When the first English settlers sailed into Hampton Roads in 1607, they were latecomers to Virginia.
Four times during the previous half-century, Spanish explorers probed the James and York Rivers — and on Sept. 10, 1570 they planted a Jesuit mission that performed the first known baptism in the land they called Ajacan.
Had the northernmost outpost of Gov. Pedro Menendez's sprawling "La Florida" province succeeded, we might all be speaking Spanish.
But even after the small band of priests was killed by Indians in early 1571 — then brutally revenged by Menendez in 1572 — the Spanish experiment on the York left memories that still reverberated among Powhatan's people when the English came 35 years later.
It also left an elusive target for archaeologists eager but not hopeful of finding its hidden footprint.
"If someone does find it, it will be pure luck," says historian James Horn, vice-president of research and historical interpretation at Colonial Williamsburg, who tells the mission's story in his 2005 book, "A Land As God Made It: Jamestown and the Birth of America."
"But if it were found it would be one of the earliest European structures in the United States. So it's certainly worth looking for."
Discovered in the mid-1520s, the Chesapeake Bay — first mapped in 1562 as the Bahia de Santa Maria — sparked European ambitions from the beginning.
Some thought it might be the fabled northwest passage to China, Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation historian Nancy Egloff says. Menendez himself praised its potential as a base from which Spain could control both the valuable fisheries off Newfoundland and its claim to La Florida.
Not until 1561, however, did a Spanish ship blown off course into the bay make contact with an Indian boy who would play a crucial role in the mission's story.
Dubbed Paquiquineo, the youth agreed to sail back to Spain, where he was presented to an admiring King Phillip II and introduced to European culture. He remained a favored guest until 1562, when Phillip arranged for him to accompany an expedition back to the Bahia de Santa Maria.
Traveling first to Mexico City, Paquiquineo became so ill that he asked to be baptized and took the name Don Luis. He later embarked on two return voyages to the bay, but both were aborted.
Four more years would pass before he would finally land near College Creek as part of a 10-man Jesuit mission led by Father Juan Baptista de Segura.
"The Jesuits were eager to go. But they did not want any military support because they thought it would hurt their efforts to convert the Indians," Egloff says.
"They felt very confident in Don Luis."
Crossing overland to Kings Creek, the Spanish canoed down the York to the village of Kiskiack on Indian Field Creek, where Don Luis helped build a lodge and chapel. But he soon left for his family's village a day-and-a-half upriver, abandoning the Jesuits in a time of famine.
By February, Segura was so desperate that he sent three brothers to plea for Don Luis' help. All were killed as they headed back with the Indian and his companions, who then used the missionaries' hatchets and axes to slay all who remained but a young boy.
"They ended up being blindsided by Don Luis," Egloff says. "It was the last thing they expected."
That summer, a Spanish supply ship arrived to find several Indians in Jesuit robes trying to lure them ashore. Two were captured in a subsequent attack on the vessel and revealed that the boy still lived.
So great was Menendez's anger that he led four warships and 150 soldiers back to the bay the following year. In a skirmish at College Creek, the Spanish killed 20 Indians and captured 13, including one wearing the Jesuits' communion plate as a neck ornament. Then they recovered the boy and learned of the murders.
Demanding Don Luis' return, Menendez waited several days before hanging eight or nine of his hostages from the ship's rigging.
"At that point, the Spanish were still thinking of coming back to the bay — and they wanted to make a point," Horn says.
"It was something the Indians still remembered when the English came years later."
Whether Don Luis matured to become the powerful Powhatan chief Opechancanough — who led devastating attacks on the English in 1622 and '44 — continues to be debated.
Though Horn says the theory can't be proven, he does cite evidence — including an early 1700s Pamunkey Indian account linking Opechancanough to Mexico and the Spanish West Indies — that suggests his youth was far different from that of his kinsman.
Equally tantalizing is the possibility that archaeologists might one day find the remains of the mission hidden among the well-preserved features of Kiskiack.
But after years of study, College of William and Mary researchers say they've barely scratched the surface of the site on what is now the Yorktown Naval Weapons Station.
"This property has been in the hands of the Navy for nearly a century, so there's a fantastic level of preservation — and we're certainly on the lookout for anything that screams 16th-century Spanish," archaeologist Martin Gallivan says.
"But we're talking about a small footprint and a very brief period of time that would be almost invisible archaeologically."
National Hispanic Heritage Month runs through Oct. 15.