Juan Pardo & the Road to Mexico (Part 3)

This is part 3 of a 3 part blog on the Juan Pardo expeditions. Scroll down to see parts 1 and 2.

Conquistador and scribe Francisco Martinez recorded the start of the 1566 expedition. “From the city of Santa Elena Captain Juan Pardo started on the first day of November in the year 1566, to penetrate into the interior to make it known and conquer it from here to Mexico . . .” The day that Martinez recorded as the start of the expedition was a month too early. The day Juan Pardo and his 150 conquistadors and unknown numbers of Native American porters set off from Fort San Felipe on Parris Island was on or near St. Andrews Day which is usually celebrated on the Sunday nearest November 30th. Martinez certainly meant December 1, 1566 when he recorded the first day of November.

Nonetheless, 150 Spanish trekked into the Carolina wilderness. A 1578 report from Santa Elena indicates that ordinary soldiers in La Florida carried not only swords, daggers, and crossbows but early guns known as harquebuses with powder flasks and bullets. They wore quilted linen tunics known as escaupiles. These garments only marginally protected soldiers from arrows. The main reason they were chosen was because they were not as bulky or as uncomfortable to wear in hot weather as Spanish armor. No doubt, the men on Pardo’s expeditions were fitted in these garments and carried with them various armaments. In addition to extra boots and shoes, Pardo’s men also took along fiber sandals for comfort and practicality. Accompanying the Spaniards were large war dogs. These dogs had been trained to attack humans and were meant to be an intimidating presence to Native Americans who encountered them. Trade goods including beads, textiles, and axes were also carried along by the expedition. Although little could be spared, Pardo’s men carried small provisions of wine, cheese, and biscuits from Fort San Felipe’s dwindling stores.

Map from Walter Edgar's South Carolina: A History

It must have been an odd site to the Native Americans as the Spaniards made their way from the coast in the bright sunshine and cool air of the winter of 1566. Loud and colorful with the red on white flags of the Burgundy Cross before them and their drums beating, they entered the unmapped frontier. On the second expedition in 1567 the scribe Bandera is told by Pardo that there is nothing to record of the villages forty leagues from Santa Elena because "the land is rough and full of swamps and Indians already subject and obedient" to the Spanish. However, we can follow the 1569 Bandera chronicle by the same scribe, whose notes from the 1566 expedition were reworked into a chronicle several years after this march, for the trip northward from Santa Elena. Their first stop, based on the assumption that Pardo followed the same trail on both his first and second expeditions (and we have no reason to think he did not) was the village of Uscamacu. Uscamacu sat on an island surrounded by rivers. It was “a sandy place of very good clay for cooking pots and tiles and other things that might be necessary.” Historian Charles Hudson who has extensively studied the routes of the Pardo expeditions believes that this village may have been located at the northern tip of St. Helena Island.

The march continued from here. Pardo proceeded north by northwest following a Native American trail near the Coosawhatchie River. He went in this direction rather than west toward New Spain because native guides probably told Pardo he could find sizable villages and supplies of food for his men. The next stop was the village of Ahoya. On his second expedition in 1567, Pardo would make an auto de fe or a Spanish act of faith in Ahoya. This was possibly a religious speech to the natives. It was noted that Ahoya was an island surrounded by rivers and suitable corn, grapes, and stocks. This village was probably located near Pocataligo or Yemassee. Next, Pardo’s men came upon a small village subject to Ahoya named Ahoyabe. It is placed by Hudson near today’s Cummings or even further north near Hampton. The trail now closely followed the black, oily flow of the Coosawhatchie River.

