Tawodi: Cherokee of the Blue Mountains confront Spanish conquistadors (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781519310651)

As a career educator, teacher of world history and general anthropology at a small community college in western North Carolina, Larry Clark developed a special interest in the region's history and prehistory. A limited, self-published edition of Indians of Burke County and Western North Carolina was printed as archaeologists began to excavate a large native village near his home. In addition, for more than a decade, he periodically wrote about Burke County's past for a local newspaper, the News Herald, and eventually published with The History Press of Charleston a collection of these stories in "Burke County: Historic Tales from the Gateway to the Blue Ridge." As a side interest he also self-published a handbook on "Time Capsules: the Why, the How, the Where." More recently "our archaeologists" made an unexpected discovery at the Berry's farm that began to rewrite the history of early colonial America -- Spanish artifacts were uncovered in the 16th century Indian village of Joara among the remains of several burned "cabins" once occupied by soldiers of Captain Juan Pardo. It was here in 1567 that they constructed Fort San Juan (and three more in the region) to claim this land for King Philip II and the Empire of Spain, thereby making these Spanish settlements the first inland European colony in North America and the first lost colony of North Carolina -- some twenty years before England's "Lost Colony" arrived on Roanoke Island, North Carolina, and four decades before the English settled James Town, Virginia. Thereafter Clark became so fascinated with the idea of Spanish conquistadors marching across these lands that he first wrote "Of Eagles & Wolves," a play about Pardo's expeditions into western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee, and then published with McFarland & Company a book entitled "Spanish Attempts to Colonize Southeast North America: 1513 - 1587." This was followed with "La Florida: Imperial Spain Invades Indian Chiefdoms of North America," "The Last Conquistadors of Southeast North America" and an historical fiction novel, "Tawodi: Cherokee of the Blue Mountains confront Spanish Conquistadors." Today, Clark resides with wife Patricia in Irish Creek Valley along a creek that flows into the Berry site of Joara and Fort San Juan.