Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo
Fifty
years after
Columbus
landed in the New World,
soldier-navigator-explorer Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo led the first European
expedition to the shores of what is now the state of
California
. The voyage, which ended with
Cabrillo’s death, marked the beginning of recorded history in the
Western United States
.
Little
is known about Cabrillo’s early years. Even his nationality is uncertain;
most biographies describe him as Portuguese, but in his exhaustive 1986
biography Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, historian Harry Kelsey writes that
Cabrillo appears to have been born in
Spain
,
"probably in
Seville
,
but perhaps in Cuellar." His date of birth and parentage are also unknown,
but events in Cabrillo’s life lead Kelsey to believe he was born of poor
parents "around 1498 or 1500," and then worked for his keep in the
home of a prominent
Seville
merchant. The final mystery about Cabrillo is his place of burial. He died on
January 3, 1543 off the coast of southern
California
,
but his burial site is unknown; Santa Catalina Island,
San
Miguel
Island
and
Santa Rosa Island
have all been suggested.
Cabrillo’s
adventures in the New World apparently began as a boy in
Cuba
where he served (perhaps as a page) in the
army sent by
Spain
to pacify the country. He grew up to serve as a squadron commander and
shipbuilder in Hernan Cortes’ expedition of conquest in
Mexico
beginning in 1519. Later, as a merchant-adventurer, he took part in several
military campaigns in Central America, including
Guatemala
, where, through the
allocation of land and the use of Indian slave labor to mine gold, he became
one of the region’s richest men.
In
1542, Cabrillo was entrusted by the viceroy of Mexico, Antonio de Mendoza, to
lead an expedition up the coast of New Spain (what is now Baja California) to
seek new opportunities for settlement and trade. It was also hoped that the
expedition would sail on to discover either a new route to
China
, or a passage or river connecting the
Atlantic
and Pacific oceans.
"No
one then had any clear concept of the shape of the Pacific basin or of the
great distances involved," writes Kelsey. "It was generally assumed
that North America was either an extension of the Asian mainland or very close
to it….Maps by Battista Agnese, generally thought to date from around
1550, show the coast of Central America and Lower California meandering lazily
westward and a little north toward Asia.
California
is not much further from Asia than it is from
Central
America
." When Cabrillo’s men returned from their
voyage in 1543, they insisted that the fleet "had come very close to the
coast of
China
."
Cabrillo’s
expedition, Kelsey emphasizes, was a "money-oriented venture, and special
note was to be taken about trade goods, the things that sold well and items
that sold poorly." Of the three ships that formed Cabrillo’s armada
(other accounts put the number at two), the flagship San Salvador was
built and owned by Cabrillo, who stood to profit financially if the mission
succeeded.
"Generally,
the expedition was to adopt a guarded but friendly attitude toward the
natives," writes Kelsey in describing the likely instructions received by
Cabrillo. "If other vessels were sighted, the expedition was to avoid them
and also to avoid doing anything else that might endanger the safety of the
ships or the men. For example, if the commander had checked carefully and found
the natives friendly, then the men might go ashore and make a full
reconnaissance, taking careful notes about the people, their language and
religion, the quality of the soil, the houses they built, and whether
‘the country is an island or mainland.’"
On
June 27, 1542, the Cabrillo expedition left the
harbor
of
Navidad
,
Mexico
and turned north up the western coast of
Baja
.
The armada is estimated to have numbered 200-300 men, including seamen,
soldiers, a number of black and Indian slaves, some merchants and their clerks,
and one or more priests. The ships also carried horses and cattle.
The
only surviving account of Cabrillo’s voyage is based on a report compiled
by a notary, Juan Leon, in 1543 at the request of authorities investigating
Cabrillo’s death and his aborted expedition.
Leon
’s report, which included
interviews with several crewmembers, has never been found; what exists is a
summary of the report made by another investigator, Andres de Urdaneta, who
also had access to logs and charts from the expedition. The first account of
Cabrillo’s voyage to appear in print was by historian Antonio de Herrera
early in the 17th century, long after the explorer’s death.
