The Seafarers
History has preserved only dim outlines of the remarkable career of Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, who died in 1543 while attempting to complete the first exploration of California’s coastline. Though he is generally supposed to have been Portuguese, the evidence is too scanty to be sure.[5] There is no firm agreement about the cause or place of his death. He is variously reported to have used two, three, and even four vessels on his great exploration. Even his name has invited speculation. It appears on the few surviving documents he signed in the abbreviated form Juan Rodz. (The Portuguese spelling would normally end in “s,” the Spanish in “z.”) What then of Cabrillo, which means “little goat”? Was it an affectionate nickname that he liked and used informally to distinguish himself from numerous other Juan Rodríguezes, a name as common in Hispanic countries as John Smith is in English-speaking regions? In any event he should be known formally as Juan Rodríguez. The name Cabrillo is, however, so firmly fixed in California history that it will be used in this account.
Whatever his name and origin, Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo learned seafaring in his youth. He arrived in Cuba in the second decade of the 1500s, perhaps as a sailor or, because of his age, as a page. Yet he apparently joined the Narváez expedition that was dispatched from Cuba to arrest Cortés as a crossbowman. Like most of his companions, he deserted Narváez and joined Cortés at Vera Cruz and afterwards survived the grisly noche triste when the Aztecs drove the Spaniards from their capital at Tenochtitlán. Immediately thereafter his chance came to display his nautical skills.
Cortés knew that if he were to recapture lake-bound Tenochtitlán, he would have to control the causeways that linked the city to the mainland. That meant building enough small brigantines to overpower the Aztec war canoes that had harried the retreating Spaniards so mercilessly during the noche triste. According to the soldier-historian Bernal Díaz del Castillo, Cortés put Cabrillo in charge of four “men of the sea” who understood how to make pine tar for caulking ships. But was that all the younger warrior did? Seamen were needed in all phases of the operation, beginning with the prefabrication of thirteen brigantines 50 miles from the capital and then transporting the pieces on the backs of at least 8,000 porters to the shores of the lake, where they were reassembled.
Each brigantine was manned by a dozen oarsmen, who also handled the sails. Each carried several crossbowmen and arquebus marksmen. The little fleet was important enough that Cortés took charge in person. A fortuitous wind enabled the brigantines to hoist sails and smash with devastating effect into a massed gathering of Aztec canoes. Afterwards they fought a dozen fierce skirmishes while protecting the footmen on the causeway—opportunity enough for a good sailor and fighter to catch the general’s eye, if indeed Cabrillo was in the fleet, as he well may have been.
Tenochtitlán regained, the actual conquest of Mexico began. Small bands of Spaniards, reinforced by numerous Indian allies, radiated out in all directions. It is known that Cabrillo participated as an officer of crossbowmen in the conquest of Oaxaca. Later he joined red-bearded Pedro de Alvarado, cousin of Coronado’s officer, Hernando de Alvarado, in seizing Guatemala and El Salvador. During those long, sanguinary campaigns Cabrillo performed well enough that he was rewarded with encomiendas in both Guatemala and Honduras.
An encomienda was a grant of land embracing one or more Indian villages. In exchange for protecting the village and teaching the inhabitants to become Christian subjects of the king, the encomendero was entitled to exact taxes and labor from them. Most grant holders ignored duties while concentrating on the privileges. What kind of master Cabrillo was does not appear. Anyway, for the next 15 years his Indian laborers grew food for slaves he had put to work in placer mines on his lands and in the shipyards he supervised on Guatemala’s Pacific coast. He traded profitably with Peru and meanwhile enriched his personal life by taking an Indian woman as his consort. With her he fathered several children. Later he brought a Spanish wife—Beatriz Sánchez de Ortega—into his extensive and, for the time and place, luxurious household.
Successful shipbuilding helped keep the excitement of the conquistadors high, for if the world was as small as generally believed, China, the islands of Indonesia, and the Philippines, discovered by Magellan in 1521, could not be far away. There might be other islands as well, ruled by potentates as rich as Moctezuma or inhabited by gorgeous black Amazons who allowed men to visit them only on certain occasions and afterwards slew them. There was that mythical “terrestrial paradise” called California in a popular romance of the time, Las Sergas de Esplandián. According to the author, seductive California was ruled by dazzling queen Calafia, whose female warriors wielded swords of gold, there being no other metal in the land, and used man-eating griffins as beasts of burden. What a spot to find!
