Conquistadores, Colonists, and Chiefdoms in Northern La Florida: Artifacts and Architecture at the Berry Site in Western North Carolina

Summary

From 1566 to 1568, the northern frontier of the Spanish colonial province of La Florida was situated in western North Carolina. Members of the Hernando de Soto expedition traversed the province of "Xuala," in the upper Catawba Valley, in 1540, en route to towns on the other side of the Appalachians, in eastern Tennessee. Expeditions led by Juan Pardo between 1566 and 1568 visited many of the same places and provinces in the Carolinas and eastern Tennessee as the Soto expedition, including "Joara." Pardo established six outposts along what was intended to become an overland route connecting Santa Elena, the capital of La Florida in what is now coastal South Carolina, with New Spain and the Spanish silver mines of Zacatecas, Mexico. That overland route never materialized, but Pardo chose the Native American town of Joara as the location of his principal outpost (Cuenca) in the interior of La Florida, where he established Fort San Juan. Investigations at the Berry site—the location of Joara, Cuenca, and Fort San Juan—shed light on the sixteenth-century Spanish colonial presence in western North Carolina and responses by the people of Joara and other Native American towns to Spanish contact and colonialism.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Worlds Forever Changed: The Impact of Conflict and Colony in the "New World"   •
• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage