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Of course, both Spain and France had already made forays into North America, founding St. Augustine and exploring parts of the coastline as far north as Newfoundland, though their activities as foreign powers are given short shrift in our Anglo-centric version of the birth of America. What is even less frequently mentioned regarding these Spanish and French settlements and voyages is that many of the colonists and sailors were of Sephardic Jewish and Muslim Moorish descent. Several of those aboard Christopher Columbus’s first voyage in 1492 and famously even Columbus (Colon) himself were of Jewish ancestry. They were Jews or crypto-Jews.