 The second disappeared partly because the Spanish pressed them to say whom they could negotiate with; government by consensus was unknown in Europe at that time.After Cabeza de Vaca, a castaway who survived the ill-fated Narváez expedition, returned to Spain in 1537, he told the Court that Hernando de Soto said that America was the "richest country in the world".Hernando de Soto was a Spanish explorer and conquistador who led the first expedition into the interior of the North American continent.