Since leaving the coast Pardo’s party had encountered only small villages and few natives. But the next village encountered was Cozoa. This village was close to the headwaters of the Coosawhatchie River and was probably near Brunson or Fairfax. Cozoa is also probably the namesake for the Coosawhatchie River. Here the waters of the river become more palatable as they flowed swiftly over the Aiken Plateau. It was also here that small pebbles were first encountered instead of the more sandy ground of the South Carolina coastal plain. The chief of this large village had much land. There were many plots of land, “where can be cultivated corn, wheat, barley, vineyards, fruit orchards” by “the rivers and sweet water brooks.” It was a “land good for everything.” Pardo continued to follow the Coosawhatchie River to its headwaters and then he turned northeast. On the way he encountered a tributary town of Cozao that was unnamed. This town was probably on the Little Salkehatchie River near today’s Ulmers in Allendale County. At a point nearly forty leagues from Santa Elena, the Spanish scribe Guiomez would write that, “The road that he followed, was somewhat difficult, but land that can be cultimvated the same as Cozao and even better. There are some large and shallow swamps but this is caused by the flatness of the land.”

Painting from National Geographic, March 1988

Eventually Pardo continued to march east and then turned north and west. He would in time make his way to the foot of the Appalachian Mountains. Along the way, following his orders for establishing the road to New Spain, he hastily built some forts and left small garrisons of men in each. At this point he received orders from Santa Elena to return immediately to help defend Fort San Felipe against the French. French corsairs had been sighted off the coast. So he retraced his route and in four months time he was right back where he had started on March 7, 1567. The French threat never materialized. Martinez, the Spanish soldier who recorded the first expedition wrote of the lands that he encountered that, “It is good in itself for bread and wine and all kinds of cattle raising because it is flat country with many rivers of fresh water and many groves where there are nuts and blackberries and medlars (persimmons) and liquid amber and many other kinds of groves. It is also a land for much hunting not only deer but hare and rabbit and birds and bear and lions (panthers).”

Pardo, known as the “valiant Captain from Asturias” set out with 120 men on his second expedition on September 1, 1567. He was to resupply and relieve the garrisons in the backcountry, and continue his quest for a path to New Spain. He followed the same path into the interior and then back as the first expedition. This time Pardo was ordered to have each chief he encountered to swear obedience to the Spanish king Phillip II and to Menendez in the presence of a notary and to agree to play tribute to the Spanish. Each major town had to build a storehouse to be stocked with maize, salt, and deer meat to supply the Spaniards on the coast. He distributed presents to Native American leaders along the way hoping to further bring them into amity with the Spaniards.

Pardo supplied the small forts in the backcountry. The forts are never mentioned again. They probably became the casualty of attacks by Native Americans who destroyed them sometime very soon after Pardo’s last foray into this region. Pardo began to realize that the distance to New Spain was considerably more than anyone until that time had imagined. Realizing this, Pardo then began his trek home collecting as much foodstuffs as he could. He and his men foreswore corn and meat for other exotic Native American foods. They saved the corn for the men at Santa Elena and sent it ahead of them as they retraced their path to the coast. They ate deer meat, acorns, and roots supplied to them by the Indians. The Native Americans ate wild roots call batatas by the Spanish. It is known today as the American Groundnut and it is distinct but very similar to today’s sweet potatoes. At the large village of Cozoa, in accordance to Spanish wishes, the Native Americans had built a corncrib on posts high above the ground to protect it from pests and other animals. Pardo arrived there on February 16th and picked up 60 additional bushels of corn that were loaded into baskets and deerskins to be toted to the coast. Pardo and his men arrived back in Santa Elena on March 2, 1568. Only one man was lost in the two daring expeditions. The forts in the backcountry would disappear but it seems that Pardo’s leadership in unknown territory on the march was focused on the care of his men. To have only lost one man on these marches into unknown territory was a great achievement for this leader.

Painting from National Geographic, March 1988

Pardo returned to soldiering in the settlement of Santa Elena. In its heyday Santa Elena was a small farming community larger than St. Augustine. Corn, wheat, oats, pumpkins, chickpeans, beans, sugarcane and peaches were finally cultivated there with better agricultural practices. Cows, horses, pigs, sheep, and goats were raised. In 1576, however, Fort San Felipe was attacked by angry Native Americans and burned. It seems they had enough of Spanish conquistadors lording it over them. Although a subsequent fort was build, relations continued to be shaky with the Native Americans and the growth of the Spanish enclave at St. Augustine led Menendez and the Spanish to abandon Santa Elena in August 1587. The Spanish claims to the region would remain however until the 1670 settlement of the Carolina colony in a place that would become known as Charles Town. After that the frontier would tip into the hands of the English and for many the Spanish age would be forgotten.

