Our C at/10/ic 11erit,zge in Texas
to another place where the prickly pears were abundant. Here many Indians, who had heard of the cures, came to see them and brought five patients who were very sick and unable to move. Once more Castillo and his companions prayed earnestly that the Lord might give them health and their prayer was answered. Going on they met other Indians who were called Cutalches and Maliacones, who spok~ a different language from the Avavares. With them were the Susolas and the Coayos. In another part of the tuna fields were the Atayos, who were at war with the Susolas. Two days after their arrival, their fame as healers now being the talk of all the natives, there came some Susolas to Castillo and asked him to go and treat several who were sick, one of whom was dying. Castillo seems to have been afraid to try to cure them because of his sins, consequently he refused to go, whereupon the Indians turned to Cabeza de Vaca and asked him to do it. They said they knew him and liked him because he had healed them, when they met him at the river of nuts (the Guadalupe) at the time he had gone there to meet the other ---- -- Christians. He agreed to go with them and took Dorantes and Estevanico along with him. When he arrived at the ranclzo he noticed that the patient appeared to be dead from the way his relatives behaved. "When I arrived, I found the Indian with his eyes turned, and with no pulse and with all the appearances of death, as it seemed to me and as Dorantes himself said. I removed the mat he had over him as a cover, and as best I could I prayed to our Lord to be pleased to give him health," declares Cabeza de Vaca. He then made the sign of the cross and blew his breath over him, after which he went on to treat others. Next day the Indians came to tell him that the man who was dead had risen whole in the morning. Whatever the circumstances of the cure, this incident filled the Indians with awe and admiration. Henceforth the natives considered them truly the sons of the sun. 78 For eight months, from October to June, they lived among these Indians until it was time once more for the prickly pears to ripen. For six months they had experienced much want for lack of food, because they had no corn, nor nuts, nor acorns, nor fish. When the tunas ripened, they silently stole away one day, unnoticed, and went to the Maliacones and from there to a place where the natives were accustomed to live for ten or twelve days on the fruit of a certain tree. "Here we met the Arbadaos, whom we found to be so sick, emaciated and swollen [an effect of starva-
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71 Barcia, I, 24-25.
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