vessels and 600 colonists and soldiers started from Cuba and landed in Tampa Bay in 1582. But disaster followed disaster until at last there were but four survivors of whom one was Estevanico “an Arab Negro from Azamor on the Atlantic coast of Morocco”; he is elsewhere described as “black” and a “person of intelligence.” Besides him there was his master Dorantes and two other Spaniards, de Vaca and Maldonado.[1] For six years these men maintained themselves by practicing medicine among the Indians, and were the first to reach Mexico from Florida by the overland route. Estevanico and de Vaca went forward to meet the outposts of the Spaniards established in Mexico. Estevanico returned with an escort and brought on the other two men.
The four then went west to the present Mexican cities, Chihuahua and Sonora and reached Culiacan, the capital of the state of Sinaloa, in April, 1536. Coronado was governor of Sinaloa and on hearing the story of the wanderers, he immediately hastened with them to the viceroy, Mendoza, in the city of Mexico.
They told the viceroy not only of their own adventures but what they had heard of the rich lands toward the North and of
- ↑ A fifth survivor, a Spaniard, stayed with the Indians and was afterward found by DeSoto.
