As early as 1528 there were about 10,000 Negroes in the New World. We hear of one sent as an agent of the Spanish to burn a native village in Honduras. In 1539 they accompanied De Soto and one of them stayed among the Indians in Alabama and became the first settler from the old world. In 1555 in Santiago de Chile a free Negro owns land in the town. Menendez had a company of trained Negro artisans and agriculturalists when he founded St. Augustine in 1565 and in 1570 Negroes founded the town of Santiago del Principe.
In most of these cases probably leadership and initiative on the part of the early Negro pioneers in America was only spasmodic or a matter of accident. But this was not always true and there is one well-known case which, despite the propaganda of 400 years, survives as a clear and important instance of Negro leadership in exploration. This is the romantic story of Stephen Dorantes or as he is usually called, Estevanico, who sailed from Spain in 1527 with the expedition of Panfilo de Narvaez.[1] This fleet of five
- ↑ The following narrative is based on: H. O. Flipper, Did a Negro discover Arizona and New Mexico (contains a translation of parts of the narrative of Pedro de Castaneda de Majera); Pedro de Castaneda, “Account of the Expedition to Cibola which took place in the year 1540. . . . . .” translated in Spanish Explorers in the Southern United States (J. F. Jameson Ed.); Beasley, Trail Blazers of California, Chapter 2; Rippy, in Journal of Negro History, Vol. 6, pp. 183ff.; American Anthropologist, Vol. 4.
