The Niño Brothers were a family of sailors of African descent from the town of Moguer (in Huelva, Andalusia, Spain), who participated actively in Christopher Columbus's first voyage—generally considered to constitute the discovery of the Americas by Europeans—and other subsequent voyages to the New World.
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The Niño Brothers and Columbus's first voyage
The four Niño brothers, Pedro Alonso, Francisco, Juan and Bartolomé were already sailors with prestige and experience in Atlantic journeys before playing a distinguished part in Columbus's first voyage to the New World. Their friendship with the Pinzón Brothers, and especially with the oldest of them, Martín Alonso Pinzón, influenced their participation in Columbus's project. The participation of the Pinzón Brothers in the Columbian enterprise was the key to overcoming the doubts among the region's sailors; the help of the Niño Brothers made it possible to defeat the opposition among the men of Moguer to taking on an enterprise of uncertain outcome.
On Columbus's first voyage, Pedro Alonso Niño was pilot of the Santa María, Juan Niño was master of La Niña, of which was the owner, and Francisco Niño is believed to have been a sailor on La Niña.
The Niños took part as well in Columbus's second and third voyages. Between 1499 and 1501 they traveled on their own account, with the merchants Cristóbal and Luis Guerra, following the route of Columbus's third voyage to the Gulf of Paria on the South American mainland in what is now Venezuela.
Pedro Alonso was named by the Catholic Monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella chief pilot of the Ocean Sea (the Atlantic) as recompense for his services to the crown. He was also one of the teachers of Prince John, the ill-fated son of Ferdinand and Isabella, whom he taught the art of mapmaking.
The Niño family
Little of the following is known with absolute certainty, especially with respect to Columbus's first voyage. As discussed at length in Alice Bache Gould's documented list of the participants in Columbus's first voyage, almost all of the information we have is assembled by cross-comparing numerous incomplete and sometimes mutually contradictory documents. For example, there is nothing explicit in the documents related to the expeditions to distinguish the two Francisco Niños, but certainly the pilot was not the cabin boy. It is imaginable that in some cases, where discrepancies are not so obvious, two people with the same name may have been conflated, especially because the first serious scholarly effort to create a comprehensive list of the voyagers dates from 1884, nearly four centuries after the fact. Even Juan Niño's ownership of La Niña is open to some doubts, though it is clear that he was master of the ship.