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

Fear the Native woman: Femininity, food, and power in the sixteenth‐century North Carolina Piedmont

“…In the sixteenth century AD, starving and overextended, Spanish colonists turned their ravenous gaze onto the interior of La Florida, what is now the southeastern United States, hoping for a safe and prosperous terrestrial route across the continent for their silver‐heavy convoys leaving Mexico. During this time, the Spanish empire, through various entradas, settlement, and trade attempts, encountered numerous and disparate Native groups within the region, facing many of their greatest challenges, and ultimately greatest defeats, at the hands of powerful Native resistance (Hudson, 2005, 2017; Knight, 2009). Traditionally, anthropologists have interpreted Western colonial entanglements from the colonizer perspective: first, we categorize the encounter as “colonial,” then we reinforce the “colonizer” perspective of an asymmetrical power dynamic tilted in favor of the Western colonizer ( sensu Dietler, 2007; Panich and Gonzalez, 2021; Voss, 2008).…”

“…To explore the implications of an approach embedded in the agency of Indigenous women, we have chosen to focus on one case study: the construction and demise of Fort San Juan, a short‐lived Spanish colonial outpost established in the winter of 1566 by Captain Juan Pardo at the Native town of Joara (known in the chronicles of the 1539–1543 Hernando de Soto expedition as “Xuala”), located in western North Carolina at the Berry site (31BK22), near present‐day Morganton, North Carolina. Within a year and a half, the fort was razed by Native groups, along with the other forts that Pardo established in the region, while most of the Spaniards garrisoned in the interior were killed (Beck, Rodning, and Moore, 2016; Hudson, 2005). What is regularly overlooked in narrative treatments of this and other early European colonial enterprises of the sixteenth century is that Native women often had the most frequent and sustained contact with the Spanish entradas.…”

“…Our goal here is to demonstrate the symbolic power that Indigenous women possessed through their relationship with food and cooking by reinterpreting the events and outcome of an early Spanish colonial entanglement in the interior of the Southeast. Specifically, we consider two realms of power available to Indigenous women in the US Southeast through their control of food that we believe significantly shaped the interactions and outcomes between Indigenous groups of the upper Catawba River valley and surrounding areas with the mid‐sixteenth‐century Spanish entradas led by Hernando de Soto (1539–1543) and Captain Juan Pardo (1566–1568; Figure 1) (Beck, 2013; DePratter and Smith, 1980; Hudson, 2005, 2017; Hudson et al., 2008; Levy et al., 1990; Sampeck et al., 2015). First, we critically explore the chiefly, or political, power that Indigenous women could (and did) hold, as recorded in the Spanish documentary evidence, and informed with a critical understanding of Indigenous gender roles.…”

“…A little over 24 years later, in 1566, the governor of La Florida, Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, ordered Captain Juan Pardo and a company of 125 soldiers on the first of two expeditions intended to establish a series of outposts that would serve as waystations along a secure terrestrial route stretching from the Carolina coast to the increasingly important Spanish silver mines in Zacatecas, Mexico (Beck, Rodning, and Moore, 2016; Hudson, 2005, 14). This route was to extend from Santa Elena, located near present‐day Parris Island, South Carolina, through the Carolina Piedmont and across the southern Appalachians (Figure 1).…”

“…In the Catawba River Valley, Pardo visited the town of Joara (in the same province known to De Soto as “Xuala”), and after staying for two weeks, established Fort San Juan (Beck, Rodning, and Moore, 2016, 8). Over the next year and a half, and during two separate expeditions, Pardo and his men established several other forts in the area: Fort Santiago at the town of Guatari, Fort San Pedro at the town of Olamico, Fort San Pablo at Cauchi, and one at Canos (or Cofitachequi) (Figure 1; Hudson, 2005).…”