Juan Pardo (explorer)

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Juan Pardo was a Spanish explorer who was active in the latter half of the 16th century. He led a Spanish expedition from the Atlantic coast through what is now North and South Carolina and into eastern Tennessee[1] on the orders of Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, in an attempt to find an inland route to a silver-producing town in Mexico.[2]

In 1566 Menéndez had built Fort San Felipe and established Santa Elena on present-day Parris Island;[3][4] these were the first Spanish settlements in what is now South Carolina. While leading his expedition deeper into the interior, Pardo founded Fort San Juan at Joara, the first European settlement in the interior of North Carolina, and five additional forts in what are the modern U.S. states of North Carolina, Tennessee, and South Carolina.[4][5][2] These five forts were Fort San Pedro near Chiaha, Fort San Pablo on the French Broad River, Fort Santiago near modern Salisbury, North Carolina, Fort Santo Tomás near Cofitachequi, and Fuerta de Nostra Señora north of Santa Elena.[6]

  1. ^ Chester B. DePratter; Charles M. Hudson; Marvin T. Smith (October 1983). "The Route of Juan Pardo's Explorations in the Interior Southeast, 1566-1568". The Florida Historical Quarterly. 62 (2). Florida Historical Society: 125.
  2. ^ a b Hudson, Charles (2005-07-24). The Juan Pardo Expeditions: Exploration of the Carolinas and Tennessee, 1566-1568. University of Alabama Press. ISBN 978-0-8173-5190-8.
  3. ^ David J. Weber (1992). The Spanish Frontier in North America. Yale University Press. p. 70. ISBN 978-0-300-05917-5.
  4. ^ a b Beck, Robin A.; Rodning, Christopher B.; Moore, David G., eds. (2016-01-26). Fort San Juan and the Limits of Empire: Colonialism and Household Practice at the Berry Site. University Press of Florida. doi:10.2307/j.ctvx073wb.11. ISBN 978-0-8130-5567-1. JSTOR j.ctvx073wb.
  5. ^ Beck, Robin A. Jr.; Moore, David G.; Rodning, Christopher B. (2006). "Identifying Fort San Juan: A Sixteenth-Century Spanish Occupation at the Berry Site, North Carolina" (PDF). Southeastern Archaeology. 25 (1): 65–77. Retrieved 2013-12-27.
  6. ^ Larry E. Tise; Jeffrey J. Crow, eds. (14 September 2017). New Voyages to Carolina: Reinterpreting North Carolina History. UNC Press Books. pp. 45–46. ISBN 978-1-4696-3460-9. OCLC 1004225716.