Detail of the American Coast Map by Diego Ribero (1529), where the Southern Half of the East coast of the current US is named as Tierra de Ayllón

Map detail from Diego Ribero (1529)

Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón (c. 1475, probably Toledo, Spain – 18 October 1526, a Spanish explorer, established in 1526 the short-lived San Miguel de Gualdape colony, the first in the present-day U.S.

A licentiate and sugar planter on Hispaniola, Lucas Vásquez de Ayllón commanded six vessels with 600 colonists, supplies and livestock, sailing from Santo Domingo in mid-July, 1526. The large 1526 colonizing group landed in Winyah Bay, near present day Georgetown, South Carolina, on September 29, 1526 (the Feast of Archangels).

They looked for an area suitable for colonization approximately 15 km north, near Pawleys Island. They found the area unsuitable, and Ayllón decided to move further south. Some accounts say that some settlers took an overland voyage, while others left on a new boat built at the temporary settlement. If true, this would probably be the earliest example of European-style boatbuilding in what is now the United States. Heading southward, likely by both land and sea, the group reunited and established on October 8, 1526 the short-lived colony of "San Miguel de Guadalpe", probably at or near present-day Georgia's Sapelo Sound.^[1]

Ayllón was a member of the Real Audiencia in Santo Domingo. De Ayllón had received from Charles V in 1523 a grant for the land explored in 1521 by Francisco Gordillo and slave trader Captain Pedro de Quejo (de Quexo). On the 1521 expedition, Gordillo and de Quejo had kidnapped about 70 natives, including Francisco de Chicora, who survived, learned Spanish in Hispaniola, and provided essential ethnographic data about his homeland, Chicora. In 1525 de Ayllón again sent de Quejo northward and received reports of the coastline from as far north as the Delaware Bay.^[2] The employment of African slaves in the 1526 colony is perhaps the first instance of African slave-labour within the present territory of the United States. Ayllon died in the colony in 1526, purportedly in the arms of a Dominican friar.

Ayllón's rough-hewn town withstood only about a total of three months, enduring a scarcity of supplies, hunger, disease, and troubles with the local natives. Of the colony of 600 people he had brought with him, only 150 survivors made their way back to Hispaniola that winter. Most scholars consider attempts to locate the San Miguel settlement (Tierra de Ayllón) any farther north, even as far north as the Chesapeake Bay to be unsubstantiated conjecture.^[3]

De Ayllón and his settlers lost one of their ships near the mouth of Winyah Bay. There are efforts underway by state archaeologists to locate the site of the wreck. De Ayllón's colony was the first European colony in what is now the United States, preceding Jamestown, Virginia by 81 years, and St. Augustine, Florida (the first successful colony) by 39 years.

[edit] References

•  "Lucas Vásquez de Ayllón". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. 1913. http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Catholic_Encyclopedia_(1913)/Lucas_V%C3%A1squez_de_Ayll%C3%B3n. 

[edit] See also

• Slave trade (Americas)
• Ajacan Mission

[edit] External links

Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article Ayllon, Lucas Vasquez de.

• Short biography