The Juan Pardo Expeditions: Exploration of the Carolinas and Tennessee, 1566-1568

by Charles Hudson, Paul Hoffman (Introduction), David G. Moore (Afterword), Robin A. Beck (Afterword), Christopher B. Rodning (Afterword)

Overview

An early Spanish explorer’s account of American Indians.   This volume mines the Pardo documents to reveal a wealth of information pertaining to Pardo’s routes, his encounters and interactions with native peoples, the social, hierarchical, and political structures of the Indians, and clues to the ethnic identities of Indians known previously only through archaeology. The new afterword reveals recent archaeological evidence of Pardo’s Fort San Juan--the earliest site of sustained interaction between Europeans and Indians--demonstrating the accuracy of Hudson’s route reconstructions.  

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780817383213
Publisher:	University of Alabama Press
Publication date:	09/15/2009
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	356
File size:	9 MB

About the Author

Charles Hudson is Franklin Professor of Anthropology and History Emeritus at the University of Georgia and author of Knights of Spain, Warriors of the Sun:  Hernando de Soto and the South's Ancient Chiefdoms. Paul E. Hoffman is Paul W. and Nancy W. Murrill Professor of History at Louisiana State University and author of Florida's Frontiers. David G. Moore teaches archaeology at Warren Wilson College in Asheville, North Carolina, and is the author of Catawba Valley Mississippian: Ceramics, Chronology, and Catawba Indians. Robin A. Beck Jr. is currently Visiting Scholar at the Center for Archaeological Investigations, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. Christopher B. Rodning is currently Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Oklahoma and the coeditor of Archaeological Studies of Gender in the Southeastern United States.

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The Juan Pardo Expeditions

Explorations of the Carolinas and Tennessee, 1566â"1568

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By Charles Hudson, Paul E. Hoffman

The University of Alabama Press

Copyright © 1990 Charles Hudson
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8173-8321-3

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CHAPTER 1

Early Spanish Exploration

After Pedro Menéndez de Avilés founded St. Augustine in September 1565 and quickly crushed the French Huguenots, who in the previous year had established a fort near the mouth of the St. Johns River, he took a detachment of soldiers north to found yet another town—Santa Elena, on the point of land at the southern end of Parris Island, near present-day Beaufort, South Carolina. Menéndez intended to found a vast colony in the region the Spaniards called La Florida, so that he would have dominion over not only the Atlantic coast from Newfoundland to the Florida peninsula, but over the interior of North America all the way to Mexico, and Santa Elena was to be his capital city. Between December 1566 and March 1568, as part of this imperial design, Menéndez sent Captain Juan Pardo from Santa Elena on two expeditions into the interior. In both instances, Pardo departed from Santa Elena in the autumn with over a hundred men and with orders to explore the interior, subdue the Indians, and to establish a road to the Spanish silver mines in Zacatecas, Mexico. His assignment must have seemed even more impossible when he was told to accomplish all of this and return to Santa Elena by the following spring.

In the course of time, Menéndez and the officials of Florida who succeeded him had to settle for a far more modest empire in North America. The practical limits of what Spain could achieve were not known to Pardo and his soldiers, but they were soon to learn just how deadly it could be to exceed these limits.

The Pardo expeditions were failures. They do not compare with Cortés's expedition into the Valley of Mexico; and in terms of the expanse of territory explored, they are slight next to the expedition of Hernando de Soto, which was itself a colossal failure. Pardo's expeditions were failures even when measured against the standard of what Menéndez commanded him to do.

The Pardo expeditions are disappointing to students of Southeastern Indian culture because the documents that were produced by Pardo's activity contain little descriptive information about the culture of the Indians who were encountered. But for those who are interested in the social history of the sixteenth-century American South, the Pardo expeditions have proven to be crucial. From Pardo's written account of his expeditions, particularly from a detailed account by Juan de la Bandera, Pardo's scribe and notary, it has been possible to reconstruct where Pardo went and to locate—sometimes precisely—the Indian towns he visited. An accurate reconstruction of the routes Pardo followed is important, not only because it reveals the locations of many previously unknown sixteenth-century Indian towns, but even more because Pardo visited five of the towns visited by Hernando de Soto in 1540. The most important of these were Cofitachequi, near Camden, South Carolina, and Chiaha, on Zimmerman's Island in the French Broad River near Dandridge, Tennessee. Both of these locations are many miles to the northeast of where most scholars have thought they were located.

With these signposts in the interior precisely located, it has become possible to reconstruct the routes of both the Hernando de Soto expedition of 1539–43 and the Tristán de Luna expedition of 1559–61. The documents of the Soto and Luna expeditions, together with those of the Pardo expeditions, contain most of the information we are ever likely to possess on the history of the sixteenth-century Southeastern Indians of the interior. The only other source of information is archaeological. Accurate details of where Soto, Luna, and Pardo went will make it possible to combine this historical and archaeological information, from which we may expect a kind of multiplier effect: When combined, the two sources of information are far richer than when taken separately.