Juan Pardo’s two expeditions had failed to forge a route to Mexico. However, these expeditions had accomplished many other things. They expanded the geographical knowledge of Europeans about North America. They also, through oaths, trade goods, and intimidation of the Native Americans solidified Spain’s claims to this region for many years to come. They relieved immediate pressure of starvation for the settlement at Santa Elena and established friendly relations with some Native Americans who lived in the interior. They also left for us a tantalizing, if incomplete record about the Native Americans and Spanish explorers interacting in the area that would one day be known as South Carolina.

Andy Thomas

Works I consulted to write this blog:

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

Rowland, Moore, and Rogers: The History of Beaufort County, South Carolina: 1514-1861

Lawrence S. Rowland: Window on the Atlantic: The Rise and Fall of Santa Elena, South Carolina's Spanish City

Walter Edgar: South Carolina: A History

DePratter, Hudson, and Smith: Juan Pardo's Explorations in the Interior Southeast,1566-1568. The Florida Historical Quarterly 62:125-158, 1983

Paul Hoffman: A New Andalucia and a Way to the Orient: The American Southeast During the Sixteenth Century

Juan Pardo & the Road to Mexico (Part 1)

This is part 1 of a 3 part blog on the Juan Pardo Expeditions.

In 1569, writing several years after the fact, the Spaniard Joan de la Vandera recorded the names of Native American villages and the potential bounty of agricultural lands he had encountered on Juan Pardo’s expeditions through what is today known as South Carolina’s Low Country. In his travels through the area that is Allendale and Hampton counties he would later note places like the village of Ahoya. Here, he wrote that, “land suitable for corn and also many grape stocks and many shoots” was found. At the larger village of Cozao he wrote that the land was suitable to cultivate, “corn, wheat, barley, vineyards, and all kinds of fruit and orchards, because there are rivers and sweet water brooks and land good for everything.”

The two Spanish expeditions led by Juan Pardo between 1566-67 and 1567-68 explored, documented, and reaffirmed Spain’s claims to this “land good for everything.” Not as large or as celebrated as the earlier Hernando De Soto expedition, Pardo’s expeditions succeeded in the practical but failed in the visionary. Beyond that, Pardo’s marches helped the Spanish to fill in missing geographical knowledge about the North American continent and solidified their claims to the region they called La Florida. The Vandera document and others kept about the expeditions provide some of the earliest accounts of the New World. They give us a colorful snapshot of what South Carolina was like during the European exploration and discovery period, how Native Americans lived, and how the first Europeans perceived the land and interacted with the natives. They also remind us about the area’s rich and diverse history. English settlers are usually associated with the early history of the region. However, the more ancient Native American and Spanish claims to this area were to remain in place until the English, with the founding of the Carolina colony in 1670, usurped them. Essentially, the area encompassing today’s present South Carolina, for a period of about one hundred and fifty years, was claimed as part of the kingdom of Spain.

Beginning in the 1520’s the Spanish attempted to explore, establish outposts, and settle lands that had primarily been scouted from the masthead of Spanish ships as they made their way along the south Atlantic American coast. This region of discovery, which presently encompassed the state of Florida and much of today’s Southeast was eventually named La Florida by Ponce de Leon during his ill-fated attempt to found a settlement there in 1521. A prominent headland was later spotted along this coast during a reconnoitering expedition in 1525. This headland was north of Ponce de Leon’s landfall and it became a mariner’s landmark known as La Punta de Santa Elena (The Point of Santa Elena) because its discovery was made on the feast day of Saint Helena: May 18th. The landmark, whose identification is not clear today, was probably Tybee Island that sits at the mouth of the Savannah River. La Punta de Santa Elena provided a geographical reference point for early European explorers and led to the subsequent discovery of the large, majestic sound to the north of it that is today known by its French name as Port Royal Sound. This sound is the deepest and most attractive anchorage along the south Atlantic coast. During the 1500’s and 1600’s the Spanish called the sound and surrounding lands Santa Elena after the nearby headland.

