For purposes of this discussion I define an American as someone born in the new world. Commemorate can be a landmark named after them or a day named after them, being featured on currency, whatever. Virginia Dare was the first American but I don’t think anything is named after her, specifically.
So you mean the first non-native?
Dare was born in 1587. She did get a US Stamp though.
What about Dare County?
Squanto was born in 1580 or so but he wasn’t white. He was at the first Thanksgiving.
Some searching shows that
Martín de Arguelles was born in 1566 in what’s now Florida. Dare was the first person of English descent. de Areguelles was white and Spanish. He was the first European to be born in North America. He has descendants who are alive today.
There were mixed white/native kids born in the 1520s.
Moctezuma II was born in 1466 and is obviously famous and commemorated.
This is a really ill posed question.
Aw man, I was just about to come in with Moctezuma! He has, among other things, a waterfall, a city, a river, and numerous plant and animal species named after him.
Can anyone beat 1466??
In retrospect, I agree. Obviously from my Virginia Dare remark I meant us new-comers, the colonists. I was not aware of Martín de Arguelles. Is there anything to commemorative him?
I can’t find anything significant.
Obviously, if we remove the requirement of being born in the Western Hemisphere, the answer would be Christopher Columbus. But modern sentiments hold that past generations were wrong to commemorate him, what with the genocide and slavery and all.
Removing the native-born requirement, I wonder who might be the earliest American who is well known, and who few people would consider to be a horrible person?
As the question is posed, I think Dare qualifies, being on a stamp and having a county named after her.
If you add Cuauhtémoc, one can say that they are commemorated every time one drinks a Tecate beer. 
There were Norse settlements in Greenland and Newfoundland for centuries before the Spanish settled in Florida. I suppose you can debate whether you class Greenland as part of North America, but Newfoundland certainly is. We don’t know the identity of the first European to be born in North America but it is likely that they were Norse, and were born centuries before Martín. Martín is perhaps the first identifiable person of European descent to be born in North America, or the first person of European descent whose birth in North America is documented.
(poor Bjarni didn’t get a day named after him)
We can possibly take a stab at their mother’s name, though…
Although if not any get of Freydis, then Snorri Thorfinnsson is the earliest named European-American:
Also - a descendant of Ragnar of Vikings fame.
I don’t like the “must be White” restriction at all, that’s weird. But what if the restriction is “self-identified American”? I think at that point we’re talking 1770s (cite), but I’d welcome a cite for someone who called themself an American prior to that, and who is commemorated in some way.
If Montezuma counts then presumably so does the guy who United the Aztecs, Acamapichtli?
Eta: actually he didn’t unite the Aztecs, he was king of Tenochtitlan only, he did found Montezuma’s dynasty though. The 4th king of Tenochtitlan is the one who unified the Aztecs.
The restriction isn’t “must be white”, it’s “must have been born in the Eastern Hemisphere”. AFAIK we don’t know the names of any of the first generation of enslaved Africans who led rebellions against the Spanish, but I’d sure be happy to name a street after them if we did.
I suppose what the OP really meant was “Who is the first person of purely European descent to be born within the territory that later became the United States of America and who is somehow commemorated by USAians now?”
Which is vastly different from what the OP text asked.
If instead they really mean “Who is the first person of any ethnicity born anywhere in the Americas (or maybe the Western Hemisphere) from Tierra del Fuego north who is commemorated somehow by anybody anyplace in that same vast region?” well, that’s a very different question.
ChatGTP says that the first person to self-identify as American can’t be definitively identified, but the concept of “American” as distinct from “British” identity emerged around the time that the political tensions which led eventually led to the Revolution were heating up. So I’m guessing some radicals were probably identifying as such by the 1760s, but not much earlier.
Almost. They said born in the new world. So what is now North America, South America or the Caribbean Islands.