One of my favorite parts of being a fourth-grade teacher was the social studies curriculum focusing on North Carolina. I loved learning along with my students. I was faithful to the teaching guides that introduced historical events such as the Lost Colony, the shipwrecks in the Outer Banks, and the Overmountain Men. Little did I know....
Come back, former students! There's more to North Carolina's story.
My new passion is hearing stories that uncover parts of America's past. I do it all the time when I visit with people to start their journey of writing a memoir. But this...this is another story to tell.
I never imagined there was a hidden history not twenty miles from my home. I walked back into that time this past week on a visit to a Spanish fort. Yes! Twenty miles! How far do I live from St. Augustine, Florida, where typical history books locate Spanish forts? A full day. But not here in the foothills of the Appalachians.
I dutifully taught about Governor John White and the colony he established on Roanoke Island in 1587. I enlarged this photo of the historical marker at Fort San Juan so you could read the date...1567. Twenty years earlier! So, the story...
It goes back to Conquistador Hernando de Soto, who explored from Florida, through what we now call Georgia and the Carolinas, Tennessee, and Alabama, to the Mississippi River, the first European to cross the Mississippi. He died there in 1542 of a fever, probably typhoid. Did I ever teach that? Yes, to the conquistadors but no to being in our area of North Carolina.
Spain was determined to establish a road to safely transport the gold they either plundered or received in trade. Spanish ships had been attacked by pirates too often while sailing through the Gulf of Mexico. They reasoned that overland would be safer. With this as his driving force, Juan Pardo later led an expedition setting up forts along the way to use as landing spots for those who traveled with the treasure.
One spot was here in western North Carolina, near Morganton, not all that far from me, between Morganton and my house. His men arrived at the Joara village and announced that they were in charge now, that they needed housing and safety. He didn't speak the Joaran language, and they didn't speak his, but trading and sheer awesomeness spoke for him. The natives erected four houses for them, and a fort.
All was well for about a year and a half when the Joarans grew restless with these invaders taking over their lives. One night, when the Spanish were asleep, they burned the houses with the men inside, killing all but one. That one managed to escape to another of the Spanish forts along the route. His written testimony is the story that tells us what happened here.
It didn't tell what happened to Joara after the revolt, however. They disappeared. Over the following four hundred years, the village disappeared, too. Years and years of piles upon piles of dirt, leaves, and dead trees covered it all. English settlers arrived and made homes and planted fields.
And then, the current landowner asked the right person about his discovery of pottery shards and sherds, pieces of broken pottery, shards for glass or metal-based, sherds for clay-based. (I learned this on my tour.) A team came out and started exploring. The more they uncovered, the more they realized the enormity of what they had discovered.
Fast forward to this past week, when I observed a team of archaeologists at work.
So far, teams at the Joara site have uncovered the outline of burned buildings, obvious by the color of the dirt's layer. They've worked enough in the last three decades to determine the village's setting.
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| A drawn concept of Joara village |
The first dig has been covered back. As has the second and third, for several reasons, mainly to deter curiosity seekers who would come and destroy what remained. Also, to preserve what is still to be found, saving that for later advancements in the science of archaeology.
But why am I so interested? Because I'm a writer. Because I have a story set not ten miles from there and I want to incorporate some of this into it. It's an historical fiction I started several years ago, and now, I'm at the right place in my writing journey to pick it back up and go with it.
Stay tuned.
Catch of the day,
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