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In 1528, an enslaved man from Morocco washed ashore on what’s now Texas. He was worse for wear; he had spent a month adrift in the Gulf of Mexico alongside Spanish sailors on a rickety lifeboat. Eventually, the small group landed on an island near present-day Galveston, Texas, where they would be the first people from the Old World (parts of the world known to Europeans) to enter what’s now the United States. The group of four men was all that was left of a 600-person crew that had originally set sail from Spain: three Spanish captains and the aforementioned man named Estevan de Dorantes, or Estevancio.
Estevancio was one of the first documented Africans, Arabic speakers, and Muslims to enter the present-day United States, nearly 40 years before the first European settlement. Between 1528 and 1536, he walked about 2,250 miles, traversing Florida to Mexico’s Pacific Coast. The feat is considered the first recorded crossing of North America, and later Estevancio was known as the first non-Native American to enter modern-day New Mexico and Arizona.
Estevancio was born in Azemmour, Morocco, in the early 1500s. There, he was enslaved by Spanish nobleman Andrés Dorantes de Carranza, who brought him on the ill-fated Narváez expedition to the Americas. Before taking off, Dorantes baptized him because Muslim people weren’t allowed to travel to the New World (a term describing the majority of lands in the Western Hemisphere) on official Spanish expeditions. It was then that he was renamed Estevancio.
The Narváez expedition suffered a host of problems, including a hurricane that sank two ships and storms that blew them to what’s now St. Petersburg, Florida. The survivors, including Estevancio, were ordered to explore Florida’s interior. They traveled about 300 miles on foot, through swamps, until Apalachee Native Americans found and attacked them. Eventually, the small group of men escaped and ended up on the boat outside Galveston.
Estevancio was captured by Native Americans soon after he landed ashore. But he had a big advantage: he spoke multiple languages, including Tamazight, Arabic, Portuguese, and Spanish. He spent five years in captivity under the Karankawa people, and during that time he served as translator, mediator, and scout for the beleaguered Spanish group, despite being enslaved. He learned Native languages and sign language, and blended Christian and Indigenous healing practices to gain trust across Native communities. This was critical as the group traveled west.
“Estevanico is one of the most extraordinary, yet overlooked, figures in the early history of what would become the American Southwest,” said Dr Hsain Ilahiane, an anthropologist and professor at the University of Arizona. “He helped open routes, trails and geographic knowledge that later informed Spanish incursions into [the present-day American West].”
In 1539, Estevancio guided a group of Spanish friars in search of the mythical “Seven Cities of Gold.” He went ahead of the group into what’s now New Mexico and Arizona, trying to gain knowledge of these fabled cities. One day later, however, he was killed by the Zuni Pueblo people in attempts to enter the southernmost cities of gold.
If you had never heard of Estevancio before this—despite the many firsts—there are a couple of big reasons why. One is that there are no written records of his life in North America; it only survived through Spanish accounts. The second reason is that this story doesn’t fit in with the dominant narrative of the U.S., which is centered on the 13 colonies. But through scholarship, museums, and historical monuments, Estevancio’s legacy is slowly changing.
Sources: How an enslaved, shipwrecked African became the US’s first great explorer; The Journey of Estevanico: The First African in Texas
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