Negro Companions of the Spanish Explorers

Abstract

explorers. Indeed, is evidence which leads to the surmise that some of the pre-Columbians may have been Negroes. Peter Martyr, a learned historian and an acquaintance of Columbus, mentions a region, not two days' journey from Quarequa's territory, in the Darien district of South America, where Balboa, the illustrious discoverer of the Pacific ocean, found a race of black men, who were conjectured to have come from Africa and to have been shipwrecked on this coast. In connection with this statement may be noted a report by the Bureau of Ethnology which describes early American pottery with physiognomies of decided African lineaments.' The late Justin Winsor stated in a letter to the writer that there is a possible chance that at some early time the ocean currents may have swept across from the Canaries and the African coasts canoes with Guanches and other African