Estevanico (“Little Stephen”; modern spelling Estebanico; c. 1500–1539), also known as Esteban de Dorantes or Mustafa Azemmouri (مصطفى أزموري), was the first African to explore North America.

Estevanico first appears as a slave in Portuguese records in Morocco, with him being sold to a Spanish nobleman in about 1521. In 1527 he joined the Spanish Narváez expedition to explore “La Florida”, present-day Northern Mexico and Southern United States.

He has been referred to as “the first great African man in America”. He became a folk hero in the folklore of Spain and legend in New Spain, his exploration and cataloging of the Gulf of Mexico, and what is today modern Florida and Texas, resulted in numerous legends about him. During his final exploration and disappearance in New Mexico, and what would become the Southwestern United States, he became mythologized as part of stories involving the Seven Cities of Gold in Santa Fe de Nuevo México.

Background of Estevanico
Very little is known about the background of Estevanico. The most comprehensive description of his origins consists of just one line written by Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca in his Spanish account of the Narváez Expedition. Cabeza de Vaca wrote that he was a “negro alárabe, natural de Azamor”, which can be translated as “an Arabized black, native to Azemmour” or “an Arabic-speaking black man, a native of Azamor”. This same chronicle does not mention Estevanico’s enslavement but other contemporary documents make it clear that he was owned by Andrés Dorantes de Carranza, a Spanish nobleman who participated in the expedition.

Most contemporary accounts referred to him by his personal nicknames Estevanico, Azemmouri, or simply el negro (a common Spanish term, meaning “the black”).

As a young man, Estevanico was sold into slavery in 1522 in the Portuguese-controlled Moroccan town of Azemmour, on the Atlantic coast. He was sold to Andrés Dorantes de Carranza. Slavery in Spain was very different, and there were paths to freedom more readily available in the Spanish Empire.