The earliest Indian and Spanish settlements in the Southwest are in the northwestern part of the upper Río Grande region. Ruins of early native civilizations can be found in Chaco Canyon, at Aztec, and at Mesa Verde, located in present-day Colorado. These were Pueblo Indians who lived in huge buildings (one ruin is estimated to have contained 800 rooms) and survived on an agrarian economy. In the upper Río Grande Valley, the Spanish explorers found some twenty pueblos when they arrived in the sixteenth century. They took refuge there from Comanche and Apache bands, whose nomadic lifestyles depended on hunting and stealing, and who were less friendly to foreigners than the sedentary Pueblos.
The earliest Europeans in the region wandered through it for years, after having been enslaved by natives near present-day Galveston, Texas. In 1527, Pánfilo de Narváez set out with an expedition of 300 men to conquer the provinces between the Río Grande and the cape of Florida. Early in 1528, the expedition explored the region near present-day Tampa Bay, where they heard stories about gold from the natives. Narváez, excited by the news of gold, separated his cavalry and infantry from their ships and spent the spring and summer months exploring the region. Near the end of summer, ill and tired from constant hostilities by natives, they built five barges near the mouth of the Apalachicola River and coasted westward in search of the Río Grande. They crossed present-day Mobile Bay and the Mississippi. Over time, the barges became separated and lost at sea. Early in November, Cabeza de Vaca and others, many sick and unconscious, were wrecked on an island near present-day Galveston, Texas. Approximately ninety of three hundred men on the five barges survived initially, but in the end, only four (Cabeza de Vaca, Estevánico, Dorantes, and Castillo) made it to Mexico City in July 1536.
