In Hispaniola, where he and the other captives were taken, Chicora learned Spanish, was baptized a Catholic, and worked for Lucas Vasquez de Ayllón, a colonial official.
[2] Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón, oidor (judge) of the royal Audencia of Santa Domingo,[3] commissioned Francisco Gordillo to make an expedition to the continent in 1520.
Quexos happened to be a relative of Gordillo's pilot Alonzo Fernandez Sotil,[4] and decided to join Gordilla's expedition, and in June 1521 the two struck land at what they called the River of San Juan Bautista (St. John the Baptist), traditionally identified as Winyah Bay based on coordinates[5] but more recently alternatively suggested as the Pee Dee River by linguist Blair A.
[2] As recounted by Peter Martyr the court chronicler, according to colonial reports, most of the natives died within two years; many wandered the streets of Santo Domingo as vagrants, and few survived.
[2] Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón took the engaging young Indian to Spain and presented him to the royal court, where he told fantastical tales about his homeland of Chicora,[6][7] and the neighboring provinces of what is now the Carolinas.
The location and ethnicity of the actual people referred to in Chicora's tall tales of Duhare has been debated; candidates have included Catawban, Guale, and Cusabo.
In 2004 Blair Rudes asserted that other linguistic evidence in Martyr's account points to the Iroquoian Tuscarora tribe, and specifically their town on the Neuse River called Teyurhèhtè.
[2] Other sources, such as Oviedo, Navarrete, Barcia, and Documentos Ineditos list additional provinces derived from Francisco de Chicora, some of which have been tentatively identified by Swanton and other researchers: