Colonial era
Main article: Slavery in the colonial history of the United States
See also: Atlantic slave trade
The vast majority of those who were enslaved and transported in the transatlantic slave trade were people from several Central and West Africa ethnic groups, who had been captured directly by the slave traders in coastal raids,[16] or sold by other West Africans, or by half-European "merchant princes"[17] to European slave traders, who brought them to the Americas.[18]
The first African slaves arrived via Santo Domingo to the San Miguel de Gualdape colony (most likely located in the Winyah Bay area of present-day South Carolina), founded by Spanish explorer Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón in 1526.[19] The ill-fated colony was almost immediately disrupted by a fight over leadership, during which the slaves revolted and fled the colony to seek refuge among local Native Americans. De Ayllón and many of the colonists died shortly afterward of an epidemic and the colony was abandoned. The settlers and the slaves who had not escaped returned to Haiti, whence they had come.[19]
The marriage between Luisa de Abrego, a free Black domestic servant from Seville, and Miguel RodrÃguez, a White Segovian conquistador in 1565 in St. Augustine (Spanish Florida), is the first known and recorded Christian marriage anywhere in what is now the continental United States.[20]