Early Life.

Estevanico the Moor was born at the beginning of the sixteenth century in the small town of Azamor (today Azemmur) on Morocco's western coast. Raised in the Islamic world of northwestern Africa, at some point in his young life the black Moor was taken from his homeland and transported to Christian Spain as a slave. He might have been captured by slave raiders who worked the African coast or been taken captive in one of the military clashes between Spain and Morocco that followed the final reconquest of Spain from the Moors in 1492. He became nominally Christian under the tutelage of his Spanish owners and was baptized and given the name "Estevanico." By 1527 he was in the Caribbean as the property of Andres Dorantes, commander of a company of infantry in the expeditionary force being formed...