Joara

Joara was a Mississippian chiefdom in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in present-day North Carolina. Established around 1000, it was visited by Hernando de Soto's expedition in 1540.

In 1567 Juan Pardo built Fort San Juan there; in 1568 local people killed its soldiers and burned the buildings. Joara was abandoned before English explorers reached the region in the seventeenth century.