Santa Elena acquired strategic importance as the rivalry between the Spanish and the French grew to encompass the New World. The Spanish had grown wealthy on their exploitation of the Americas. Spanish treasure galleons loaded with gold and silver from Mexico and Peru gathered together in great fleets and sailed north from the Caribbean to catch the trade winds off the south Atlantic coast. These winds, acquired somewhere between Jacksonville, Florida and Wilmington, North Carolina, provided a quick and sure route back to Spain. Therefore, alarms were raised in 1563 when news arrived at the Spanish court that Protestant French Huguenots led by Jean Ribaut had built a small fort on an island in Port Royal Sound. Although this outpost proved a failure and was abandoned and burned within several months time, the French then moved south to build another fort on the Saint Mary’s River near present-day Jacksonville, Florida. This occupation of lands claimed by Spain in an area sensitive to Spanish interests set in motion a plan to protect and settle La Florida. It was hoped this would prevent unwelcome enemy fortifications there and discourage pirates and marauders who could use these coasts as basses to harass and pillage the Spanish treasure fleets. In addition, Protestant settlers in the New World who might recruit Native American allies were anathema to Catholic Spain in an age of religious strife. Immediate plans were made to eliminate this serious threat to Spanish economic security and to uphold the interests of the Catholic Church.

Pedro Menendez de Aviles was the man chosen by the Spanish monarch, Phillip II, to evict the French and lay a more strenuous claim to these lands. Menendez was a nobleman, a veteran sea captain, and a bit of a pirate. He had fought French corsairs in the Mediterranean and escorted treasure caravans home as captain-general of the Indies fleet. He was also a privateer who plundered French vessels that sailed along the coast of his native Asturias in northern Spain. Phillip II, however, entrusted the rakish Menendez with the settlement and security of La Florida. Menendez, although expected to bare an equal share of cost for colonization, readily accepted this honor. He believed it to be a lucrative opportunity. He had lost his son and a fortune in riches to an Atlantic hurricane in 1563. The king offered him a means to recoup his loses, search for his son, serve his king, country, and church against the Protestant French invaders, and fulfill his own imperial ambitions. Menendez quickly moved to murderously evict the French from the coast of La Florida. This act was to carry the violence of the Reformation in Europe to the New World. Menendez cruelly slaughtered the French Huguenots that he found along the La Florida coast without remorse and as a warming to other European interlopers. He established a fort and settlement nearby at present day St. Augustine and then erected a small fort on or near the abandoned ruins of the French fort in Port Royal Sound. Over one hundred and ten Spanish soldiers and settlers were sent to build and man this lonely island outpost at Santa Elena. It was at Santa Elena, on the Atlantic edge of the North American continent where Menendez decided to focus his efforts, both public and private. And it was at Santa Elena that the Juan Pardo expeditions were born out of necessity, duty, and Menendez’s ambition.

Andy Thomas

Bibliographic references of works used to prepare this blog will be presented in the last part of this blog..

An Early Frontier in South Carolina

Once South Carolina’s tidewater frontier had been pierced by planters and slaves, the next subsequent frontier (depleted of most Native Americans for decades) began to be filled up with settlers from the Old World and the New. They arrived here between 1730-1775. Germans, Swiss, and Irish swarmed into the Backcountry enticed by inducements to settle in such places as Purrysburg, Orangeburg, and Williamsburg. In addition, Scotch-Irish, Germans, North Carolinians, and Virginians came south from Philadelphia on the Great Wagon Road looking for new lands and livelihoods. This frontier, named the Backcountry, included the place where I had been born and spent most of my life Fairfax, South Carolina. Fairfax is in Allendale County which is the newest created county in the state: 1919. Most people would not see Allendale County, South Carolina as a frontier land. However, in the colonial period and beyond Allendale County had been a part of the Old Barnwell District and its currently defined boundaries sit on the edge of the Lowcountry in a transitional geographical zone. In its northern reaches the land gives way from low lands and swamps to low hills and rises. During the colonial period this place, minus the Native Americans, was as wild and unsettled as other subsequent frontiers.



