Juan Pardo (explorer)

Juan Pardo was a Spanish explorer and conquistador active in the second half of the sixteenth century. He led a Spanish expedition through what are now the Carolinas and into present-day Tennessee. He established Fort San Felipe, the first Spanish settlement in South Carolina and Fort San Juan, the first Spanish settlement (1567-1568) in the interior of North Carolina.

A stone thought to have been inscribed by Pardo or a member of his group is in the collection of the Spartanburg Regional Museum of History. It is inscribed with an arrow and the date 1567. The stone 454865 was discovered by a farmer in Inman, SC.

Juan Pardo led two expeditions into the southeast United States. The first (1566-1567) was for the purpose of finding food and establishing bases. He established Fort San Juan at Joara, a Mississippian culture center (near present-day Morganton, North Carolina) and left a garrison behind. Claiming the settlement for Spain, he renamed it Cuenca. Pardo led a second expedition (1567-1568) into the Piedmont interior and Appalachians to find a land route to Zacatecas, where the Spanish had silver mines they wanted to protect. He returned to Santa Elena when hearing news of a French raid there, and did not return to the interior.

In 1568 the natives turned against the Spanish, killing all but one of the 120 men in the garrisons and burning down all six forts. The Spanish did not return to the North Carolina interior.

Since 1986, archaeologists working at the Berry Site near Morganton have found evidence of mound culture, burned huts and 16th-century Spanish artifacts. There is strong consensus that this is the location of Joara and Fort San Juan. In 2007, they fully excavated one of the burned huts and found a Spanish iron scale typical of what the expedition would have used. [Constance E. Rice, [http://www.warren-wilson.edu/~arch/berrysitepress/amerarchspring2008.pdf "Contact and Conflict"] , "American Archaeologist", Spring 2008, pp.14 and 17, accessed 26 Jun 2008]

References

* Hudson, Charles M. and Hoffman, Paul E. "The Juan Pardo expeditions : explorations of the Carolinas and Tennessee, 1566-1568", Washington : Smithsonian Institution Press, 1990. ISBN 9780874744989

Notes

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External links

* [http://www.northcarolinahistory.org/encyclopedia/165/entry "Juan Pardo Expeditions"] , North Carolina History Project