Indians of Burke County and western North Carolina (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781453762080)

After retiring from Western Piedmont Community College as Dean of Planning & Research (following years as an instructor in world history and anthropology), Larry Clark served as an educational consultant and began to explore non-fiction and fiction writing. For more than a decade he periodically wrote about Burke County for a local newspaper, the News Herald. A collection of these stories was later published as "Burke County: Historic Tales from the Gateway to the Blue Ridge" by The History Press of Charleston. With a continuing interest in anthropology he also became interested in discovering the Native Americans who once lived in the region. This resulted in his limited publication of "Indians of Burke County and Western North Carolina" at a time when archaeologists were excavating a large native town near his home. What happened next, during these "digs" at the Berry site, excited everyone involved -- and began to rewrite the history of early colonial America. Spanish artifacts were uncovered among several cabins constructed in 1567 by soldiers under the command of Captain Juan Pardo who was under orders to claim the Carolinas for King Philip II and the Empire of Spain. Having followed the earlier trail of Captain Hernando de Soto, this Spanish settlement, Fort San Juan, has been documented as the first inland European colony in the southeast -- some twenty years before England's "Lost Colony" arrived on Roanoke Island, North Carolina, and four decades before the English settled at James Town, Virginia. Clark became so fascinated with the idea of Spanish conquistadors marching through this region that he wrote "Of Eagles & Wolves," a stage play about the Pardo expedition into western North Carolina. Further research about sixteenth century Spain and their expanding empire resulted in a book entitled "Spanish Attempts to Colonize Southeast North America: 1513 - 1587," scheduled for publication in late 2010 by McFarland & Company.