2.1 African Explorers in the Americas

In the early 1500s, some free and enslaved Africans who were familiar with Spanish and Portuguese culture traveled with Europeans on their first explorations of the Americas. They were called ladinos. Among them were the first Africans to set foot in the territory that became the United States.

Ladinos belonged to a generation historians call Atlantic creoles: Africans who moved between African, European and American worlds before plantation slavery became the norm. Because they spoke several languages and understood different customs and ways of doing business, they could work as translators, traders and guides. That gave some of them a degree of social mobility, the chance to move up in status, that later generations of enslaved people were denied.

Africans were part of Spain's claim to 'La Florida', a Spanish name for a region that included present-day Florida, Georgia and South Carolina. Their presence came from Spain's early role in the slave trade and from the free and enslaved Africans who traveled with Spanish explorers. This also means Africans took part, willingly or not, in taking Indigenous lands.

• Conquistadors: taking part in conquest, often hoping to win or keep their freedom.
• Enslaved laborers: working mostly in mines and on farms, producing wealth for Europeans.
• Free skilled workers and artisans.

Juan Garrido was born in West Central Africa, in the Kingdom of Kongo region, and moved to Lisbon as a young man. As a free man, he joined Spanish forces in the Caribbean. In 1513 he took part in Juan Ponce de León's expedition to present-day Florida, making him the first known African to arrive in North America. He later joined the conquest of Mexico.

Garrido kept his freedom by serving in Spain's military campaigns against Indigenous peoples. In 1538 he wrote a petition to the Spanish Crown listing his years of service and asking for a reward. That petition is a required source: it shows an African man using Spanish law and his record as a soldier to claim status and recognition. A sixteenth-century image also shows him among Spanish conquistadors.

Estevanico (also called Esteban) was an enslaved African from Morocco. He was taken along, against his will, on a Spanish expedition that reached Florida in 1528 and was wrecked on the Gulf Coast. He and three Spanish survivors spent years crossing what are now Texas and northern Mexico, and he worked as a translator, guide and healer. He was later killed by Zuni people resisting Spanish colonization in what is now New Mexico.