Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón

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Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón (ca. 1475, probably Toledo, Spain - 18 October 1526, San Miguel de Guadalupe colony) was a Spanish explorer.

A licentiate and sugar planter on Hispaniola, Lucas Vásquez de Ayllón commanded six vessels with 500 colonists, supplies and livestock, sailing from Santo Domingo in mid-July, 1526. After exploring the Georgia and Carolina coast (to Cape Fear or northward), they landed in the Winyah Bay area of present-day South Carolina, September 29, 1526 (Feast of Archangels).

He discovered Chesapeake Bay, and was the first of the navigators who tried to find a northwest passage from Europe to Asia.

He was a member of the Real Audiencia in Santo Domingo. He sent an expedition to Florida under Francisco Gordillo, who, in June, 1521, landed in lat. 33 deg, 31', somewhere near Cape Fear in North Carolina. In quest of the Northwest passage, Ayllon came up from Hispaniola in 1524, and tried the James River and Chesapeake Bay. He received from Charles V a grant of the land he had discovered. The employment of African slaves in this work is perhaps the first instance of slave-labour within the present territory of the United States. Ayllon died of ship fever, and of the colony of 600 people he had brought with him only 150 survivors made their way back to Hispaniola.

Founding the first pre-mission, European settlement in what is now the United States (not far from the settlement at Jamestown, built by the English fully eighty years later), Ayllón's rough-hewn town, named San Miguel de Guadalupe after a nearby river, withstood a three-month scarcity of supplies, hunger, disease, and troubles with the local Chicorean (?) natives.

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

After Ayllón's death, purportedly in the arms of a Dominican friar, and having endured great hardships, a surviving contingent of 150 colonists returned to Hispaniola in despair.

While scholars consider the location of San Miguel (Tierra de Ayllón) to be conjecture, assertions the settlement existed as far north as the James River (Ajacan; Jacan) are probably inaccurate.

Lucas Vázquez Ayllon and his settlers lost their boat near the mouth of Winyah Bay, near present day Georgetown, South Carolina. There are efforts underway to locate the site of the wreck. Landing nearby, they looked for an area suitable for colonization approximately 15 km north, near Pawleys Island. They found the area unsuitable, and Ayllon decided to move further south. Some accounts say that some settlers took an overland voyage, while others left on a boat built at the temporary settlement. Scholars think they landed near Sapelo Island, Georgia. This colony failed about a year later, perhaps due to disease and famine. This was the first European colony in what is now the United States, preceding Jamestown and the Pilgrims' landing at Plymouth Rock by almost 100 years.