Abstract
In 1566-1568 Captain Juan Pardo led two expeditions through the length of what is now South Carolina, through western North Carolina, and into eastern Tennessee. Both expeditions departed from Santa Elena, a Spanish outpost which Pedro Menéndez de Avilés had established on Parris Island, near present-day Beaufort, South Carolina, and which was then part of la Florida. The route which Pardo and his men followed is important both to anthropologists and historians because it sheds light on the Indians who lived along the route, and also because the northern part of Pardo’s route closely parallels a portion of the route followed twenty-six years earlier by Hernando de Soto after wintering in Florida. If the route of Pardo’s expeditions can be established with confidence, it will then be possible to pinpoint some interior points of reference for the De Soto expedition, an achievement that has proved to be impossible using the De Soto documents alone.
Recommended Citation
DePratter, Chester B.
(1983)
"The Route of Juan Pardo's Explorations in the Interior Southeast, 1566-1568,"
Florida Historical Quarterly: Vol. 62:
No.
2, Article 3.
Available at:
https://stars.library.ucf.edu/fhq/vol62/iss2/3
