June 26, 2026
How Estevanico, an Enslaved African Man, Survived a Shipwreck To Cross the U.S. Decades Before European Settlement
In 1528, an enslaved man from Morocco washed ashore on what’s now Texas. He was worse for wear; he had spent a month adrift in the Gulf of Mexico alongside Spanish sailors on a rickety lifeboat. Eventually, the small group landed on an island near present-day Galveston, Texas, where they would be the first people from the Old World (parts of the world known to Europeans) to enter what’s now the United States.