One early settler can attest to this lost frontier. Tarleton Brown and his family came to the area in 1769 when it was still sparsely settled. His family moved from Albemarle County, Virginia the same place where Thomas Jefferson and Lewis Clark were born and lived. Brown gives us a snapshot of his youth along the Savannah River. His home was on a small creek near the present day crossing of the Savannah River by Highway 301. Across the river was Burton’s Ferry, a well-known gateway to Georgia and the West. The location of his home was close to the present town of Allendale on the South Carolina side of the river. His memoirs give us a good feel for what the area was like during the frontier era. Notice here in the following excerpt from his memoirs the importance of cattle and horses, staples of western culture. The horses were perhaps renegade and may be traced to an earlier period of this frontier when packhorses carried deer skins and other items in the wide-spread Indian trade between Charles Town and the lands to the Southwest (Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas).

Excerpt from Tarleton Brown‘s Memiors:

“My father, William Brown, was a planter in Albemarle County, Virginia, where I was born on the 5th day of April 1757. Flattering inducements being held forth to settlers in the rich region of South Carolina contiguous to the Savannah River; and my uncle, Bartlet Brown, having already moved and settled himself two miles above Matthew’s Bluff, on the Savannah River; my father brought out some Negroes, and left them with his brother to make a crop; and in 1769, a year afterwards, my father and family, consisting of eleven persons, emigrated to this country and settled on Brier’s Creek, opposite to Burton’s Ferry. We found the country in the vicinity very thinly inhabited. Our own shelter for several weeks to protect us from the weather was a bark tent, which served for our use until we could erect a rude dwelling of logs.

Having cleared a piece of land, we planted, and found the soil to be exceedingly fertile in the river swamp, producing abundant crops. The country was literally infested with wild beasts, which were very annoying to the inhabitants - killing the stock and destroying crops - and were so bold, daring, and ravenous, that they would come into our yards, and before our doors take our sheep and poultry. Indeed, it was dangerous to venture out at night beyond the precincts of our yards unarmed. We used every device to exterminate them, and ultimately effected our object by setting traps and poisoned bait.

The forest abounded with all kinds of game, particularly deer and turkeys - the former were almost as gentle as cattle. I have seen fifty together, in a day’s ride in the woods. The latter we saw were innumerable, and so very fat that I have often run them down on horseback. The range for the cattle was excellent; it was a very common thing to see two hundred in a gang in the large ponds. In any month in the year beeves in the finest order for butchering might be obtained from the forest. It was customary then to have large pens or enclosures for cattle under the particular charge or direction of some person or persons; I was informed by one of those who kept a pen at Kings Creek, that there had been marked that spring seven hundred calves. Our produce for market was beef, pork,staves, and shingles. There was but little corn planted in that section then; and indeed,there was scarcely any inducements to plant more than sufficed for our own consumption,there being but few mills in the country, and consequently very little demand for the article.

From the fact of the new and unsettled state of the country, it may readily be inferred that the roads were very inferior; in truth, they were not much better than common bridle paths; and I feel confident in asserting that there were not, in the whole Barnwell District, any conveyances superior to carts or common wood slides. There were a great many wild horses running at large in the forest when we first settled in the district, a number of which were caught and sold by various individuals, who pursued exclusively the business for a livelihood.” (Memoirs of Tarleton Brown: A Captain in the Revolutionary Army, published posthumously in 1862, reprinted in 1999, Barnwell,South Carolina: Barnwell County Museum and Historical Board, pp.1-2).



Here the snapshot of the past ends. We have more questions and wish it could have given us more details. But what is included in this written record is a tantalizing picture of South Carolina’s colonial frontier period.

Andy Thomas