What the
record shows is a voyage marked by many encounters with
California
natives (as a rule, more friendly than unfriendly), innumerable occasions to
claim land for the crown of
Spain
,
and the first reliable charting of the
California
coast.
Three
months into their journey (having become the first explorers to sail the length
of the Baja peninsula), the Cabrillo armada recorded its first landfall in Alta
or
Upper California
. It was a "sheltered
port and a very good one" which Cabrillo named San Miguel in honor of the
saint whose feast day was a day away. San Miguel is present-day
San Diego
. Earlier they
had passed the
Coronado
Islands
, which they named
Islas Desiertas.
Traveling
north up the heavily populated coast, the voyagers encountered a large and
beautiful island which they named
San Salvador
,
after the expedition’s flagship; we know it today as
Santa
Catalina Island
. Continuing on, they sailed into present-day
San
Pedro
Bay
; seeing thick clouds of smoke from burning chaparral,
they named the area Baya de los Fumos, or
Bay
of
Smoke
.
The ships anchored overnight in what is now
Santa Monica
Bay
.
Next they passed the islands we know today as the
Channel
Islands
; Cabrillo named them Islas de San Lucas, after the Apostle
Luke.
Imagining
the
Channel Islands
scene as the expedition
arrived, Bruce W. Miller writes in Chumash: A Picture of Their World:
"From the shore many Indian canoes flashed across the blue surface of the
channel waters, first approaching the Spanish caravels, then circling the
gallant flagship swiftly and with apparent ease. Each canoe had 12 to 13
tanned, muscular Chumash. Most were naked wearing only a waist string, some
wore skins or cloaks of sea otter. They were friendly and offered fish to the
Spanish… A strange new world had come to the Chumash and though little
changed by this first visit, the Indians almost certainly took this event as
significant, for the Spanish explorers must have seemed truly powerful to
them." Anchored off Goleta Point, Cabrillo’s men were brought so many
fresh sardines that they named the nearby villages Los Pueblos de Sardinas.
Further
north, the armada ran into stormy weather, missed
San
Francisco
Bay
and
finally turned back upon reaching the
Russian
River
, taking shelter in what is now
Monterey
Bay
. On November 23, 1542, the
bedraggled armada arrived back at
Santa Catalina Island
for wintering. A series of running battles took place between Cabrillo’s
men and the island natives. When a party sent ashore for water came under
attack, Cabrillo organized a relief party and rowed ashore. "As he began
to jump out of the boat," one of his sailors recalled, "one foot
struck a rocky ledge, and he splintered a shinbone." Cabrillo was taken
back aboard ship where a surgeon treated his wound, but it soon became affected
with gangrene. He died on January 3, 1543. The armada, now commanded by chief
pilot Bartolome Ferrer (or Ferrelo), attempted to complete the voyage, but
coastal storms proved overwhelming. Battered and leaking, the ships headed back
to
Navidad
,
Mexico
, arriving April 14, 1543.
They had been gone almost nine months, had left no settlements, had found no
passage linking the Atlantic and Pacific, had discovered no new route to
China
. But
New Spain
was no longer the great mystery it had been
prior to Cabrillo’s voyage, and future explorers would profit from his
trail-blazing.
For
many years, Cabrillo’s discoveries went unrecognized and unappreciated.
As Kelsey notes, "no copies of the expedition’s logs and maps
reached
Spain
before 1559," 16 years after his death. "Before that date the royal
cosmographers in
Seville
were unaware of the discoveries made on this journey. None of the place names
were entered on the padron general, the official maps kept at the Casa
de Contratacion…" The earliest map to draw directly upon
information brought back by the Cabrillo expedition was dated 1559. And not
until 1769 did Spain send soldiers, missionaries and settlers to Alta
California to underscore the claims made by Cabrillo some 227 years earlier
(see: Fr. Junipero Serra).
For
further information, see the following books consulted in the preparation of
this article:
* Juan
Rodriguez Cabrillo by Harry Kelsey, published by the Huntington Library,
San Marino, Calif., 1986
* Chumash: A Picture of Their World by Bruce W. Miller, published by
Sand River Press, Los Osos, Calif., 1988
--
contributed by Albert Greenstein, 1999
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