On May 30, 1539, a Spanish army of six hundred and twenty men landed on the coast of Florida. No one doubted that great and glorious deeds lay ahead. A little over four years later, a band of half-starved, half-naked refugees, three hundred and eleven in number, staggered into a village in northern Mexico. All they owned were a few ragged animal skins for clothing, their rusty worn-out weapons, and the memories of a nightmare of endless wandering through an incomprehensible wilderness filled with violent death. This is the true and amazing story of the first major European invasion of the North American mainland, and of the strange driven man who led it to disaster.