After nearly six years along the Texas coast, Cabeza de Vaca, Dorantes, Castillo, and Estebanico finally make a run for freedom during the prickly pear season.

But escape does not mean safety.

They walk into hunger, cold, unknown languages, unfamiliar peoples, and a world no European had ever described before.

In this episode, the four survivors encounter the Avavares, hear the chilling story of La Mala Cosa — The Bad Thing — and watch their reputation as healers begin to spread across the land.

They are no longer conquerors.

They are wanderers.

Healers.

Men surviving only because Native communities feed them, guide them, fear them, and begin passing their story from village to village.

Before Texas was Texas, this was the world already here.

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Music: "Anamalie" by Kevin MacLeod(incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License ⁠http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/⁠

Episode 5: Bleeding Hands and Bitter Roots

After years of hunger, captivity, and survival on the Texas coast, the scattered survivors of the Narváez Expedition finally found each other again.

Cabeza de Vaca, Estebanico, Andrés Dorantes, and Alonso del Castillo were reunited, but reunion did not mean rescue. They were still trapped in a world far from the Spanish settlements they hoped to reach, surrounded by Native peoples whose trade routes, customs, and survival skills now shaped every part of their lives.

In this episode, the story turns from endurance to escape. The four survivors begin preparing for the journey west, following rumors of other Spaniards while facing bitter roots, wounded bodies, uncertainty, and the growing realization that they would have to cross Texas not as conquerors, but as dependent strangers.

Their escape would become one of the most remarkable journeys in early Texas history.

Follow The History of Texas as we continue tracing the story of Cabeza de Vaca and the first Europeans to cross what would become Texas.

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Music: "Anamalie" by Kevin MacLeod(incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License ⁠http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/⁠

Episode 4 - The Island of Ill Fate

After the storm, the survivors of the Narváez expedition were no longer conquerors, soldiers, or explorers in control of their fate. They were castaways.

Stranded on the Texas coast, hungry, sick, and surrounded by a world they did not understand, Cabeza de Vaca and the remaining Spaniards were forced to depend on the Native peoples of the coast for survival.

This episode follows the first brutal chapter of their life after the wreck, as the story of exploration becomes a story of endurance, captivity, adaptation, and survival in early Texas.

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Music: "Anamalie" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Episode 3 - Cabeza de Vaca: Conquistador to Castaway

The Narváez expedition had marched into Florida chasing rumors of wealth, only to find hunger, disease, violence, and disaster. By the time they returned to the coast, their ships were gone.

In this episode of The History of Texas, the survivors make a desperate decision. With no proper tools, no safe harbor, and no clear path home, they begin building crude rafts along the Gulf Coast. What started as a Spanish conquest turns into a fight for survival.

Among them is Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, a royal treasurer who entered the New World as a conquistador and would soon become something very different.

This is the story of how ambition, desperation, and the sea carried the Narváez expedition toward Texas.

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Music: "Anamalie" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

In 1527, a Spanish expedition sailed into the unknown with dreams of wealth, conquest, and glory.

Led by Pánfilo de Narváez, hundreds of men crossed the Atlantic under the authority of the Spanish Crown. Their mission was to claim and settle a vast territory called La Florida. But almost from the beginning, the expedition was cursed by storms, confusion, bad decisions, and brutal conditions.

In this episode of The History of Texas, we follow the Narváez Expedition from Spain to the Caribbean, then to the shores of Florida, where ambition quickly turns into desperation. The decisions made here will eventually drive a handful of survivors westward, toward the lands that would one day be called Texas.

This is where one of the strangest survival stories in North American history begins.

Hosted by Justin Day.

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Music: "Anamalie" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Before it was Texas, it was already ancient.

In the first episode of The History of Texas, we go back thousands of years before the Republic, before the Alamo, before Spain, France, Mexico, or the United States ever claimed the land.

This episode begins with the earliest people in Texas, from Ice Age hunters and mammoths to stone tools, shifting climates, ancient camps, and the long human story that came before written history.

Texas was never an empty place. It was old, difficult, dangerous, and alive long before it had a name.

Hosted by Justin Day.

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Music: "Anamalie" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Howdy, and welcome to The History of Texas.

This podcast is a chronological journey through the story of one of the most unique and powerful regions in North America—told from its earliest beginnings to the rise of the Lone Star State.

From the first peoples who called this land home…
To Spanish exploration…
To revolution, independence, and beyond…

Each episode will build on the last, telling the full story—one chapter at a time.

If you’ve ever wanted to truly understand Texas—where it came from, how it was forged, and why it became what it is today—you’re in the right place.

Follow now and join me as we start at the very beginning.

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All links:https://linktr.ee/texasruneforge

Music: "Anamalie" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/