La Florida

2016 Gold eLit Book Award international competition Beginning four centuries ago North America was almost annexed to Imperial Spain's vast New World empire. Known as La Florida, "the land of flowers," this well researched and scholarly work examines the earliest period of United States colonial history to reveal the often forgotten invasions by Spanish conquistadors Juan Ponce de León, Lucas Vásquez de Ayllón, Pánfilo de Narváez, Francisco Vázquez de Coronado and Hernando de Soto. Spanish armies were the first Europeans to travel inland into this vast unknown continent, the first to encounter these Native American tribes and chiefdoms - and the first to fail in an attempt to conquer North America. Ultimately, it was the unrelenting opposition of Native Americans to the Spanish invasions of their homeland that resulted in King Charles I going to his grave believing North America was unfit for Spanish occupation. Not until his son Philip inherited the throne some two decades later will a new generation of conquistadors offer a glimmer of hope that Spain could force this region into its global empire.
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" 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 play about Captain Juan Pardo's arrival in Burke County, and later published a book entitled "Spanish Attempts to Colonize Southeast North America: 1513 - 1587." This was followed with the publication of "La Florida: Imperial Spain Invades Indian Chiefdoms of North America" and "The Last Conquistadors of Southeast North America." Currently he is completing an historical novel, "TAWODI," the story of a Cherokee warrior of the Blue Mountains who challenges the arrival of Spanish conquistadors. Today, the author resides with his wife Patricia in Irish Creek Valley along a waterway that flows into the Berry site of Joara and Fort San Juan.