In his book, Black Indians, William Loren Katz, claims that the first foreign colony on 'U.S.' soil was neither Jamestown, nor Roanoke Island. More interestingly, he asserts that while Europeans left the colony several months later in 1526 because of harsh weather, a labor storage, and inadequate shelter, "Africans remained to build their own society with Native Americans
In June 1526, Lucas Vasquez de Ayllon , A Wealthy Spanish official, in the City of Santo Domingo on Hispaniola founded a Colony at the mouth of the Pee Dee River in Eastern South Carolina, 60 years before Roanoke Island, eighty years before James Town and almost a century before the "Mayflower " landed at Plymoth RockAyllons' efforts has been overlooked perhaps because most people prefer to believe that U.S. life begin with the arrival of English speaking Anglo Saxons living under British Law or perhaps it is not mentioned because of its Unique rebirth in the woods by People not considered as part of the White U.S.Heritage..
The story of San Miguel de Guadalupe begins when Lucas Vasquez de Ayllon, a wealthy Spanish official in the Spanish colony of Hispaniola sent an expedition in 1520 to canvass the North American mainland to establish a colony. Though, according to Katz, Ayllon wanted to build "friendly relations with the local inhabitants," Ayllon's men, among whom was a slave-hunter, captured seventy Native Americans.. The first European act on what is now American soil was that of making slaves of Free Native Americans .. One of these natives, Chicorana, would help Ayllon persuade the Spanish king to permit a settlement on the mainland of the U.S.
"The king's orders forbade enslavement of the Indians, and added 'you be very careful about the treatment of the Indians," but this had little effect as "one hundred enslaved Africans", along with 500 Spanish men and women, six to seven dozen horses, Physicians, Sailors and three Dominican Priest headed for San Miguel de Guadalupe. Mishaps and diseaster dogged the enterprise from the onset, as it landed on the wrong coast, lost a ship and their only Indian Guide, Chicorana deserted...The Europeans were on their own.
Determined to suceed Ayllon drove his People to a great river ,probably called the Pee Dee.. He paused to name His settlement San Miguel de Guadalupe. When he ordered his Africans to begin building homes, he launched Black slavery in the United states...
In a matter of time, "disease and starvation ravaged their colony and internal disputes tore it apart," culminating in a slave revolt, in which slaves fled to the Indians and the departure of the surviving Spanish settlers. In a series of events, "Africans began setting fires and Native Americans (who also hated slavery) sided with the slaves and made trouble.
"The Africans understandably fled the dying European colony and slavery.. They saw an opportunity to begin new lives in the woods with the Native Americans ...The surviving 150 Spanish Men and Women , no longer able to face a freezing winter, without shelter, packed up and left for Santo Domingo. It would be another quarter of a century before the Spanish would again build a North American Colony with slave labor...
San Miguel de Guadalupe.
was not a total failure as the First Foreign Colony on American soil because a community emerged in the woods which included the new foreigners from oversees , the Africans who were indeed the First Foreigners to settle the U.S.
