There were almost certainly not any Moors in the group that accompanied Cortés. Both the Spanish Crown and the Catholic Church were very sensitive to the idea of introducing non-Christian elements over to the Americas. In the 16th Century, there were multiple proclamations that explicitly restricted immigration to the new Spanish colonies by suspect groups.

Who were these groups? Well, actual, full, practicing Muslims do not ever factor into the discussions. Any discussion of letting "Mohamaddans" settle in New Spain was simply outside the discourse. The elite of Spain at the time embraced a national biography strongly based on the expulsion of Islam from Iberia, and were not about to allow anything resembling a Muslim into their new colonies. Crown prohibitions instead focused more on "New Christians," those who came from a Muslim or Pagan (i.e., non-Muslim African) background who had converted to Christianity. Muslim converts, even those who came from families who had converted generations earlier, were seen as untrustworthy and viewed with suspicion that they might ally with fractious natives.

Even in Spain itself these groups were discriminated against. In the 1600s, long after the Reconquista, even the moriscos were expelled. As with those barred from travel to the Americas, this group was not even composed of newly converted Muslims, but of the descendants of Muslims who had converted, in some cases decades prior.

So this sets the stage for immigrants to the Americas. A person with a background of being a morisco or converso (converted Jew) was, under various royal and ecclesiastical proclamations, prohibited from settling in New Spain. Restall (2000), notes that these bans were at times extended to various "bellicose" groups, which could include basically anyone with even the slightest hint of connection to Islam. North African muslims, obviously, were excluded, but so to were Hispancizied Africans, Ladinos, mixed race people, and "anyone from Guinea." The Ovando expedition of 1501, for example, was explcitly instructed not to allow Jews, Muslims, or converts to settle in the Americas, a sentiment that was repeated in edicts from the Crown in 1513 and 1530 (Taboada 2004).

There were, of course, exceptions. The African slave trade was alive and thriving in New Spain by the early 1500s. Many of these captives were drawn from areas in Africa that were at least partially Muslim. Indeed, Spain's justification of the slave trade was predicated on a religious basis, which allowed for the enslavement of non-Christians.

More important in the early days of Spanish colonization of the Americas were esclavos blancos, white slaves. These were not, as an anachronistic reading might imply, slaves snatched from the melanin deficient parts of Europe. This group was composed of North African slaves who were confirmed as having converted to Christianity prior to age twelve, and thus were assumed to be fully Christian (though not "Old Christians'). For an exploration of the religious-based delination of ethnicity in medieval Spain and how it presaged modern era racism, I highly recommend Martínez's Genealogical Fictions.

The majority of esclavos blancos in very early Spanish colonization were actually esclavas blancas. Brought over with bachelors seeking their fortunes in New Spain were many female slaves and servants who performed a multitude of roles. In least disturbing interpretation, these women acted as domestic servants, looking after the cooking, cleaning, laundry, and other sundry household tasks. Many of these women, however, are thought to have acted as surrogate wives, concubines, and even prostitutes for the men arriving in the Americas.

The existence of these converted female slaves was often a point of contention amidst the plethora of edicts restricting immigration. A 1512 proclamation actually encouraged the travel of esclavas blancas y christianas to the colonies, with the tacit aim of reducing intermarriage of Spanish men with Indigenous women. Better to have them wed a convert than a pagan (though obviously a "real" Christian wife would be best). In 1543, settlement by esclavos blancos would be banned, only to be re-allowed in 1550 following protests from Hispaniola, then banned again in 1577 (Gomez 2005).

By the time Cortés was setting foot in Mexico, however, there was already a heavy African presence in the Americas, many of whom came from Muslim regions. In 1549, about one-third of slaves counted in Mexico were from African Muslim groups, including Wolof, Tukalor, and Mandingo (Restall 2013). Actual practice of Islam would, of course, be forbidden, and all of these people were at least overtly Christian converts.

This did not preclude Africans of presumed or known Islamic backgrounds from showing up among otherwise purely Spanish conquistadors. The famous Juan Beltran in Chile was the son of an Indigenous woman and an African thought to have been Wolof, the Muslim people who the Spanish considered "arrogant, disobedient, rebellious and incorrigible," though also fine horsemen. Estevanico, a Black North African slave who took part in Cabeza de Vaca's wanders through the Southwest was a Christian convert. Juan Garrido, who actually was part of the Cortés expedition and later settled in Tenochtitlan, was a free black man who wrote that he "became a Christian in Lisbon" as a young man. Garrido was from Kongo, however, so it is unlikely he was a Muslim prior to his conversion.

Cook (2016) notes moriscos and North African Muslims were thought to have skill with languages, and thus were used as translators in early colonial Mexico. She identifies three such individuals: Francisco de Triana, the son of a converted Muslim slave who worked for Cortés, his cousin Marcos Romero, and Alonso Ortiz de Zuñiga, the son of a another morisco slave. In the 1540s, Viceroy Mendoza was critiqued for employing these men as they "live[d] more like Muslims than Christians." The charge appears to be based more on their co-habitation with multiple women, which in turn seems more to be adapting to Indigenous practices than living "more according to the law of Muhammed than as a Christian." The three men were also critiqued for drunkenness, impiety, extortion, illegally selling Indigenous slaves, and various other vices. So while the slander against them was cloaked in terms of Islam, the crux of the criticism is that these were lower class men from tainted backgrounds who had achieved enough success to behave just as poorly as their hidalgo betters.

If there were any secret Muslims or converts who accompanied Cortés, their stories have been lost. The fact of pressure from the Crown and Church to keep anyone with even tangential connections to Islam out of the Americas means the chances of such a person was slim to begin with, though this does not preclude some minor figure or even a slave who fit this role.

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Cook 2016 Forbidden Passages: Muslims and Moriscos in Colonial Spanish America

Gerhard 1978 A Black Conquistador in Mexico Hispanic American Historical Review 58(3)

Gomez 2005 Black Crescent: The Experience and Legacy of African Muslims in the Americas

Martinez 2008 Genealogical Fictions: Limpieza de Sangre, Religion, and Gender in Colonial Mexico

Restall 2000 Black Conquistadors: Armed Africans in Early Spanish America The Americas 57(2)

Restall 2013 The Black Middle: Africans, Mayas, and Spaniards in Colonial Yucatan

Taboada El Moro en Las Indias Latinoamérica 39