Thus, the history of the Pardo expeditions is the key to a door that once appeared to be forever locked. Behind this door lies an entire world that until now has only been glimpsed. It is an unknown South—a land and a time when the large and powerful Indian chiefdoms that held dominion in the South collided for the first time with people from the other side of the world. For the Southeastern Indians, the Spaniards would hardly have been more alien if they had come from Mars.

Santa Elena, the ill-fated town from which Pardo departed on both of his expeditions, was located on an island whose wretched soil was barely suitable for farming, and it flooded when struck by the storms that plague the Atlantic coast. Apparently, the cape or point of Santa Elena was first named between 1521 and 1526, during the course of the slaving and colonizing activities of Lucas Vásquez de Ayllón, although its location was not accurately mapped. After a series of failures at colonizing the southeastern United States, authorities in Spain decided that Santa Elena was the most favorable location for founding the principal city of yet another colony. But the authorities were wrong. The colonists at Santa Elena seldom did better than subsist, and at times they did not even fare this well. Eventually the town was abandoned for military, and possibly political, reasons, and the site on which the town stood was so forgotten that its precise location could only be discovered through historical and archaeological research.

Ironically, St. Augustine, whose site was not so much selected as happened upon, survived and became the center of Spanish Florida. Although it, too, had a troubled career, St. Augustine was the first Spanish success in North America after a remarkable string of failures. After stunning conquests elsewhere, conquistador after conquistador was frustrated and defeated by the Southeast and its people.

Following Columbus's discovery of the New World, Spain quickly established colonies on the larger islands of the Caribbean: Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, and Cuba. From these ports Spain explored other islands in the Caribbean as well as the coasts of the southeastern United States and Central America. For about a dozen years, however, settlement was limited to the islands, where in due course Spaniards succeeded in building an economy based on sugar production and cattle ranching. These plantations and ranches were worked by native Indian slaves as well as slaves imported from Africa.

The real impetus for Spain to explore and colonize the mainland came in 1519 when Hernán Cortés encountered the wealthy and populous Aztec empire. Not only did Cortés discover gold in the form of jewelry and ritual objects, which he could take by force, but he also found a large population habituated to subordination, who could be put to work on plantations and in mines. Cortés became fabulously wealthy, the most powerful private citizen in the New World, and he was granted the title of marquis.

If such wealth and power could be had in New Spain, then it was possible that as much or even more could be found in the land to the north of the Caribbean Islands. It was a land whose shape, dimensions, and natural features came to light very slowly. The continent was first sighted by Juan Ponce de León, who sailed along the coast of southern Florida in 1513. More was learned about this area in 1519, when Alonso Alvarez de Pineda sailed along the Gulf Coast from the western coast of Florida around to Vera Cruz. Observations made on this voyage were later incorporated into the first map of the Gulf Coast.

Knowledge of the interior was far more difficult to come by. Was this land a continent, or was it a series of large islands? This question could only be answered through exploration and colonization. Juan Ponce de León made the first attempt to found a colony in North America in 1521. Making a landfall at an unknown location on the southwestern coast of the Florida peninsula, he put ashore with two hundred colonists, horses, livestock, and tools. But the local Indians wanted no invaders in their land. A large number of them soon attacked, killing many Spaniards and wounding others. Ponce himself was seriously wounded. Disheartened, the Spaniards abandoned the colony and returned to Cuba, where Ponce died.

Yet another colonial venture was set in motion in 1521 when two ships dropped anchor off the Atlantic coast of the Lower South. One of these ships was owned by Lucas Vásquez de Ayllón, an official in Santo Domingo. The Spaniards went ashore, where they had a friendly encounter with the Indians, some of whom they persuaded to come out and visit their ships. But when the Indians canoed out and climbed aboard, the Spaniards promptly enslaved about 60 of them and sailed for Santo Domingo. One of the ships sank en route, and most of the Indians on the other ship died, but at least one of them survived, to be baptized Francisco de Chicora. He not only survived, but learned Spanish and went with Ayllón to Spain. Partly because of Francisco's extravagant accounts of his native land, Ayllón determined to colonize it.

In 1526 Ayllón sailed from Santo Domingo with a fleet of six ships carrying 500 colonists, as well as horses, farm animals, and slaves. They are thought to have first landed near the place where Francisco de Chicora was enslaved, although they did not succeed in finding the province of Chicora, whence Francisco had come (see figure 1). Their landing was at the mouth of a river they named the Rió de Jordán, said to be located at 33 2/3° N. The Rió de Jordán was possibly the South Santee River. As they entered its mouth, their flagship ran aground and sank. They reconnoitered the surrounding land and found it unsuitable for colonization. At the first opportunity Francisco escaped, and perhaps as a consequence the local Indians refused to have anything to do with Ayllón and his people.

