Joara

Joara was a large Native American settlement, a regional chiefdom of the Mississippian culture, located in what is now Burke County, North Carolina, about 300 miles from the Atlantic coast in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Joara is notable as a significant archaeological and historic site, where Mississippian culture-era and European artifacts have been found, in addition to an earthwork platform mound and remains of a 16th-century Spanish fort. The first European encounters came in the mid-16th century. In 1540 the party of Spanish conquistador Hernando De Soto recorded visiting this place. A later expedition in 1567 under Juan Pardo, another Spanish explorer, founded the first European settlement in the interior of the continent, establishing Fort San Juan at this site, followed by other forts to the west. It is thought to be the first and the largest of the six forts that Pardo established in his attempt to establish an overland road to the silver mines of Mexico. At the time, the Spanish mistakenly believed that the Appalachian Mountains were the same as a range running through central Mexico. After about eighteen months, all but one of the Spanish troops at the six forts were killed by the indigenous people of the area. Pardo had already left and survived to return to Spain. The Spanish made no other attempts at settlement in this interior. British-related colo

Archaeological site data from Wikidata (CC0). Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).