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A courageous enslaved Moroccan, Estevanico the Moor, fights for the Spanish in the New World but is ultimately defeated.
1527
Estevanico, an enslaved African from Morocco, accompanied his enslaver, Andres de Dorantes, on an expedition to conquer Florida. Estevanico, born around 1503 in Azemmour, Morocco, had probably been sold into slavery by the Portuguese, who had captured Morocco in 1513 and started selling its people after a drought in 1520. When Estevanico and the explorers arrived in Florida on April 12, 1528, they fought with the native population and lost. The survivors, Estevanico among them, served as the enslaved and medicine men until 1535 when Estevanico, Cabeza de Vaca, Dorantes de Carranza, and Alonso del Castillo Maldonado escaped and headed up the Rio Grande toward the Northwest. In March of 1536, the five-man party met up with a Spanish patrol on the Rio Sinaloa and followed it back to a Spanish outpost. Later that year the group made its way to Mexico where the Viceroy of Mexico asked if they would lead an expedition into Arizona and New Mexico. Estevanico was the only one to accept and, in February of 1539, he led a party to northwest New Mexico. Later that year, however, he was captured by the Zuni tribe and killed as a spy.
References:
- • Hornsby, Alton. Chronology of African-American History: Significant Events and People from 1619 to the Present. Detroit: Gale Research, 1995.