From the Mother Land during the
Age of European Exploration and Settlement
in the New World

1441: Portuguese explorers capture Africans off the coast of Muritania, signaling the start of a European Trade in African slaves.

1479: Spain and Portugal sign the Treaty of Alacovas, granting Portugal the right to supply the Spaniard with all the African slaves they need.

1488: Africans in Ghana, West Africa, greet Columbus when he visits El Mina Fortress

1492: Blacks are among the first explorers to the New World, Pedro Alonzo Nino, identified by some scholars as a black man arrives with Christopher Columbus.

1502: Portugal brings its first shipload of African slaves to the Western Hemisphere, selling them in what is now Latin America.

1513: Spain authorizes the use of African slaves in Cuba. Thirty black men accompany Balboa when he discovers the Pacific Ocean.

1522: First rebellion by African slaves the Americas occurs in Hispaniola.

1526: The first group of Africans to set foot on what is now the United States were brought by a Spanish explorer to South Carolina to erect a settlement. However, they soon flee to the interior and settle with Americans.

1539: The black explorer Esteban encounters the Zuni Indians in New Mexico and is killed..

1542: The Spanish abolishes Indian slavery and encomienda system.

1550: First slaves to arrive in Brazil directly from Africa disembark at the city of Salvador.

1562: Britain enters the slave trade when John Hawkins ( a sea dog) sells a large cargo of African slaves to Spanish planters.

1586: Francis Drake frees African in the Spanish Caribbean but fails to make them part of England’s colony at Roanoke.

1595: Spanish Crown awards the first Asiento or monopoly contract, to supply the colonists with slaves

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