The Spaniards located a site that appeared to be more favorable for a colony about 40 to 45 leagues to the west (actually, to the southwest). It was near the mouth of a large river they named the Río de Gualdape, probably the Savannah River. All of the Spaniards moved to this new location, where Allyón founded and built the town of San Miguel de Gualdape. The site of this town has not yet been located, but it was possibly on Sapelo Sound, in the area Spaniards would later call Guale. The colonists soon began to starve, and thus weakened, fell ill. Many died, including Ayllón himself. After a few months they abandoned the colony and returned to Santo Domingo. According to one source, only about 150 of the 500 colonists survived.

Two years later Pánfilo de Narváez attempted to establish a colony on the Gulf Coast. He landed near Tampa Bay in April 1528 with 400 people. After landing, he marched northward to the province of Apalachee, in and around present Tallahassee. But the Indians of Apalachee were so unremittingly bellicose, and the land was so unpromising, Narváez and his followers soon retreated to the Gulf Coast, where they built four crude flat-boats, and the 250 or so who were still alive attempted to sail around the Gulf coast to Mexico. But their number soon began to dwindle. Some died of thirst, others of hunger. Some were killed by Indians and others by illness. Some of them drowned. Eventually several boats were blown ashore on the Texas coast, but the only members of the expedition who survived and returned to Mexico were Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca and three others, who miraculously survived nine hard years among the Indians.

This string of failures dampened Spain's interest in North America, but it was revived by yet another spectacular conquest. Francisco Pizarro sailed southward from Panama in December 1530, landing on the coast of what is now Ecuador. He and his soldiers proceeded to fight their way overland to Cuzco, where he discovered the capital of the Inca empire, another native state rich in gold and other treasures. Once they had subdued most of the natives, the conquerors began fighting among themselves, and their conflict escalated into a civil war. But fabulous fortunes had already been made, particularly by one Hernando de Soto, who in 1535 left Peru for Spain a wealthy man.

Soto was not content with the wealth he had amassed in Peru; he wanted a domain of his own. Ponce de León, Lucas Vásquez de Ayllón, and Pánfilo de Narváez had failed in Florida, but none of them had penetrated the interior. Both in Mexico and Peru, Spaniards had found riches only after reaching the interior. On April 20, 1537, Soto received his asiento to conquer La Florida. Cabeza de Vaca returned to Spain in the summer of that year, and when Soto offered him a place in his expedition, Cabeza de Vaca declined. Cabeza de Vaca also showed a reticence in talking about some of the things he had seen, a reticence Soto interpreted as concealment, and this fired even more Soto's hope of discovering his own golden empire.

Soto landed at Tampa Bay on March 25, 1539, with a large expedition (see figure 2). Like Narváez before him, he proceeded northward to the chiefdom of Apalachee, where he spent the winter. The following spring he set out toward the north, where he visited the small chiefdom of Capachequi, to the southwest of Albany, Georgia. From there he went to the chiefdom of Toa, on the upper Flint River. Next he visited the chiefdom of Ichisi on the Ocmulgee River, the chiefdom of Ocute on the Oconee River, and the chiefdom of Cofitachequi on the Catawba-Wateree River in South Carolina. He expected there to be gold and silver at Cofitachequi, but not only did he find no precious metals, he found very little food, because the people of Cofitachequi had been struck by an epidemic disease, probably of European origin, and it had caused many deaths. He did obtain a quantity of freshwater pearls at Cofitachequi.

From Cofitachequi Soto headed northward, following a trail that ran parallel with the Catawba-Wateree River. He crossed the Blue Ridge Mountains and picked up a trail along the French Broad River, which led him to the chiefdom of Chiaha in the Tennessee Valley. From Chiaha he headed southwest to the large and powerful chiefdom of Coosa, whose main town was near present-day Carters, Georgia. The ruler of Coosa was a paramount chief whose power extended north over Chiaha, as well as south over the chiefdom of Talisi, the center of which was near present-day Childersburg, Alabama. From Coosa, Soto proceeded southwest to the chiefdom of Tascaluza on the upper Alabama River. In this chiefdom, at the town of Mabila, in the vicinity of present-day Selma, Alabama, Soto fought the greatest battle of his expedition. It was a costly battle for the Spaniards; for the Indian combatants, it was a horrendous disaster. From Mabila, Soto continued on through Mississippi and Arkansas, encountering small and large chiefdoms all the way. But his expedition steadily wore down and finally failed. Soto himself died of a fever on the banks of the Mississippi River. He lost his fortune, his life, and about half of his army. His only discovery was that there was no populous native state in North America like the one Cortés had conquered in Mexico and the one Pizarro had conquered in Peru.

