"...an adventure story more thrilling than Defoe or Melville could
have imagined."--The Philadelphia Inquirer
The true story of America's first great explorer and adventurer--an
African slave named Esteban Dorantes
Crossing the Continent takes us on an epic journey from Africa to
Europe and America as Dr. Robert Goodwin chronicles the incredible
adventures of the African slave Esteban Dorantes (1500-1539), the first
pioneer from the Old World to explore the entirety of the American south
and the first African-born man to die in North America about whom
anything is known. Goodwin's groundbreaking research in Spanish archives
has led to a radical new interpretation of American history--one in
which an African slave emerges as the nation's first great explorer and
adventurer.
Nearly three centuries before Lewis and Clark's epic trek to the Pacific
coast, Esteban and three Spanish noblemen survived shipwreck, famine,
disease, and Native American hostility to make the first crossing of
North America in recorded history. Drawing on contemporary accounts and
long-lost records, Goodwin recounts the extraordinary story of Esteban's
sixteenth-century odyssey, which began in Florida and wound through what
is now Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona,
as far as the Gulf of California. Born in Africa and captured at a young
age by slave traders, Esteban was serving his owner, a Spanish captain,
when their disastrous sea voyage to the New World nearly claimed his
life. Eventually he emerged as the leader of the few survivors of this
expedition, guiding them on an extraordinary eight-year march westward
to safety.
Filled with tales of physical endurance, natural calamities,
geographical wonders, strange discoveries, and Esteban's almost mystical
dealings with Native Americans, Crossing the Continent challenges the
traditional telling of our nation's early history, placing an African
and his relationship with the Indians he encountered at the heart of a
new historical record.
