January 1539

Freed and commissioned as an advance scout for Coronado's expedition, Estevanico leads a scouting party from Mexico into present-day Arizona and New Mexico, becoming the first non-indigenous person to enter that region. He arrives at the Zuni pueblo of Hawikuh, where he is killed, but his journey opens the route that later explorers follow into the American Southwest.

An enslaved North African, Estevanico, guides one of the first European expeditions across the future U.S. Southwest — among the first Africans known in North America.