The Narváez Landing at Boca Ciega Bay
St. Petersburg, Florida – On Holy Thursday, April 14th, 1528, four carracks and a brigandine containing more than 400 men and 10 women arrived at the entrance to a shallow bay on Pinellas County’s gulf coast. Among those on board the ship were the new adelantado, governor of all land from the “river of the palms” to the “cape of the Florida,” Pánfilo de Narváez, aguacil mayor and treasurer Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, officers Alonso del Castillo Maldonado and Andres Durantes, and an enslaved North African man called Estevanico.
Most historians agree that they were located outside of a large pass into Boca Ciega Bay, near today’s Treasure Island causeway. At the head of the protected bay the Spanish scouts had spied several houses and dwellings of the Tocobaga Indians. Another officer, Alonso Enriquez, set out from the ships to a small island from which he called to the Tocobaga, who came and by way of trade gave Enriquez some fish and venison.
On the following day, which was Good Friday, Narváez disembarked with as many men as his small boats could hold, but when he arrived on the shore they found the Tocobaga houses empty and abandoned.
One of the houses was very large. Cabeza de Vaca noted that it was capable of holding around 300 people, others were smaller, and among them the Spaniards found a little golden bell.
The next day, Narváez ordered the rest of the men to disembark and the horses to be brought ashore to drink. They raised the flag of Spain and laid claim to the land for his Catholic majesty, and they read aloud a proclamation asserting and claiming their own titles. Mass was offered by Fr. Juan Suarez, the first Catholic Mass in Florida history (37 years before the founding of St. Augustine in 1565).
The next day, which would have been Easter Sunday, the Tocobaga people returned to the village and spoke to the Spanish, but since Narváez had no interpreter, he couldn’t understand them. They made many signs and gestures that seemed to Cabeza de Vaca to indicate that they wanted these conquistadors to leave, but in the end they went away again without violence.
On Monday, the Governor decided to go inland and explore what was there. He took 40 men with him, and, walking until sunset, they arrived at a great bay that seemed to stretch far inland. This was most likely Tampa Bay. They spent that night near the shore, returning on the following day to where the ships and people were near the present-day Jungle Prada Site.
Narvaez decided to have the brigandine, a smaller and more maneuverable vessel than the carracks, to sail along the coast and look for the entrance to the large harbor they had seen, and, if unable to find it, to cross back to Havana and return with additional supplies.
After the brigantine had departed, Narváez again ventured inland along with even more men. This time, when they arrived at the large bay they followed the coast to the north. Soon they captured four Tocobaga men and showed them corn to see if they were familiar with it. The captives took them to their village at the head of the bay. This was almost certainly present-day Philippe Park in Safety Harbor.
At Tocobaga, the name of this town and its people, the Spaniards found corn, but also discovered there many merchandise boxes from Spain. Some historians propose these were the supplies abandoned by Ponce de Leon after his failed attempt to colonize the west coast of Florida 7 years earlier in 1521. Most disturbingly to the Spanish, each box contained the body of a dead man covered in painted deer skins. There were also pieces of linen and cloth, feather headdresses like those from Mexico, and more samples of gold.
Through sign language Narváez asked the Tocobaga where they had gotten such things, and they indicated that very far from there was a province called Apalachee, in which there was much gold, and they gestured that Apalachee had a great amount of everything that the Spaniards valued.
Narváez was then taken to another village about 30 miles from there, where there was a great quantity of corn that was ripe and ready to be picked. The conquistadors stayed at that village for two days before returning again to where the people and the ships were at the landing place.
It was now first day of May, and Pánfilo Narváez took his officers aside, expressing his desire to go back inland while the ships sailed the coast. This seemed to most of the officers to be a bad idea. The pilots recommended that the ships shouldn’t be left until they were in a good and populated harbor. That they, being uncertain of exactly where they were, and without having an interpreter or local guide, should not risk the safety of the vessels which were their only means of escape.
Cabeza de Vaca added that since they were entering a land that had no description, they did not know what kind of place it was, or by what people it was inhabited, nor which part of it they were in. Plus, he argued, they did not have enough supplies to enter an unknown land, and that each man could receive no more rations than one pound of biscuits and one pound of bacon for the journey.
However, the Commissary, a delegate of the church, supported Narváez’s plan to have the ships sail north and meet the men at the next harbor, which their guide insisted was not very far away. He suggested that they had already experienced many hardships at sea that they should trust in God’s protection on the land. All felt that if they continued following the coast it would be impossible not to eventually reach Panuco, a Spanish colony in present-day northeast Mexico, which they felt was not very far away.
Pánfilo de Narváez’s will was set, he placed a sailor named Caravallo in charge of the ships, and, leaving one-hundred men with them, Narváez prepared to venture into the unknown with 300 soldiers and 42 horses.
Eight years later, in 1536, four survivors out of those 300 souls were found wandering in the desert near the Pacific coast. The 296 others were never seen again. The four survivors were Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, Alonso del Castillo Maldonado, Andres Durantes, and Estevanico. Narváez himself had perished along the way with most of his men, but Cabeza de Vaca lived to see Spain again and write a chronicle of his journey across much of what is now the United States. Cabeza de Vaca’s account was originally published in 1542, and is a document of tremendous value for students of history, anthropologists, and general readers. The Account is available for purchase in paperback form on the Jungle Prada Site History Tour, an interpretive historical tour of the Tocobaga village site where Panfilo de Narvaez is thought to have first stepped foot on land on that April day 500 years ago.