The ships charged with searching for these places were built of materials hauled overland (except for timber) from the Atlantic to the Pacific by Indian bearers. The vessels were small, ill-designed, cranky, and often did not have decks. Nevertheless, ships sent out into the unknown by Cortés during the early 1530s discovered a strip of coast the sailors believed was part of an island. They were the first, probably, to refer to it as California, perhaps in derision since the desolate area was so totally different from the paradise described in the romance. The notion of nearby Gardens of Eden persisted, however, and interest soared again when Cabeza de Vaca’s party reached Mexico in 1536 with tales of great cities in the north.
Cortés, who considered himself the legitimate adelantado of the north, tried to cut in on Mendoza’s plans to exploit the Vaca discoveries. Rebuffed, he defied the Viceroy by dispatching three ships under a kinsman, Francisco de Ulloa—one of the vessels soon foundered—to search for a sea opening to the lands of Cíbola. Finding himself locked in a gulf, Ulloa retreated along the eastern edge of the 800-mile-long peninsula that we call Baja California, rounded its tip and continued north to within 130 miles or so of the present U.S.-Mexico border. No inlets. His ships battered by adverse winds and his men wracked by scurvy, he returned to Mexico, only to be murdered, it is said, by one of his sailors.
The only man remaining who could have saved Cortés’s dimming star was his old captain, Pedro de Alvarado, then governor of Guatemala. Dreaming of still more wealth in the sea, Alvarado, too, had built a pair of shipyards on the Pacific coast and had put Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo in charge of creating vessels out of materials dragged overland by Indians from the Atlantic. In 1538 Alvarado went to Spain and returned with 300 volunteers and a license to conquer any islands he found in the South Seas. By then he commanded 13 vessels, several of which had been built by Cabrillo. In the fleet were three galleons of 200 tons each, one of which, the San Salvador was owned and piloted by Cabrillo; seven ships of 100 tons, and three lesser brigantines. If Alvarado had thrown in with Cortés ... but prudence dictated that he consult first with Mendoza, who had already invested some money in the building of the armada. So he took the fleet north to the port of Colima, due west of Mexico City and left it at anchor there, under Cabrillo’s watchful eye, while he went inland to dicker with the Viceroy.
In the end Mendoza and Alvarado agreed to share equally in the expenses and profits of a double venture: they would send some ships west to the Philippines and some north to Cíbola and then on to a strait called Anian, which supposedly sliced through the upper latitudes of the continent. The arrangements, which ignored Cortés’s claims, sent the aging conquistador hurrying to Spain in 1540 in search of justice, as he defined justice. He never returned.
Alvarado had no opportunity to exploit the newly opened field. When an Indian revolt broke out in provinces of Jalisco and Michacán, the viceroy called on Alvarado to bring in his volunteers as reinforcements. During an engagement in the summer of 1541, a horse lost its footing on a steep hillside, rolled down and crushed Alvarado to death.
Navigation was still in its infancy in Cabrillo’s day. Mariners sailed by “dead” reckoning, a method of figuring location by multiplying time by estimated speed over a given course. The main instruments were the compass, the hourglass, and the astrolabe. None of these devices was exact, and charts and mathematical tables were often inaccurate. Hence mariners sailed as much by instinct as by science. Skill often meant the difference between a successful voyage and wreck.
Onerous problems followed. Alvarado’s estate had to be put in order; ships had to be refitted; the chaos of an earthquake at Santiago, Guatemala, headquarters of Cabrillo’s holdings, had to be confronted. In due time Mendoza acquired control of the fleet, including the use of Cabrillo’s San Salvador, and in 1542 launched the major explorations previously agreed on. Ruy Lopéz de Villalobos took ships to the Philippines. On June 27 of that same year Cabrillo headed north with three vessels: San Salvador, which he captained; Victoria, commanded by pilot Bartolomé Ferrer (a pilot ranked just below a captain and was far more than a mere guide); and San Miguel, a small brigantine used as a launch and service vessel. It was commanded by Antonio Correa, an experienced shipmaster. More than 200 persons were crowded aboard the three vessels.[6]
Because both Ulloa and Alarcón had reported that the Sea of Cortés was a gulf, Cabrillo made no effort to follow the mainland north, but led his ships directly toward the tip of the peninsula, calling it California without comment, as though the name was already in current use. For nearly three months they sailed along Baja’s outer coast, bordered much of the way by “high, naked, and rugged mountains.” Because they were looking for a river entrance to the interior and for a strait leading to the Atlantic, they sailed as close to land as they dared, constantly tacking in order to defeat the contrary winds and the Pacific’s erratic currents.
