There is a curious omission of sex by the entire Cabeza de Vaca group over the eight years of their travel across the continent. While enslaved, that's understandable, but in the last year and a half while they were on friendly terms with Indian women often naked or nearly naked, it seems less credible.
     This is mentioned because writers have made major and escalating accusations against Esteban about having sexual liaisons with native women, stating their opinions as fact despite no evidence.
     Yet they write not a word about the three Spaniards, who seem to have led lives of devout celibacy— at least according to history books. However, upon arrival with the Avavares and afterward, there are hints that perhaps the Spaniards were not as chaste as history books indicate.
     Dorantes might have left a clue when he said the Avavares let the travelers "live in liberty and do anything they pleased" for the six or seven months they spent with the tribe.
     Consider also that the Coronado expedition encountered a plains Apache Indian girl in 1541 "who was as white as a Castilian lady." On the same expedition, Juan Jaramillo reported meeting an elder of an unidentified plains Apache tribe who remembered the Cabeza de Vaca group visiting his people years earlier, so the "white" girl of an Indian mother probaby was fathered by Cabeza de Vaca, Dorantes, or Castillo.
     Nevertheless, it is only Esteban's affairs with Indian women that later writers have questioned.