him do their trading for them; and they let him come and go at will. Of his career as a merchant in Texas, Vaca gives a lengthy account, interesting because it is the first record of trade in this now great commercial land.

I set to trafficking, and strove to make my employment profitable in the ways I could best contrive, and by that means I got food and good treatment. The Indians would beg me to go from one quarter to another

for things of which they have need; for in consequence of incessant hostilities, they cannot traverse the country, nor make many exchanges. With my merchandise and trade I went into the interior as far as I pleased, and travelled along the coast forty or fifty leagues. The principal wares were cones and other pieces of sea-snail, conchs used for cutting, and fruit like a bean of the highest value among them, which they use as a medicine and employ in their dances and festivities. Such were what I carried into the interior; and in barter I got and brought back skins, ochre with which they rub and color the face, hard canes of which to make arrows, sinews, cement and flint for the heads, and tassels of the hair of deer that by dyeing they make red. This occupation suited me well; for the travel allowed me liberty to go where I wished, I was not obliged to work, and was not a slave.

Evidently he made an enviable name for himself among the savages as a merchant of their primitive commerce for, wherever he went, he received fair treatment and generous hospitality "out of regard to my commodities"; and those Indians with whom he had not traded, hearing of him, "sought and desired the acquaintance for my reputation." He traveled far afield in pursuit of his "leading object while journeying in this business," which was to find the best way to go forward. "The hardships that I underwent in this were long to tell, as well of peril and privation as of storms and cold," he