Luisa and Teresa of Appalachia

On this Indigenous Peoples' Day, I thought I would share a remarkable source that has occupied my mind for several years. The following is a translation of two remarkable testimonies given by two equally remarkable women known to us by the Spanish names that were forced upon them: Luisa Meléndez and Teresa Martín. These are, so far as I am aware, the oldest Indigenous descriptions of life in Appalachia, or indeed anywhere in the continental interior.

Luisa and Teresa lived extraordinary lives. They grew up in an Appalachia that few Europeans had even seen. They were both kidnapped by members of the Juan Pardo expedition, a Spanish attempt to explore and subdue the interior South that launched from Spanish Florida. For decades they lived in Spanish settlements, first in Santa Elena in South Carolina and then in Saint Augustine, Florida. Both married Spanish men, although Teresa was widowed by the time this story takes place. In 1600, after 33 years adapting to their captivity in the Spanish world, they (along with Spanish survivors of the Pardo expedition) were asked to describe the places where they had come from.

Luisa had come from a place called Manaytique, in what is now Saltville, Virginia, a prosperous site with natural salt springs. That salt brought in game from the surrounding area, while also providing the people of Manaytique with a valuable trade good. Her testimony seems to brim with excitement, either at the riches she grew up with of the possibility of going home. Manaytique seems to have had ties with the Ohio Valley and is associated with the Chisca people. Teresa was from Joara, now Burke County, North Carolina, which is associated with the Catawba. One notable aspect of her testimony is the seeming disdain she had for Florida.

It is worth noting that this is a Spanish scribe's version of what these women said. The scribe made their answers conform to the structure of testimony and likely shortened them, as well as asking very Spanish-centric questions. I have shortened some of the most formulaic bits for ease of reading, indicate by an elipsis. At the same time, some of Luisa and Teresa's answers seem less than truthful, designed to manipulate the Spanish into bringing them home.

AGI, Santo Domingo 224, R.5, N.36, f. 20v-26r.

Teresa Martin

[4 February, 1600]

She said that what she can say and knows is that a captain named Juan Pardo came to her land with infantry , and that it was by her reckoning 150 leagues from the interior lands to Santa Elena, which is on the sea coast. In her land she saw the Indians and her kin give gifts and respect him. Her people gave a great deal of food from what they had for their own nourishment. That food included corn, beans, pumpkins, peeled chestnuts, meat of cows [bison], deer, and wattle hens [turkeys] and other game, seafood from the rivers and lakes in great quantity. Juan Pardo could go from village to village with them bringing this food, sweeping the roads before him. When Juan Pardo returned [to Santa Elena] he left some soldiers stationed here and there in something like forts. He said that he would return in three or four moons he would return with many people. The Indians, understanding this, waited. A great time passed and he did not return, and the soldiers were disorderly with the Indians and their wives.

During that time, being a girl, she went in the company of the standard bearer Moyano. She didn't know what happened with the soldiers...

She was asked if there is gold, silver, or pearls in her land. She said that when there were meetings and Indian dances they brought nose pendants [chagualas] of silver and gold, but being a girl she wasn't familiar with it. There are pearls, which come from a rushing river, which is a journey from her village. The captain and the standard bearer Moyano were presented with many of them in chests. [Moyano goes to Spain, returns, and is killed by the Indians of Escamacu on the coast of South Carolina.]

Asked where the gold comes from for the nose pendants that the Indians wear at their dances, she said that three or four days journey from her village there are Indians that reside in a mountain chain called Chisca, where they collect the gold. These Indians go around clothes and are very white, red, and blue-eyed like Flemings because their hair has a bit of gold to it. These are the ones that give gold for the nose pendants for the dances and gold pipes with holes that they carry hanging.

Asked if there are large settlements in her land in what houses they lived in, she said that her village was very large and neighborly, with men and women. She couldn't agree on a number, but it is a lot. It is fenced all around, with no more than four main gates that are closed at night because of the wars and large hogs. If they do not close the gates the hogs enter and usually kill some children. The houses are of wood and [razones] covered with bark from sticks.

She was asked which was the superior land, more fertile for food, between Saint Augustine and her land. She said that Saint Augustine was worthless in comparison to her land, because one cannot know hunger. From two or three the had corn, beans, pumpkins, and chestnuts, even without the abundant seafood in the rivers and lakes. There is such a quantity of [hickory] nuts that they gather oil from them. At the foot of a mountain range near her village there are four or five ponds of water that come out salty. From this water, with a certain fire technique the Indians have, they get a great abundance of salt.

The people of her land are different from those here because they are settled and neighborly, rooted with grandchildren and great-grandchildren, not prone to moving nor lying like the Indians of this land. In this land they do nothing but grab their [bells?] and bow and go from island to island swamp to swamp, fishing and hunting without a home...

Luisa Meléndez

In the City of Saint Augustine, 6 February 1600, the General Gonzalo Mendez de Canzo had appear before him:

Luisa Meléndez, Indian, native to the interior lands. From a village called Manaytique, where the standard bearer Moyano went...

She says that what she knows and agrees to is that her land is very good land fertile, with a great deal of food. That food is shelled chestnuts, beans, pumpkin, and walnuts. There are many deer, cattle [bison], bears, wattle hens [turkeys], ducks, and game birds. Her village is very large and neighborly. The houses are made of large planks, covered with chestnut bark and juniper shingles.

Asked if there is gold, silver, or pearls in her land, she said that the Indians have nose pendants [chagualas] and that this gold comes from a mountain chain called Chisca. The Indians of that lands are very pale, with blue eyes and red hair. She does not know if there is silver, because although there are many mountain ranges, the Indians don't know how to mine silver, nor do they know it.

Asked if there are pearls in that land, she said that she went out with many men and women to a river where they harvest many large clams [more likely mussels] and get many pearls. They gave these pearls to Moyano and similarly gave him the nose pendants. She believes that there there are certainly many mountain ranges, valleys, and great rivers and if the Spanish went there they would acquire great wealth. She says she was a child when she left that land can't tell as much about the land as she could now, being a woman. Her husband Juan de Ribas would know more, being a Spanish man.

Asked if a large group of Spaniards could find enough food if they went to that land, she said that they wouldn't lack it. There is also, she said, a spring with three or four ponds of salt water that the Indians make salt from. It rises and falls. In all that land there is no other salt spring...