![]() ![]() This essay will map the spheres of his journey across time and cultures as a means of assessing themes of conquest, colonization, race and identity formation, religion, and gender on the frontiers of empire in the native ground. This shaman of syncretic belief systems appropriated a highly unusual degree of power, both institutional and self-authorized. Although his personal life can only be factually reconstructed through subjective Spanish political lenses, it is possible to form a portrait of the man by examining the cultural spheres through which he passed, from Sub-Saharan Africa to Morocco, from Iberia to the Caribbean, from Florida to the Rio Grande Valley, and from Mexico City to his death in the Zuñi pueblos of modern New Mexico and Arizona. Esteban’s journey is an African story that defies historiographic stereotypes of Spanish imperial conquest and colonization in the Atlantic world. As one of the four surviving members of the ill-starred 1528 Pánfilo de Narváez expedition, the only references to him are contained in narratives and records of Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, Fray Marcos de Niza, and the Coronado expedition, as well as colonial administrative correspondence of the viceroy and archbishop of New Spain. ![]() Estebanico, the Moroccan black slave of conquistador Andrés de Dorantes, has garnered sporadic scholarly attention throughout the twentieth century and in recent years. ![]()
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