About August 20 they passed the most northerly point (Punta del Engaño) reached by Ulloa. A little farther on, where the land was flat, they beached the vessels to make some necessary repairs and, while exploring the neighborhood, found a camp of Indian fishermen. The native leaders, their bodies decorated with slashes of white paint, came on board, looked over the sailors and soldiers and indicated “they had seen other men like them who had beards and had brought dogs, ballestas [crossbows] and swords.” Since there was no mention of horses, the strangers probably had come from ships. Ulloa’s men of 1539? Hernando de Alarcón’s of 1540? Or a later party, for there had been talk of Alarcón’s returning for another venture inland. Mystified, Cabrillo entrusted the Indians with a letter for the bearded ones.
They relaunched the ships and another month dragged by—crosswinds, headwinds, calms. Cabrillo took constant sightings of sun and stars with his massive astrolabe, no small task for he had to stand with his back braced against a mast for steadiness on the heaving deck while he called out the readings that were to be recorded in the log. Speed was computed by throwing a wooden float over the stern and counting the marks flashing by as the line holding it unwound from its reel. Compasses were used, but magnetic declinations were not well understood. All of Cabrillo’s longitudes and latitudes were wide of the mark, but the fault was not entirely his or his instruments. He began his reckonings at a point inaccurately observed by others. Even the precise location of Mexico City was unknown in 1542.
San Salvador, Cabrillo’s Flagship
Cabrillo himself built the ship he sailed up the California coast. It was constructed between 1536 and 1540 at Iztapa on the west coast of Guatemala. This region was something of a shipbuilding center, with a reputation for better quality than the yards of Seville, Spain. Much of the labor was furnished by Indians and black slaves, whole villages of whom were conscripted to portage supplies, raise food, cut lumber, trim timbers, and make pitch, rope, and charcoal.
San Salvador was a full-rigged galleon, with an approximate length of 100 feet, a beam of 25 feet, and a draft of 10 feet. The crew numbered about 60: 4 officers, 25 to 30 seamen, and 2 or 3 apprentices, and two dozen or so slaves, blacks and Indians. On the voyage to California, San Salvador also carried about 25 soldiers and at least one priest. The ship was armed with several cannon.
Ship’s fare was wine, hard bread, beans, salt meat, fish, and anything fresh picked up along the way, all washed down by mugs of wine. Officers, who probably brought along food of their own and servants to prepare it, ate better. Slaves lived off rations of soup and bread and scraps left by others.
The ship’s cannon probably resembled this Lombardo of the period. It fired a stone ball about 3½ inches in diameter.
This illustration by John Batchelor is based on the research of Melbourne Smith.
On September 28, three months after leaving Mexico, the ships crossed the future international border and put into a “very good enclosed port, to which they gave the name San Miguel.” It was our San Diego.
The Indians there were afraid. That evening they wounded, with arrows, three men of a fishing party. Instead of marching forth in retaliation, Cabrillo sailed slowly on into the harbor, caught two boys, gave them presents, and let them go. The kindness worked. The next day three large men partly dressed in furs (the “Summary” says) came to the ship and galloped around to illustrate horsemen killing Indians far inland. Melchior Díaz, fighting Yumans during his crossing of the Colorado in the fall of 1540? Or had word of Coronado’s battles at Háwikuh and on the Rio Grande trickled this far west along the trade trails? In any event, Europeans were no longer a mystery. On three more occasions Cabrillo picked up rumors of Spaniards in the interior.
After easily riding out the first storm of the season in the harbor, the ships sailed on, pausing at Avalon on Santa Catalina Island and later at the island we call San Clemente. Along the way they remarked on the many flat-lying streamers of smoke from Indian villages near San Pedro and, later, Santa Monica Bays (warnings, unrecognizable then, of temperature inversions and smog). Somewhere near modern Oxnard, they spent a few pleasant days with Chumash Indians, admiring their big, conical huts and their marvelous plank canoes. Tantalized by a fresh rumor of Spaniards near a large river (the Colorado?), Cabrillo sent out a letter in care of some Indians “on a chance.” But where the river reached the coast, if it did, he could not learn.
A deadeye and a triple-purchase block of the type used on San Salvador. Deadeyes and lanyards were employed in fixed rigging, frequently to secure shrouds that supported the mast; on the right is a typical setup, by which lines were tightened and secured to the vessel’s frame. A block and tackle were essential for hoisting heavy yards. Drawings by John Batchelor.
The coast from Oxnard to Cabo de Galera (our Point Conception) runs roughly east and west for nearly a hundred miles before bending sharply north. This stretch was heavily populated. Many canoes traveled alongside the ships, and there was a great deal of calling back and forth and exchanges of gifts. A string of islands, also populated, paralleled the shore, forming what is now called the Santa Barbara Channel. On October 18 the Spanish ships endeavored to round Cabo de Galera but were blown by strong winds out to the westernmost of the Channel Islands, one the mariners had not yet explored. They named it Posesión (it is now San Miguel) and remained in the shelter of Cuyler’s Harbor for about a week.
