Strange.  Granted, this was the declared objective of the director, and it was met successfully.  Beginning at the end, it is a retelling of a man’s transformation from European to tribesman and the savagery that invites his return to civilization.  The dichotomies of his life over the eight years in question, 1528-1536, are illustrated in his primal scream and disconnected laughter when he is given clothes for the journey home.

A few survivors on rafts open the film, and the captain declares ‘every man for himself’.  We soon see that the captain, himself, was not enough to survive the encounter with the savage natives.  The collection of survivors is quickly reduced by two thirds.  The explorers are captured and taken inland to a village built on stilts over a river.  For all their savagery, they demonstrate an excellent grasp of engineering principles.

Cabeza deVaca is selected to go further downriver (upriver?) as a servant to the shaman and his noisily demanding armless companion.  Finally seeing an opportunity to escape, he runs to the point of exhaustion, only to find himself collapsing on the same beach where he started, courtesy of the shaman and an iguana tied to a stick.  His despair seems to have an impact on the shaman and companion, as he lays weeping in a fetal ball, then begins to list aloud the Spanish words for the environmental elements around him.

Beginning with the deliberate blinding and subsequent healing of one of the villagers, deVaca is introduced to the life of a shaman and sent on a spiritual quest.  Surprisingly, it seems the armless man will actually miss him.  As the shaman oversees his journey, he finds a village, where some of his compatriots are tied to posts.  There he learns that the members of the captain’s raft became cannibals to survive.  Between tribal rituals and a sudden battle, deVaca finds himself essentially alone again, trying to save the life of an Indian who has been shot through the heart with an arrow.  With a strange combination of latin prayers, military first aid techniques, and voodoo, he succeeds.

As he is integrated into the indigenous community, we next see a funeral procession.  As though he has a Jesus complex, deVaca enters the tomb and attempts to restore life to the deceased young girl.  The only other shipwreck survivor tries to impress on him the reality that he is not God, and thus cannot possibly restore life – to even attempt it is sacrilege and heresy of the highest order.  When, amazingly, the girl wakens, the people celebrate all the way back to the village, where they find there has been a massacre.  Musket balls give evidence that Spanish troops have arrived, taking captive those they didn’t kill.

After eight years, deVaca suddenly has options, and with each of them, dire consequences.  If he and the natives encounter the soldiers together, it will be revealed that he has become a shaman, for which he will be tried and burned as a witch.  Remaining with the natives risks both their lives and his exposure as a shaman, either way ensuring that he will never be restored to civilized life in Spain.  He insists that the villagers run away and leave him, even to the point of getting aggressive about it, casting off both his medicine bag and his crucifix.  As the two ragged Spaniards enter the settlement, they pass cages of natives, enslaved.

Learning that he has the respect of the natives, the leader of the settlers asks deVaca to get them to agree to serve, as they need 80 more slaves, having imprisoned 178.  Of course he declines.  His life has changed much in eight years, as has his understanding of the differences between the civilized and the savage.