Estevanico

Estevanico , Mustafa Zemmouri
Born	1500 Azemmour Morocco
Died	1539 Hawikuh, New Mexico
Nationality	Moroccan
Occupation	Explorer in Mexico and parts of southwest North America

Estevanico (c. 1500-1539) was one of the first native Africans to reach the present-day continental United States. He is known by many different names, but is commonly known as Esteban de Dorantes, Estebanico and Esteban the Moor or Mustafa Zemmouri. Enslaved as a youth by the 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 across the Gulf of Mexico.

He traveled for eight years 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), reaching 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 only speculative, however, because the two Indians who reported back to Friar Marcos de Niza did not see him killed but only assumed he had been. He is considered a discoverer of New Mexico.

Estevanico was sold into slavery in 1522 in the Portuguese-controlled Berber town of Azemmour, on Morocco's Atlantic coast. Some contemporary accounts referred to him as an "Arabized black"; or "Moor", a generic term often used for anyone from North Africa. Diego de Guzmán, a contemporary of Estevanico who saw him in Sinaloa in 1536, described his skin as "brown".

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