First Contact: An African Shaman in Sixteenth-Century New Spain

• In Event: Narratives of Conquest, Conversion, and Colonization: Violence, Religion, and Consolidation

Abstract

Spanish conquest of the Americas was in every sense also a story of Africans, both enslaved and free, whether animist, Muslim, or Christian, who facilitated imperial expansion for centuries. The epic collision of cultures and the mediation of contested physical and spiritual spaces, from sub-Saharan Africa to the Zuñi pueblos and all points in-between, may be reconstructed in the last decade of one man’s life: Esteban the Black. Following his captivity among indigenes of the present-day Texas coast in 1528, Esteban served as the first contact and intermediary between African, Spanish, and indigenous spaces in the sacred role of a hybrid shamanic healer revered by Indians and Spaniards alike, although for different reasons. In this capacity, he was at times an equal among Spanish Christians and Native Americans, and was the de facto leader of portions of two historical expeditions. Until his reported death in 1539, Esteban’s self-originated and institutional spiritual authority made him a pivotal figure in power struggles among Spanish secular and ecclesiastical regimes and the sacred worlds of various Native American groups. Esteban’s story exposes unconscious testimony in conflicting Spanish colonial narratives regarding the role of spirituality and its heterogeneous interpretations, and the complex social relationships by which empires were formed along their peripheries. In this discussion we examine a man who may be fittingly described as the first known African shaman in North America, or as an evangelizing warrior-priest who was martyred for his Catholic faith.

Author

• Kevin C Young, Rutgers University