In 1526 Carlos I of Spain granted Panfilo de Narvaez a license to claim what is now the Gulf Coast of the United States. Panfilo de Narvaez set sail in 1527 to conquer and settle present day Florida. Setting out with a crew of approximately 600 members ultimately only four members would survive the ill-fated expedition. The journey would take these four survivors from Spain to Hispaniola and Cuba and then onto Florida. Sailing through a hurricane and other storms the expedition would finally land near Tampa Bay. Suffering from Indian attacks and the effects of poor food and disease the crew, of which there was now only eighty, decided to sail from Florida to Mexico. In 1536, the four survivors-Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, Alonso del Castillo Maldonado, Andres Dorantes de Carranza, and his enslaved Moor Estevanico-finally managed to rejoin Spanish countrymen in present-day Mexico City. Upon returning to Spain Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca would receive considerable notoriety for his published account of the ordeal.

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The publications of the Hakluyt Society (founded in 1846) made available edited (and sometimes translated) early accounts of exploration. The first series, which ran from 1847 to 1899, consists of 100 books containing published or previously unpublished works by authors from Christopher Columbus to Sir Francis Drake, and covering voyages to the New World, to China and Japan, to Russia and to Africa and India. This 1891 volume contains two sixteenth-century accounts, one Spanish and one German, of the exploration and conquest of the basin of the River Plate, which includes parts of Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay and Uruguay. The account of Ulrich Schmidt was written as a reply to that of Alvar Nu ez Cabeza de Vaca, the deposed governor of the area, and presents a radically different version of events. Both narratives reveal that the early Spanish conquerors of South America were riven by dissent and ambition.