Cabrillo’s voyage of discovery carried him past California’s Big Sur. In four centuries, this coast has lost none of its enchantment.
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.