Alonso del Castillo Maldonado

Alonso del Castillo Maldonado (? - 1540s?) was one of the first Spanish explorers in the Americas. He was one of the last four survivors of the Panfilo de Narváez expedition in Texas, along with Cabeza de Vaca, the Estevanico slave, and Dorantes. In addition, Castillo Maldonado lived with a Native American tribe in Texas between 1527 and 1528. He most likely introduced the Christian faith to the tribe.

Biography

Travel in New Spain

Alonso del Castillo Maldonado was born in Salamanca, Spain, the son of the doctor Castillo and Aldonza Maldonado.^{[1] [2]} He was a close cousin of the Alcalde Mayor of Santo Domingo, Alonso Maldonado, and of Martín de Guzmán.^[3] Raised in a poor noble family of Hidalgos, Castillo traveled to the Americas in order to obtain wealth. He was the captain of the Panfilo de Narvaez expedition that began in 1527 in Florida.^[1]

On June 17, 1527, a fleet of five ships and six hundred men commanded by Narvaez set sail from the coast of Sanlucar de Barrameda. After several weeks of sailing, they arrived at the island of La Española where they were provisioned and stayed for a time. When leaving the island and entering the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, a ship was put under the joint command of Captains Del Castillo and Andrés Dorantes de Carranza.

In early November, after the expedition, the ship captained by Andrés Dorantes de Carranza and manned by Castillo, Cabeza de Vaca, the slave Estevanico, and about forty men, was wrecked by storms^[1][4] on or near the western end of Galveston Island, Texas. On this island, the fifteen survivors, who had no clothing, food, or weapons, suffered heavy privations and were forced to feed on the cadavers of their peers. Through the good grace of the Native Americans that were present on the island, Castillo and the group managed to survive up until the following spring and took up positions among the natives as spiritual healers.

The surviving men were on the island until the spring of 1528. At this time, thirteen of the fifteen survivors decided to leave the island, abandoning Cabeza de Vaca (because he was sick and almost unable to move), and two other members of the expedition there. In April 1529, this group, led by Dorantes and Castillo, reached the coast and landed at Matagorda Bay. However, most of the members of this expedition were killed by Native Americans. Only three survived: Dorantes de Carranza, Castillo, and Estevanico.

For almost seven years, they lived in poverty among hostile Native Americans. After that period of time, the three men managed to reunite with Cabeza de Vaca in September 1534, somewhere west of the Sabine River. Cabeza de Vaca taught his companions the Native American art of medicine. In August 1535, the men fled from the Avavare tribe, with whom they were living as medicine men. Then they fled inland.^[4] They crossed Texas (being, apparently, the first Europeans to cross the area),^[1] taken across the whole territory^[4] until they arrived in El Paso in late 1535.^{[note 1]}Finally, they headed south, and in late 1535 they entered the territory of the Mexican state of Chihuahua,^[1] crossing through the territory of also Mexican state of Sonora.^[1][4] Then, they temporarily settled in the land of the Pimas and the Sierra Madre,^[4] where they lived with a Native tribe for three days. There they heard the natives speak of a Spanish village located further south.^[1] After entering the territory of the state of Sinaloa in 1536,^[1][4] they found a party of slave hunters led by Diego de Alcaraz and managed to avoid the capture of the hundreds of Native Americans who accompanied them.^[4] Later, Castillo and his companions reunited with other Spanish groups residing in north Culiacan - included among them the future explorer Melchor Díaz, who received him.^[4] From there, they traveled to Compostela, the Nueva Galicia's capital.^[4]

Last years

When the governor of New Galicia, Nuño de Guzman, received news that Spanish castaways had reached land under their jurisdiction, he provided them with horses and clothing and sent them to Mexico City to surrender accounts to the viceroy of New Spain, Antonio de Mendoza.^[1] In this city, where his story was already known, they were received with great honors.^[4] Nunez Cabeza de Vaca recounted his experiences in his book Naufragios (in Spanish: Shipwrecks), on which he recounts the period of slavery with the natives and the long march to find his way back to the Spanish.

Alonso del Castillo married in Mexico and was the beneficiary of the encomienda of his wife in Tehuacan, Puebla. So, as "comendero" he won a quarter of the income of Tehuacan.

In 1541, he traveled to Spain to solve his inheritance because his father had died while he traveled across North America and some relatives had inherited. He was briefly in Spain and then returned to the Americas, living the rest of his life in New Spain. In 1545, Castillo served as treasurer at Guatemala. In 1547, Alonso del Castillo was listed as a witness in a trial ^[1] and presented information of his labor service or any pension from the crown, because he lived in poverty. It is believed that he died in the late 1540s.^[1]

Notes

References

External links

• Cartas de Alonso del Castillo Maldonado desde México (in Spanish: Letter of Alonso del Castillo Maldonado from Mexico).