Juan Pardo (explorer)


Juan Pardo was a Spanish explorer who was active in the later half of the sixteenth century. He led a Spanish expedition through what is now North and South Carolina and into eastern Tennessee on the orders of Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, who had built Fort San Felipe, and established Santa Elena, on present-day Parris Island; these were the first Spanish settlements in what is now South Carolina. While leading an expedition deeper in-country, Pardo founded Fort San Juan at Joara, the first European settlement in the interior of North Carolina.

New World exploration

Pardo led two expeditions from Santa Elena into the interior of the present-day southeastern United States. The first, from December 1, 1566 to March 7, 1567, numbered 125 men who went to seek food and to establish bases among the region's indigenous people. He established Fort San Juan at Joara, a Mississippian culture center and left a garrison behind. Claiming the settlement for Spain, he renamed it Cuenca in honor of the Spanish city Cuenca.
Pardo led a second expedition from September 1, 1567 to March 2, 1568, and explored the Piedmont interior and south along the Appalachian Mountains. He established additional forts that aimed to supply a land route to Zacatecas in present-day Mexico, where the Spanish had silver mines they wanted to protect. Pardo returned to Santa Elena when he learned of a French raid there.
Later in 1568, the Native Americans turned against Pardo's garrisons in the interior, killing all but one of the 120 men and burning down all six forts. The Spanish did not return to the interior of North Carolina. The Joara and Fort San Juan sites are being excavated through the Joara Foundation and a partnership with Warren Wilson College.
A stone believed to have been inscribed by Pardo or one of his men is in the collection of the Spartanburg Regional Museum of History. It is inscribed with an arrow and the year 1567. The stone was found by a farmer in Inman, South Carolina.
In 1569, Pardo left the Florida colony to return to Spain; no further details about his life and death are known after that.

Archaeological evidence

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 scholarly consensus that this is the site of Joara and Fort San Juan. In 2007, the archaeologists fully excavated one of the burned huts. They found Spanish ceramic olive jar fragments, and iron plate from a 16th century Brigadine type armor typical of what the expedition would have used.