Whenever I read any mention of Esteban, I was struck about how almost every reference was negative, even though no European ever reported seeing the bad acts attributed to him.
     I began to wonder. Why was all the evidence cited against Esteban based on assumptions and nearly 500-year-old negative hearsay? And why were there so many differing and increasingly dramatic versions of his death? I no longer necessarily believe the conventional wisdom that Zunis killed him the day after they first met him.
     To paraphrase Voltaire: History is society's agreed-upon fables. And to paraphrase Harry Truman: There's nothing new in the world except the history someone doesn't want you to know.
     My hope is that my biography repairs Esteban's reputation and that his accomplishments as an explorer will receive the attention they deserve. He must have been a remarkable man to have risen as a slave to such prominence in a slave-holding society.