Imperial Spain's Failure to Colonize Southeast North America 1513-1587

by Larry Richard Clark

Overview

2017 North Carolina Historian of the YearAlthough Imperial Spain laid claim to Southeast North America for more than seven decades during the 16th century, attempts to colonize this region proved to be a dismal failure. Neither Juan Ponce de León who charted La Florida, "The Land of Flowers," nor Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón or Pánfilo de Narváez would succeed. Likewise, Spain's honored conquistadors Hernando de Soto, Tristán de Luna and Supreme Commander Pedro Menéndez with his captain Juan Pardo would also fail. Ultimately, it was the determination and intrepid resistance by Catawba, Creek and Cherokee chiefdoms to these invasions of their homeland that changed world history -- and a future United States of America.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781542923118
Publisher:	CreateSpace Publishing
Publication date:	02/06/2017
Pages:	238
Sales rank:	727,719
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

As a career community college educator and teacher of world history and anthropology, the author developed a special interest in western North Carolina's history and prehistory. During these years he wrote articles for a local newspaper and eventually published some of these in "Burke County: Historic Tales from the Gateway to the Blue Ridge," and also published "Indians of Burke County and Western North Carolina" for local interest as well as a booklet entitled "Time Capsules: the Why, the How, the Where." After retiring as a Dean Emeritus, this author became fascinated with an archaeological excavation of a sixteenth American Indian town called Joara near his home - and then they made an unexpected discovery that began to rewrite the early colonial history of the United States. Spanish artifacts were uncovered among the remains of several burned cabins once occupied by soldiers of Captain Juan Pardo at Fort San Juan, a date some twenty years before England's "Lost Colony" arrived on Roanoke Island, North Carolina, and four decades before the English settled James Towne, Virginia.

Thereafter, the author became so captivated with the idea of Spanish explorers marching across these lands that he first wrote "Of Eagles & Wolves," a yet to be produced play about Captain Juan Pardo's arrival in Burke County, and later published "La Florida: Imperial Spain Invades Indian Chiefdoms of North America" and "The Last Conquistadors of Southeast North America." He recently completed his first historical novel,"TAWODI," the story of a Cherokee warrior of the Blue Ridge Mountains who challenges the arrival of Spanish conquistadors. Today, the author resides with his wife Patricia in Irish Creek Valley along this creek which flows into the Berry site of Joara and Fort San Juan.

Editorial Reviews

2018-01-04
A book explores the history of Spain's ill-fated efforts to occupy Southeast North America.For all of Spain's empire-building successes in New Spain (Mexico) and New Peru (South America), its experience in Southeast North America was altogether less fruitful. From Juan Ponce de León's initial foray in 1513 to the abandonment of Santa Elena, the capital of Spanish Florida, in 1587, Spain's efforts to occupy and colonize the region were lamentable failures that helped pave the way for Britain to become the predominant colonial force. Why and how Spain failed so dismally in the Southeast is the focus of Clark's (Tawodi, 2015, etc.) breezy, colorful history. "This convoluted story included all the elements of high drama with political intrigue, religion, untold riches, international conflict and, especially, the tragic consequences of Europe's earliest contact with the indigenous peoples of the Americas," he writes. The author covered some of this territory in his book The Last Conquistadors of Southeast North America (2015), but here, using a remarkable assortment of sources and anecdotes, he deftly broadens his scope to include the misadventures of Hernando de Soto, Friar Luis Cáncer de Balbastro, and Juan Pardo. Cáncer's attempt to establish a religious colony in La Florida ended with him kneeling to pray before a small band of Native American warriors, one of whom unceremoniously clubbed him to death. The presidios constructed by Pardo along the La Florida frontier were largely destroyed by natives, with one Jesuit priest blaming the Spanish soldiers' "lust for Indian women." Clark convincingly attributes the Spanish malaise in the Southeast in large part to the stubborn resistance of the indigenous peoples, noting that, unlike the more centralized Inca and Aztec, they were "a collection of many independent tribes with skilled warriors who would eagerly fight any invader into their homeland." The Spanish also made the mistake of failing to sufficiently populate the region with colonists or adequately defend it with soldiers and, at critical moments, were distracted by other problems within their vast empire. Ultimately, of course, other invaders were able to obliterate the natives, leaving, as Clark wistfully notes in his detailed and absorbing book, only "300 Apalachee descendants in Louisiana…as the only members of any Florida indigenous tribe."The author uses an impressive array of sources to show how the stubborn resistance of Native Americans thwarted Spanish colonizers.

Kirkus Reviews