In 2019, the U.S. marked the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first enslaved Africans to the English colony of Jamestown, where “20 and odd Negroes” were brought, according to historical reports. But 1619 wasn’t the first time African slaves were taken to America.
Ninety-three years earlier in 1526, nearly a century before Jamestown, Africans became the first permanent settlers on what became the United States of America, The Washington Post reported.
Wealthy Spanish sugar planter Lucas Vazquez de Ayllón, from Hispaniola (present-day Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic) hired a ship captain named Francisco Gordillo and his cousin, the slave-hunter Pedro de Quejo, to explore the American continent in 1521, Afropunk reported.
Quejo was known as a “Spanish slaver,” who, for hire, “plied the Caribbean and Atlantic Ocean plundering small islands and capturing native Indians for slavery to help the Spanish in their search for gold in the Americas,” according to Carolana.com.
Gordillo and Quejo landed at what is thought to be the bank of the Pee Dee River in South Carolina. Ayllón has instructed them to build friendly relationships with any indigenous people they encountered. Instead, Quejo captured 70 Native Americans for sale into slavery in Hispaniola, The Washington Post reported. This was the official start of European-imposed slavery.
Ayllón was apparently unhappy about Quejos’ violent capture of the Native Americans and in 1525, Ayllón sent Quejo back to America to make peace with the Natives, whom they wanted to use as an inroad to create a settlement.
In 1526, Ayllón sailed from Hispaniola to South Carolina with three ships carrying 500 Spanish settlers, 100 horses, and 100 African slaves on board. One of the ships was lost at sea. The remaining two ships landed near present-day Georgetown, South Carolina, on Sept. 29, 1526.
This was the first instance of African slave-labor within the present territory of the United States, according to Legends of America.
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Within three months of establishing the settlements, the enslaved Africans, with the help of the Native Americans under Quejo’s control, rebelled. They set fire to the colonial dwellings and killed a slavemaster. They fled, many going to live among the Cofitachequi tribe, according to Legends of America. Quejo died in a fever epidemic. Only 150 survivors from Quejo’s failed expedition made their way back to Hispaniola.
