Estevanico

Estevanico (c. 1500–1539) ("Little Esteban") was one of the first Muslims to reach the present-day continental United States. He is known as Esteban de Dorantes, Estebanico, and Esteban the Moor, or Mustafa Azemmouri. Enslaved as a youth by the ruling Portuguese, he was sold to a Spanish nobleman and taken in 1527 on the Spanish Narváez expedition to establish a colony in Florida. He was one of four survivors among 300 men who explored the peninsula. By late 1528 the group had been reduced to 80 men, who survived being washed ashore at Galveston Island after an effort to sail homemade crafts across the Gulf of Mexico. For eight years, he traveled with Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, Andrés Dorantes de Carranza, and Alonso del Castillo Maldonado across northern New Spain (present-day U.S. Southwest and northern Mexico). They finally reached Spanish forces in Mexico City in 1536. Later Estevanico served as the main guide for a return expedition to the Southwest. Spaniards believe that he was killed in the Zuni city of Hawikuh in 1539. That is speculative, as the two Indians who reported back to Friar Marcos de Niza did not see him killed but only assumed he had been killed. Estevanico was the first non-Native to visit Pueblo lands.