After the 1528 Expedition, Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca was appointed governor of the Rio de la Plata colony.
The 1528 Expedition of Narvaez was a failed campaign of the Spanish Empire that had as an aim to colonize the Spanish Florida. It was directed by Pánfilo de Narváez, who had been appointed to govern as an advance, and who on a voyage of exploration from 1528 to 1536 ended up crossing the south of what are now the United States and northern Mexico. The surviving members of this expedition were the first Europeans to sight the Mississippi River and they crossed the coast of the Gulf of Mexico and Texas.
The expedition was initially composed of about 600 people, including men from Spain, Portugal and Italy. Making stops on the way to Florida on the islands of Hispaniola and Cuba, the expedition suffered a hurricane, among other storms. After disembarking near Tampa Bay, they were attacked by the American Indians, and suffered the effects of severe lack of food and disease. In September 1528, after an attempt to sail from Florida to Mexico, only 80 of the men survived after being swept by a new hurricane on the island of Galveston, Texas. In the following years, almost all the men died and only four people survived.
In 1536, these four survivors - Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, Alonso del Castillo Maldonado, Andrés Dorantes de Carranza and their slave Estevanico - finally managed to meet Spanish compatriots in what is now Mexico City.
