Customer Reviews

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

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Charles Hudson is perhaps the best scholar to read about the interaction of Indians and Spanish in the American Southeast during the 16th century. His book about De Soto's route is definitive. This book concerns the nearly-forgotten expeditions of Juan Pardo through the Carolinas and across the Appalachians to Tennessee in 1566,67,and 68. Included in the book are the official accounts in Spanish of Pardo's expeditions plus English translations.

Pardo visited several of the same Indian cities as De Soto had thirty years earlier and thus we have two sources regarding such places as Cofitachequi, Joara, and Coosa. When De Soto reached Cofitachequi -- few miles east of present-day Columbia, SC, it was aleady in decline, having suffered from a plague -- almost certainly of European origin. By Pardo's time, the powerful Chiefdom was on its last legs. Within a few years, the complex societies seen by the early Spanish would cease to exist to be replaced by the much depopulated and simpler societies of the historic Creek, Cherokee, Catawba and other Indian tribes.

Hudson pieces together linguistic and archaeological data as well as nuggets from the tiresome accounts of the expedition by Pardo's legalistic notary to portray the Indians Pardo met. One interesting feature of Pardo's expeditions compared with De Soto's is that Pardo had few battles or adventures, got along well with most of the Indians he met, and none of his men were killed or died.

There is little information about the Indians of the Southeast at the time of first contacts with the invading Europeans. Pardo's is one of the most useful and least fanciful accounts that we have and Hudson's interpretation of it is almost surely the best that can be found.

Smallchief

A good book. Well written. Easy to read.

A good account of a little-known Spanish expedition through the US Southeast.

Recommended for people who think de Soto was the only Spaniard to enter the interior of Dixie. You will learn something. Has several insights that help to understand just where de Soto really went and when, with excellent background on the people that he met.

Charles Hudson is perhaps the best scholar to read about the interaction of Indians and Spanish in the American Southeast during the 16th century. His book about De Soto's route is definitive. This book concerns the nearly-forgotten expeditions of Juan Pardo through the Carolinas and across the Appalachians to Tennessee in 1566,67,and 68. Included in the book are the official accounts in Spanish of Pardo's expeditions plus English translations.

Pardo visited several of the same Indian cities as De Soto had thirty years earlier and thus we have two sources regarding such places as Cofitachequi, Joara, and Coosa. When De Soto reached Cofitachequi -- few miles east of present-day Columbia, SC, it was aleady in decline, having suffered from a plague -- almost certainly of European origin. By Pardo's time, the powerful Chiefdom was on its last legs. Within a few years, the complex societies seen by the early Spanish would cease to exist to be replaced by the much depopulated and simpler societies of the historic Creek, Cherokee, Catawba and other Indian tribes.

Hudson pieces together linguistic and archaeological data as well as nuggets from the tiresome accounts of the expedition by Pardo's legalistic notary to portray the Indians Pardo met. One interesting feature of Pardo's expeditions compared with De Soto's is that Pardo had few battles or adventures, got along well with most of the Indians he met, and none of his men were killed or died.

There is little information about the Indians of the Southeast at the time of first contacts with the invading Europeans. Pardo's is one of the most useful and least fanciful accounts that we have and Hudson's interpretation of it is almost surely the best that can be found.

Smallchief