AFTER COLONY 250 SERIES

De Soto died on the banks of the Mississippi, and at the end of the four years, what was left of his army (just over 300 men) retreated down the Mississippi in a makeshift flotilla. As a result, the tribes retaliated against De Soto’s men and attacked them frequently. They also abused many American Indian tribes they often confiscated their food or enslaved their people. However, the men found no gold or silver. De Soto and an army of more than 600 men (with more than two hundred horses) spent four years traveling through much of the Southeast, from Florida to the southern Appalachians in North Carolina and west beyond the Mississippi River. Hernando de Soto's expedition of 1539 to 1543 was the most ambitious of the efforts- and the greatest failure. Only 150 of those colonists survived to return to the Spanish colony on Santo Domingo. Internal mutiny and attacks by threatened American Indian tribes also disrupted the colony. It was abandoned within a few months, after the colonists were unable to get food and began to starve. This site, called San Miguel de Gualdape, has never been located. Five years later, Lucas Vasquez de Ayllón made another attempt, with 600 colonists, to establish the first European settlement in North America, probably somewhere along the coasts of South Carolina or Georgia in September 1526. De Leon and his 200 colonists retreated to Cuba. Soon after landing on the southwest coast of Florida, his expedition was routed by American Indian tribes. And settlement of North America would turn out to be more difficult than imagined.įor example, in 1521 Juan Ponce de Leon was the first to try and settle a colony in North America.

AFTER COLONY 250 SERIES

However, over five decades, a series of failed attempts at exploration and colonization discovered no gold or silver. Spanish conquests of Native societies in Mexico and South America had made the royal court very wealthy. The Spanish viewed the American Indian people as new subjects to be used and hoped they would lead them to gold and silver. Spain hoped to discover a passage to the Pacific Ocean, as well as to exploit the land, the people, and its resources. In the fifty years after Columbus's arrival in the Caribbean, many Spanish expeditions pushed along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts and into the interior of what is now the southeastern United States. It also shows the tragic effects that these attempts had on American Indians tribes and their people. The fascinating story of Fort San Juan reveals the challenges to early European efforts at colonizing what is now the United States.

Archaeologists working at what is called the Berry site-the site is named for the property owners-in Burke County believe that they have rediscovered Joara and found remains of buildings that may have been part of the fort. American Indian soldiers burned the fort the next year, and its location was forgotten for more than four hundred years. Most people are surprised that it wasn't the Lost Colony of Roanoke Island but a small Spanish fort located in present-day Burke County near Morganton.Ĭaptain Juan Pardo built Fort San Juan in 1567 at the Native town of Joara. Reprinted with permission from the Tar Heel Junior Historian.įew North Carolinians know the story of the first European settlement in North Carolina. Moore, Tar Heel Junior Historian Association, NC Museum of History, Fall 2007 Revised by SLNC Government and Heritage Library, May 2023 Fort San Juan Finding a Lost Spanish Fort (North Carolina’s Real First Colony)īy Dr.

After colony 250