Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón

Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón (c. 1475, probably Castile, Spain – 18 October 1526) was a Spanish explorer who in 1526 established the short-lived San Miguel de Gualdape colony, the first European attempt at a settlement in what is now the continental United States. Ayllón's account of the region inspired a number of later attempts by the Spanish and French governments to colonize the southeastern United States.

Lucas arrived Santo Domingo in April 1502, with Nicolás de Ovando y Cáceres' flotilla. Under Ovando, Lucas became alcalde mayor of Concepcion. Lucas left the island in 1509, returning to Spain where he earned a law degree from Valladolid, before returning to Santo Domingo as a Spanish judge.

A licentiate and sugar planter on Hispaniola, Lucas Vázquez 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 Gualdape, the first European settlement in the present United States, probably at or near present-day Georgia's Sapelo Sound.

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 one named Francisco de Chicora when baptized. He survived in Hispaniola, learning Spanish and working for Ayllón. When Ayllón took Chicora to Spain with him, they met with the court chronicler, Peter Martyr, and Chicora talked with him at length about his people and homeland, Chicora, and about neighboring provinces.

In 1525 Ayllón sent Quejo northward and received reports of the coastline from as far north as the Delaware Bay. In 1526, his new colony used African slave-labour, perhaps the first instance within the present territory of the United States. Ayllón 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 hunger, disease, scarcity of supplies, and troubles with the local natives. Of the colony of 600 people Ayllón 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.

Ayllón and his settlers lost one of their ships near the mouth of Winyah Bay. State archaeologists are working to locate the site of the wreck. 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.