er, the debarkation of a Spaniard and his slave at Tumbez
resulted in an amusing occurrence which once more gave the Negro a few
brief sentences in the _Decades_. Astonished at the color of his face,
the natives of the region had him wash time after time in order to see
if the black would disappear; and the Negro, true to his good nature
and love of a joke, complied willingly while he grinned so as to
display his pearly white teeth.[5]

Several Negroes assisted the Yanaconas Indians in carrying the baggage
of Diego de Almagro and Rodrigo Orgonez during their perilous journey
along the frozen Andes from Cuzco to Chile; and many of them perished
on the way.[6] Moreover, upon at least one occasion the forces of the
great conqueror of Chile, Pedro Valdivia himself, would probably have
been destroyed, had it not been for the cool-headed alertness of
Captain Gonzalo de los Rios and a Negro who managed to procure the
saddle-horses of the Spaniards as soon as they saw a band of Indians
dart from their hiding places.[7]

Numerous African slaves were along with the Spanish pioneers in
Venezuela. Ortal, Sedeno, and Heredia each had permission to introduce
one hundred Negroes to build fortresses and search for mines; and in
1537, when the licentiate Vadillo came to Cartagena to hold the
residencia of Heredia, he brought down a large number who later
accompanied him on the luckless excursions which he undertook
apparently in the hope of finding the mines of Peru.[8]

But of all the members of the colored race who accompanied the
Spaniards upon their explorations in the New World, it may be doubted
whether any played so conspicuous a part as did Estevanico, or
Estevan, an Arabian black from Azamor, in Morocco, and the slave of
Andres Dorantes de Carranca. He was a member and one of the survivors
of the ill-fated expedition of Panfilo de Narvaez which went to pieces
somewhere on the southern coast of the United States, (1528). For six
years he was a captive and slave among the Indians of Texas where, in
company with others of the expedition who had escaped with their
lives, he effected miraculous cures. He was one of the three
companions of Cabeza de Vaca on his historic journey across the
continent from the Gulf of Mexico to Culiacan. From Culiacan he
accompanied De Vaca and his companions to Mexico City, where he was
honored by being made the slave of the viceroy, Antonio de Mendoza.

Surely these were rare and noteworthy experi