Ajacán – variants include Xacan, Jacan, Iacan, Axaca and Axacam – was a short-lived Spanish settlement, between 1570 and 1571, near Chesapeake Bay, in what would later become Virginia.
The settlement was intended to be the capital of a larger Spanish colony, named the Province of Axacan, straddling the future Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. In his 1842 Historia de la Compañía de Jesús en Nueva España, Alegre said Father Juan Bautista de Segura and his companions called the province Axacan.
Some early 20th-century historians promoted the idea that the early Spanish explorers who made voyages into the Chesapeake Bay between 1565 and 1570 sailed up the Potomac River as far as Occoquan, Virginia, based on the similarity between "Axacan" of the Spanish missionary chronicles and the name of the Indian town and creek on the Potomac. The chronicles describe the failed Axacan mission in 1570, which included abandonment by their guide, and massacre of the party.
Spanish explorers
Francisco Fernández de Écija, chief pilot of Spaniards searching the Chesapeake Bay for English activities in 1609, asserted that Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón's failed colony of 1526–27, San Miguel de Gualdape, had been located on the James River somewhere near Jamestown. While some historians accepted Écija's claim, more recent scholars believe Ayllón instead went southwest, and that the "River Guandalpe" was in Georgia.
Esteban Gómez named what may have been the Chesapeake Bay, "Immaculate Conception Bay", on his 1525 expedition. No record of the Spanish reaching a place called Axacan was made until 1559–60, the year Sacchini says Dominican missionaries took the Indian they named Don Luis from there. Don Luis was recorded in Viceroyalty of New Spain-Mexico in 1565.
In 1561, Pedro Menéndez de Avilés also believed he could find the Northwest Passage by way of the tributaries flowing east from the Allegheny Mountains' gaps and the rivers flowing west on the other side to the Pacific, as told them by the Native Americans at the range of Axacan.
Vincente Gonzalez described a bay he visited in 1588 where natives told him of an English settlement to the north on a river flowing into it, but did not give a name to the bay. However, Governor of Florida Juan Menéndez Márquez in 1606 asserted that this expedition had been to the Bay of Jacan, and Lowery (1905) also thought the Chesapeake was meant.
Province of Axacan
The Chesapeake Bay was in the Province of Axacan which included the Allegheny Mountains. Virginia was not called thus at this time, before Sir Walter Raleigh and the "Virgin Queen".
The Chesapeake Bay was called "Bahia de Santa Maria" after the time of Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón. Axacan had been called "Land of The Saints" earlier. The Spanish considered this land to be in their domain. Later, Avilés apparently thought the Portuguese were in the vicinity of the mountains eighty leagues (~240 miles) to the north of the Chesapeake Bay and not a great distance from the channel connecting the bay from the "South Sea", Gulf of Mexico.
Greater Axacan and adjoining Allegheny Mountains' western slopes, Mocosa, to Ajacal (Avacal) was thought to have rivers connecting to the south and west seas at that time. It was due to what the Spanish viewed as trespassing that had brought about the order for the monks to support the Virginia mining efforts. Hernando Moyano and Juan Pardo prospected through the Cherokee range in 1566-67 and barely sufficient reports suggest mining continued into the 1690s along the Appalachian Mountain range. These had routed by land. The explorers had discovered the curiosity of interior oil springs, copper outcrops, iron ore and coal for forging. All of which were located towards the Allegheny Mountains and Unaka Range also in the province of Axacan and the northern areas of "La Floridia" as spelled on 16th-century Spanish maps. North of "The Florida" at today's Virginia was called "Land of Don Luis" by later half 16th-century Spanish.