USA HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -Estevanico ("Little Stephen"; modern spelling Estebanico; c. 1500–1539), also known as Esteban de Dorantes or Mustafa Azemmouri ( ), was the first African to explore North America. Estevanico first appears as a slave in Portuguese records in Morocco, with him being sold to a Spanish nobleman in about 1521.

Detailed explanation-2: -He is referred to as simply Esteban or Estevan, more commonly as Estevanico, and also referred to as Esteban the Moor. His formal name “de Dorantes” comes from his status as an enslaved person. He was the property of Andrés Dorantes, a captain of the ill-fated Narváez Expedition of 1527.

Detailed explanation-3: -Estevanico was assuredly the first African to traverse Texas, and, in the company of three Spaniards, reentered Texas from Mexico at La Junta de los Ríos. From La Junta, the trekkers eventually made their way across northwest Mexico to the Pacific Coast.

Detailed explanation-4: -Esteban arrived at the southwestern-most village of the Zuni tribe in New Mexico in May 1539, more than a hundred miles in front of Friar Marcos, who’d sent him ahead to find the way northward.

Detailed explanation-5: -Estevanico was the slave of Andrés Dorantes de Carranza, who took him on the Narváez Pizarro expedition to Tampa Bay, Florida, in 1528. A series of hurricanes and fights with Native Americans killed many of the crew, and the pilot of the ship sailed to Mexico abandoning the men.