Estevanico

This picture is labelled as “Cortes, with the Moorish soldier Estevanico, entering Mexico, c. 1550”. But Estevanico was not known to live after 1539!

Chakwaina, a Zuni kachina, may be based on Estevanico.

Estevanico (c. 1500-1539), aka Estebanico, aka Esteban de Dorantes, aka Esteban the Moor, aka Mustafa Azemmouri, from 1527 to 1539 took part as an interpreter and scout in the Spanish exploration of Florida, the Gulf Coast, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and the search for the fabled Seven Cities of Gold of Cibola. He quickly picked up languages of the Indians, hundreds of who followed him as a healer – and may be what the kachina Chakwaina (pictured) is based on.

Black First: On April 14th 1528 Estevanico became the first known Black person to set foot on the US mainland, in Boca Ciega Bay near what is now St Petersburg, Florida. “Mainland” because there were already plenty of Black people in Puerto Rico (thanks in part to the Taino genocide of 1492 to 1518). Spanish and French expeditions to North America were hardly Whites-only affairs (pictured above).

By 1619 Black people had already been in (sometimes even lived in) Nova Scotia, New York, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, the Mississippi Valley, Texas, New Mexico, and Arziona. At least.

In 1539 he became the first non-Native of any race to set foot in Arizona.

Race/Origin: All we know about this is what Cabeza de Vaca said, that he was “negro alárabe natural de Azamor” – a black Arab (or Arabic speaker), a native of Azemmour, which is a city on the coast of Morocco.

Slavery: He was enslaved by the Portuguese in 1522, four years after they took over his town. They sold him to the Spanish. He lived in Spain and Cuba the slave of Andrés Dorantes de Carranza, a sea captain who took part in the  expedition to Florida. In Florida Estevanico escaped an attack by Apalachee Indians, taking a raft, winding up in Texas where he (along with White explorers) was enslaved by the Karankawa Indians. He escaped five years later and became a:

Healer: He learned how to become a medicine man and was called a “son of the Sun” because he came from the east, the land of the rising sun. Hundreds of Indians followed him because of his healing powers.

The Seven Cities of Cibola: Indians said there were seven cities of gold across the desert. All he found were Pueblo towns that made turquoise jewellery. In 1540, the year after Estevanico’s death, Coronado followed up with another expedition – and heard tales of Quivira, yet another city of gold, even more distant, in Kansas. But all he found were the usual Indian villages.

Death: When Estevanico arrived at what the Spanish would call Cibola, a Zuni Pueblo town (in New Mexico near the Arizona border), he was killed (or at  least disappeared from the historical record). It is unclear why.

After death: among Pueblo Indians, in particular the Zuni, Hopi and Keresan, there is a kachina (spirit being, dancer, doll) called Chakwaina. He is pictured as a black ogre with a goatee and yellow eyes (see above). He may have been based on Estevanico – or may come from a time before. He was the first Black man (or non-Native, for that matter) that the Zuni ever saw.

– Abagond, 2022.

See also:

• 1619
• Also before 1619:
  • Juan Rodriguez
  • Abubakari II
  • Olmec colossal heads
• Moors:
  • al-Idrisi
  • Ibn Batuta (ابن بطوطة)
• The Spanish
  • The Taino genocide
  • Colonial Mexico
• kachina
• Zuni
• Hopi

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