He led a Spanish expedition from the Atlantic coast through what is now North and South Carolina and into eastern Tennessee[1] on the orders of Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, in an attempt to find an inland route to a silver-producing town in Mexico.
[2] In 1566 Menéndez had built Fort San Felipe and established Santa Elena on present-day Parris Island;[3][4] these were the first Spanish settlements in what is now South Carolina.
[7] He established Fort San Juan at Joara, a Mississippian culture center (near present-day Morganton, North Carolina) and left a garrison behind.
He established an additional five forts to the west of Joara, intended to supply a land route to Zacatecas in present-day Mexico, where the Spanish had silver mines they wanted to protect.
[9] Since 1986, archaeologists working at the Berry Site near Morganton have found evidence of Mound Builders, burned huts and 16th-century Spanish artifacts.