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My talk summarizes documentary evidence of Spanish exploration in western North Carolina from 1540 to 1568, and it discusses ongoing archaeological investigations of the effects of early encounters between Native American groups and Spanish colonists in western North Carolina during the sixteenth century. Seventeen years after Hernando de Soto traversed western North Carolina, in 1540, expeditions led by Captain Juan Pardo attempted to establish permanent Spanish settlements in the interior Southeast, at the northern edge of the Spanish province of La Florida. Throughout the sixteenth century, Spanish colonists had attempted to establish an overland route connecting La Florida to New Spain, in what is now Mexico and the American Southwest. As part of this effort, Pardo established six forts in the Carolinas and in eastern Tennessee. His primary outpost, Fort San Juan, was built in 1567 at the Native American town of Joara, located at the Berry site, in the upper Catawba River Valley of western North Carolina. Ongoing archaeological investigations at the Berry site offer significant insight into the built environment of the first permanent European settlement in the interior of what is now the United States, and they also shed light upon the effects of sustained interactions between Native American towns and Spanish colonists in the Southeast. At first, relations between the Pardo expedition and the town of Joara were amicable—gifts were given, alliances were formed, and Fort San Juan was built. Eighteen months later, news reached Santa Elena, the Spanish colonial capital of La Florida, that native warriors had attacked Fort San Juan and Pardo’s other settlements. Spanish settlements and missions continued to thrive in some areas of Florida and Georgia, but the abandonment of Pardo’s forts effectively ended Spanish colonial claims to large areas of the Southeast, which set the stage for later exploration and colonization by French and English colonists.
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