Cabeza de Vaca disheartened me greatly. That was a deeply depressing ending for a story that showed the audience a great deal of hope at the halfway point. The main character discovers something beautiful about the natives and their way of life, and they discover similar truths about his. The audience is lulled into a false sense of security for a while, thinking that our intrepid protagonist will get a happy ending.

This is all stripped away by the end. The closing shot depicts a group of enslaved natives carrying a massive and inexplicably iron-wrought cross through the desert. This is, of course, a blatant metaphor for Christian attempts at dominating and subjugating native cultures -- ostensibly "in the name of" a God who would never order any such thing. While the symbolism is heavy-handed, I did appreciate it, because it helps reinforce the message that these cultures are beautiful, fragile things, and can be -- but shouldn't be -- steamrolled by foreign influence.

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