Estevanico

Estevanico (c. 1500–1539), born in Morocco, was the first known person born in Africa to have arrived in the present-day continental United States. He is known by many different names, common are Esteban de Dorantes, Estebanico and Esteban the Moor. Enslaved as a youth by the Portuguese, he was sold to a Spanish nobleman and taken in 1527 on the Spanish Narváez expedition. He was one of four survivors among the 600 men who started, and traveled for eight years with Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, Andrés Dorantes de Carranza, and Alonso Del Castillo across northern New Spain (present-day U.S. Southwest and northern Mexico), before they reached Spanish forces in Mexico City in 1536.