The idyllic days were over—and so, in many critical ways, is agreement between Juan Páez’s “Summary” of Cabrillo’s log and the testimony about the trip given in 1560 to the audiencia of Guatemala by Lázaro de Cárdenas and Francisco de Vargas, both of whom told the court they had been on the trip.
During the stay on Posesión, according to the “Summary,” Cabrillo fell and broke his arm near the shoulder. In spite of that, he resumed the journey, rounded Point Conception, was again driven back, tried once more, and in mid-November succeeded. The fleet soon reached the rugged Santa Lucia Range, in which William Randolph Hearst four centuries later built fabulous San Simeon. For the mariners it was a heart-stopping area—“mountains which seem to reach the heavens.... Sailing close to the land, it appears as though they would fall on the ships. They are covered with snow.”
They may have sailed as far as the vicinity of Point Reyes, a little north of San Francisco Bay, or they may have gone no farther than Monterey Bay, where they almost certainly anchored on November 16. Whatever their northernmost point, they turned back, probably because of bad weather, possibly because of Cabrillo’s sufferings. On November 23 they once again landed on San Miguel Island. There, sensing he was about to die, Cabrillo made the pilot, Bartolomé Ferrer (or Ferrelo in some accounts) swear to continue the explorations. On January 3, 1543, he perished and was buried on the island.
Or was he? In 1901, an amateur archeologist, Philip M. Jones, found on Santa Rosa Island, just east of San Miguel, an old Indian mano, or grinding stone, into one of whose sides a cross and the fused initials JR had been incised. The stone was stored in a basement at the University of California, Berkeley, until 1972, when Berkeley’s noted anthropologist, Dr. Robert Heizer, began wondering whether the curiosity might have once marked Juan Rodríguez’s grave. So far extensive examinations have determined nothing about this additional mystery.
The Chumash: Village Dwellers
The Indians that Cabrillo encountered along the Santa Barbara coast were the village-dwelling Chumash. Their villages were groupings of houses, according to a later traveler, with a sweat-house, store-rooms, a ceremonial plaza, a gaming area, and a cemetery some distance off. The houses were cone-shaped, spacious and comfortable. A hole in the roof admitted light and vented smoke from cook fires. Apart from the brief skirmish at San Diego Bay, Cabrillo found the California Indians a gentle, friendly people.
Two views of the Chumash:
An early illustration of two fishermen, from George Shelvocke’s Voyage Around the World, 1726.
Artist Louis S. Glanzman’s drawing of a woman with a garment. “They were dressed in skins,” said Cabrillo’s diarist, “and wore their hair very long and tied up with long strings interwoven with the hair ... attached to the strings were many gewgaws of flint, bone, and wood.”
This stone found on Santa Rosa Island may have once marked the burial place of Cabrillo.
And then there is the testimony of Cárdenas and Vargas in 1560. They said, without giving dates, that Cabrillo decided to winter on Posesión, which the witnesses called La Capitana, and that on stepping ashore from the ship’s boats he fell between some rocks, broke his shin bone, and died 12 days later. Vargas adds that the fall resulted from Cabrillo’s hurry to help some of his men, who were battling Indians. A splintered shin bone with its possibilities for gangrene sounds more deadly than a broken arm.
On February 18, 1543, after beating around the Santa Barbara Channel for more than a month, exploring and taking on wood and water, Ferrer resumed the trip, as Cabrillo had asked. Standing well out to sea, he scudded north until on March 1 he was opposite—who knows? Cape Mendocino? The California-Oregon border? The mouth of the Rogue River? Wherever they were, the sea, breaking over the little ships with terrifying fury, was driving them irresistibly toward the rock-punctuated shore. They prayed fervently, and suddenly the wind shifted, driving them south “with a sea so high they became crazed.” The storm separated the ships, San Salvador ran out of food, and the sailors were in dire straits until they were able to land at Ventura and later San Diego, where, in addition to food, they also picked up a half a dozen Indian boys to train as interpreters in case of a repeat journey.
Miraculously, the ships rejoined at Cedros Island off Baja California, and on April 14, 1543, they reached Navidad, nine and a half months after their departure. There was no repeat journey. Like De Soto and Coronado, they had located neither treasure nor shortcuts to the Orient. After that, no one else wanted to try, and Spain’s first great era of exploration of the United States came to an end.
Mission churches were the vanguard of Spanish civilization in the Southwest. They softened the imperatives of the state and eased inexorable cultural transitions. San Jose Mission was established along the San Antonio River in 1720. Still an active parish, the mission today is a unit of San Antonio National Historical Park, Texas.