<P> Spanish explorers traveling inland in the 16th century met Mississippian culture people at Joara, a regional chiefdom near present - day Morganton . Records of Hernando de Soto attested to his meeting with them in 1540 . In 1567 Captain Juan Pardo led an expedition to claim the area for the Spanish colony and to establish another route to protect silver mines in Mexico . Pardo made a winter base at Joara, which he renamed Cuenca . His expedition built Fort San Juan and left a contingent of 30 men there, while Pardo traveled further, and built and garrisoned five other forts . He returned by a different route to Santa Elena on Parris Island, South Carolina, then a center of Spanish Florida . In the spring of 1568, natives killed all but one of the soldiers and burned the six forts in the interior, including the one at Fort San Juan . Although the Spanish never returned to the interior, this effort marked the first European attempt at colonization of the interior of what became the United States . A 16th - century journal by Pardo's scribe Bandera and archaeological findings since 1986 at Joara have confirmed the settlement . </P> <P> In 1584, Elizabeth I granted a charter to Sir Walter Raleigh, for whom the state capital is named, for land in present - day North Carolina (then part of the territory of Virginia). It was the second American territory which the English attempted to colonize . Raleigh established two colonies on the coast in the late 1580s, but both failed . The fate of the "Lost Colony" of Roanoke Island remains one of the most widely debated mysteries of American history . Virginia Dare, the first English child to be born in North America, was born on Roanoke Island on August 18, 1587; Dare County is named for her . </P> <P> As early as 1650, settlers from the Virginia colony moved into the area of Albemarle Sound . By 1663, King Charles II of England granted a charter to start a new colony on the North American continent; it generally established North Carolina's borders . He named it Carolina in honor of his father Charles I. By 1665, a second charter was issued to attempt to resolve territorial questions . In 1710, owing to disputes over governance, the Carolina colony began to split into North Carolina and South Carolina . The latter became a crown colony in 1729 . </P> <P> In the 1700s, a series of smallpox epidemics swept the South, causing high fatalities among the Native Americans, who had no immunity to the new disease (it had become endemic in Europe). According to the historian Russell Thornton, "The 1738 epidemic was said to have killed one - half of the Cherokee, with other tribes of the area suffering equally ." </P>

Where did the name north carolina come from
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