Soto found no precious metals along his route, although he heard and saw tantalizing hints that such metals might exist there. One of his soldiers was said to have found "a trace of gold" in the Catawba-Wateree River near the central towns of Cofitachequi. Also, some of Soto's men were convinced that pieces of the great quantity of copper jewelry and religious objects they found at Cofitachequi contained traces of gold, but they lacked the means to do a metallurgical test. At Chiaha, Soto was told that the Chiscas who lived to the north produced and traded gold, and he had apparently heard the same story in Cofitachequi. He sent two men north from Chiaha to investigate the Chiscas, but what they found there is not clear. The various chroniclers of the Soto expedition differ in their accounts of what these two men discovered. The Gentleman of Elvas only says that the country between Chiaha and Chisca was so mountainous and sparsely populated that an army could not march through it; he says nothing about discovering any metals. Rondrigo Ranjel merely says that they brought back "good news." Garcilaso de la Vega, always prone to exaggeration, reports that they found three copper mines, and that they felt a further search might reveal gold and silver. Luis de Velasco, Viceroy of New Spain, was probably referring to this same incident when he wrote in July of 1560 that gold could be procured in this general region, and that some of Soto's men said they had bartered for it there. Except for the freshwater pearls found at Cofitachequi and elsewhere, none of the Soto chroniclers mentions the discovery of any precious stones, even though they showed the Indians the stones set in their rings and asked if they knew where any like them could be found in their land.

After the failure of the Soto expedition, the possibility of finding precious metals and gems in the Southeast ceased to be a strong motive for exploration. The Spanish certainly found no gold and silver among the Indians of La Florida, as they had in Mexico and Peru, although there was a chance that it could be mined. But other motives for colonization began to gain strength, particularly the desire to prevent other European powers, especially France, from moving in.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from The Juan Pardo Expeditions by Charles Hudson, Paul E. Hoffman. Copyright © 1990 Charles Hudson. Excerpted by permission of The University of Alabama Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents

Contents
Illustrations
Preface to 2005 Edition
Preface to First Edition
Part I The Juan Pardo Expeditions
1 Early Spanish Exploration
2 Juan Pardo's Two Expeditions
Pardo's First Expedition: December 1,1566 to March 7,1567
Moyano's Foray: April 1567
Pardo's Second Expedition: September 1,1567 to March 2,1568
3 The Indians
The Mississippian Transformation
Social Structure of Chiefdoms in the Carolinas and Tennessee
Polities, Cultures, Languages
Cofitachequi
Joara
Guatari
The Cherokees
Coosa
Economic Patterns
4 The Foundations of Greater Florida
Outfitting the Second Expedition
The Road to Zacatecas
Dugout Canoes
Pacifying the Indians
The Houses the Indians Built
The Forts the Spaniards Built
The Missionaries
Prospecting for Precious Metals and Gems
5 The Failure of Greater Florida
Misconceptions about the Land and the Indians
The Failure of the Forts
The Shrinking of Florida
The Decline and Coalescence of the Indians
Los Diamantes and La Gran Copala
Part II The Pardo Documents
The “Long” Bandera Relation: AGI, Santo Domingo 224
The “Short” Bandera Relation: AGI, Patronato 19, R. 20
The Pardo Relation: AGI, Patronato 19, R. 22 (document 1)
The Martinez Relation: AGI, Patronato 19, R. 22 (document 2)
Three New Documents from the Pardo Expeditions: AGI, Contratación 2929 No.2, R. 7
Part III Afterword
Pardo, Joara, and Fort San Juan Revisited Moore David G. Beck Jr. Robin A. Rodning Christopher B.
Index
Errata
About the Authors

Editorial Reviews

Between December 1566 and March 1568, Captain Juan Pardo was sent on two expeditions to lay the groundwork for a Spanish empire in the Greater Florida area. The Expeditions remain a unique source of knowledge of 16th century history of the Indian Southeast. Working from Pardo's own writing, as well as detailed account of his scribe and notary Juan de la Bandera, Hudson (anthropology and history, U. of Georgia) has reconstructed Pardo's journeys and located the Indian towns he visited. No index. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews

"This work will be especially welcomed by those seeking connections between archaeological 'phases' with unlikely names and historic Indian tribes of the Southeast. This is a bold interpretation based upon several rather thin lines of evidence. Its strength lies in the confidence one can place in Hoffman's translations and in the solid reputation Hudson has built reinterpreting the Southeast before as well as after Pardo's time."
—American Indian Quarterly

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