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On his second expedition, Captain Juan Pardo led 120 soldiers to Joara, a small Indian village in present-day North Carolina. They arrived on September 22, 1567. On his first visit, he had read the requerimiento to the villagers. It demanded that they agree to be subject to the Spanish King and to accept Catholicism. This time, Pardo had orders to map a road to Zacatecas, Mexico, the silver mine the Spanish pinned all their hopes onto. Though they were wildly mistaken about the distance.

Now, Pardo and his men stayed just outside of Joara in Fort San Juan, one of the hastily built forts that they had constructed on their first sojourn through the region. Like a western classic movie, a rider galloped in and handed Captain Pardo an emergency missive. Indians surrounded Sargeant Moyano’s soldiers in Olamico, further west. They cut their rest short. Leaving a few soldiers to hold the fort, Captain Pardo galloped off with reinforcements.¹

Fortunately, Joara lay just past the swampy coastal flatlands in the farming soil of the Blue Ridge foothills. Yet even on solid ground, the soldiers struggled through dense underbrush, thus taking until October 7 to arrive in Olamico. Only to find that although the Indians surrounded Moyano, he was not in immediate danger.²

Happy Endings, at First

The happy ending was typical of Pardo’s first expedition through La Florida. Most of his first encounters were friendly—even though Pardo’s men were the second Europeans the natives had met. As yet, the natives displayed no visible signs of suspicion.

Anthropologists speculate that the natives of the Southeast may have easily agreed because they had a system of paying tribute to chiefs already in place. It may have seemed to the Indians that the Spanish King and the Catholic church were not much different from their own chiefs. So the commands to build corn cribs to house grain for the Spanish was acceptable.³

Among the villages that Pardo visited were more chiefs than he could record. Moreover, during his first expedition through the region, virtually all of them accepted his proposals peaceably. However, on his second expedition tension was growing. The Indians were growing displeased with Spanish demands and surrounded Moyano. More signs were coming.

News of an Ambush

The Spanish continued westward, arriving in Satapo on October 16. Settling into their fort, the soldiers heard some Indians making a lot of noise around the outside perimeter. Pardo put his men on alert. Later, an Indian snuck into their interpreter’s sleeping quarters to reveal that the Indians from five villages were planning an ambush. He asked for an ax in exchange for more information.

The interpreter took him to Pardo, who gave him the ax. Whereupon the Indian spilled additional details—that the great chief of Coosa was gathering other chiefs to lead three ambushes against the Spanish. Also, the Indians would provide no more food unless they were paid for it. Moreover, he told them that they were not on the easiest trail to Coosa and suggested they take another way.

Escaping an Ambush

To test the information, Pardo asked another Indian captive interpreter if he knew of any secret plans. He confirmed the information and added that he was afraid to go with them to the next town. Since the last Europeans (De Soto’s men) had a fierce fight with the Indians of that town, including five of his brothers who became enslaved by the attacking indians.

In the morning, Captain Pardo casually followed his usual routine, asking the chief of Satapo to supply burden bearers. The chief pretended to agree and left with some of his men to get helpers for the Spanish. But when he came back, he didn’t have any helpers with him, nor were the other men anywhere to be seen. Pardo noticed as well that only women and children remained in the village.

So he held an emergency meeting, in which the soldiers agreed to return to a town called Chiaha, taking a different route from the one they had come west on. They left on that same day, thus escaping almost certain warfare with the Indians.⁴

Building Shabby Forts

Upon arriving at a town called Cauchi, they hastily built Fort San Pablo, and in what became Pardo’s method, he garrisoned it with a thin supply of soldiers and then moved on. They arrived back at Joara on November 6 and stayed at Fort San Juan. Per Pardo’s custom, he assigned only about thirty-five men to garrison the fort when he left.⁵

They continued travelling the countryside, stopping to inspect potential crystal mines and looking for paths to the silver mines in Zacateca. In a town called Yssa, they left axes with some Indians from Guatari with instructions to cut down wood for them, so they could build a fort when they arrived. The female chiefs welcomed them upon their arrival, and he told them to command their people to help build a fort. They finished Fort Santiago on January 6, 1568. Continuing his practice, Pardo split off a small contingent of soldiers to garrison the fort and led the rest through the wilderness searching for crystals, gold, and signs of Zacateca.

By January 26 he was back in Cofitachequi where he stayed about two weeks, building Fort Santo Tomás.⁶ Upon departure, he released all his captive interpreters and sojourned toward Santa Elena, the Spanish basecamp on an island off the coast. On February 6, they reach Coçao where the Indians fed them sweet potatoes, corn, and acorns. They also delivered sixty bushels of corn, as tribute for the Spanish at Santa Elena.

Early Warning Signs

When they arrived at Ahoya, they discovered the town in cinders. The Indians had already killed a Spanish corporal, in resentment over the constant ferrying of soldiers to Santa Elena, across the water from Ahoya. In retaliation, the Spanish burned Ahoya, the natives ran, and the Spanish imprisoned their cacique in Santa Elena.

Some of the Indians finally agreed to meet with Pardo, who told them that if they didn’t come back to live in Ahoya, the Spanish would consider them traitors and would make war on them. He gave them gifts and the Indians returned, agreeing to let Pardo build a fort near their town.

Believing the issue resolved, they continued marching toward Santa Elena, arriving on March 6. Pardo reported locations of crystal and salt mines, but had no gold and no map to Zacatecas, Mexico.

The Forts Are Overrun

Pardo assumed that his soldiers were peacefully settled throughout the region, and that the shabby forts constituted a visible declaration of government. However, Fr. Juan Rogel, who had served in the interior, reported from Havana, Cuba on July 25, 1568 that all the forts had fallen. One native woman, Teresa Martin, who survived the attack on Fort San Juan testified later about the events.

She reported that at Fort San Juan, the Indians resented the Spanish. Even though Captain Pardo had left strict instructions that they were not to mingle with the Indians, the soldiers began accepting cooking help and taking native wives after about four months. By late Spring of 1568, the Indian men burned down the fort, killing nearly everyone.⁷

Virtually simultaneously, all the Spanish forts in the interior were destroyed. According to one survivor, Jaime Martinez, the Indians became angry over the growing demand for food from the Spanish and killed nearly all of them.⁸

No record exists of Captain Pardo’s departure, though we know that he left La Florida in 1569 and returned to Spain. No records of his life remain after his return.⁹

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1. Hudson, Charles. The Juan Pardo Expeditions. Exploration of the Carolinas and Tennessee, 1566-1568. Pages 35-36. ↩︎
2. Hudson, page 109. ↩︎
3. Hudson, pages 39-40. ↩︎
4. Hudson, page 40. ↩︎
5. Hudson, pages 43-45. ↩︎
6. Hudson, pages 175-176. ↩︎
7. Ibid. ↩︎
8. Hudson, page 176. ↩︎
9. Hudson, page 46. ↩︎