Bear Flag Rising: The Conquest of California, 1846 - Softcover

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Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo had commanded a company of crossbowmen in the march by Hernán Cortés to the Aztec capital of Tenochitlán in 1519, and for these and other military labors, he had earned the confidence of the viceroyalty of Mexico. After two decades of service to Spain in the New World, the Portuguese-born officer was given his first command--an odd assignment for a soldier, but an important one. In June, 1542, he sailed north from the port of La Natividad, on the Pacific coast of Mexico, his flagship the caravel San Salvador accompanied by a smaller vessel, the Victoria.

Cabrillo's mission, assigned him by the viceroy, was to explore the uncharted "coast of Cathay," believed to be a large island somewhere in the north, and perhaps discover any number of fabled places: the Strait of Anian, a northwest passage between the two great oceans; or the seaport of Quivira, a land said to contain Seven Cities of Gold ruled by El Dorado, a king whose subjects dusted him with gold every morning and washed it off every night.

He might even find the island mentioned in a popular work by the Spaniard Ordóñez de Montalvo titled Las sergas de Esplandián ("The Deeds of Esplandián"), published in Madrid in 1510. Thistale told how the Christians in Constantinople had fought a force of black Amazons led by Queen Califía of the island of California. The island was said to be located "at the right hand of the Indies" and close to the Terrestrial Paradise, a place bounteous in gold and guarded by griffins that carried unwary intruders high into the sky and dropped them to their deaths.

Whatever he was searching for, the record of Cabrillo's voyage, written about thirteen years later, states that on "Sunday, July 2 [1542], they sighted California."

He sailed up the unknown coast, charting islands, bays, inlets, reefs and rocks, among the latter a dangerous group he named the Habre Ojos--"Watch Out." In September, he visited a "good harbor" that he named San Miguel (soon called San Diego), found ways to talk with coastal Indians, and sailed on, often far to seaward to avoid fierce winds and the terrifying crash of the ocean on the cliffs and rock-girded beaches. He sighted but did not visit a widemouthed harbor 450 miles north of San Miguel and named it Baia de los Pinos (probably Monterey Bay), and in mid-November, after sailing past a great fog-shrouded place that would become known in three hundred years as the Golden Gate, the San Salvador and Victoria anchored in a large bay about six hundred miles north of San Miguel. This anchorage was visited thirty-five years later by the English freebooter, Sir Francis Drake, and given his name.

On the return voyage, somewhere in the islands off Santa Barbara Channel on January 3, 1543, Cabrillo died of an infection caused by having broken his arm and shoulder in a shipboard fall, but he had made his mark: this Portuguese-Spaniard soldier-mariner found the land that had been named before it had been seen.

 

 

After Cabrillo's expedition, 227 years passed before the Spaniards made their first settlement there, but in the waiting, California was rediscovered many times.

Galleons from the Philippine Islands, a Spanish possession from 1564 and governed by a viceroyalty of New Spain, built a profitable trade between Manila and Mexico and skirted the California coast laden with cargoes of silks, damasks, spices, chinaware, wax, and other exotic goods of the Far East. The rules of the trade called for the galleons, outward-bound from Manila, to follow the Great Circle. This route took them northeast toward Japan, then due east along the forty-first parallel to the vicinity of Cape Mendocino, westernmost point of the California coast, then south past Baja California to Acapulco. There were at least two hundred Manila galleon voyages to Mexico and many of them, perhaps most, touched on the California shore to fill water casks, cut wood, and search for game.

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Then Drake came. He and his corsairs sailed from Plymouth in November, 1577, with a fleet of six vessels led by the hundred-ton Golden Hind. They ran south to the Cape Verdes and into the Strait of Magellan, took seventeen days to thread the hellish Horn, and, as they entered the Pacific, endured a storm that lasted fifty-two days, destroyed some of their ships and sent others scurrying back to England. Now alone, a speck on the measureless ocean, Drake worried the battered Hind north along the gale-swept western coast of South America, his cutthroat crew sacking Spanish towns from Chile north to Mexico and filling the hold of the flagship with gold and silver bullion and plate, pearls and emeralds, and all manner of plunder. The Hind captured and looted many Spanish ships as well. One of them, bound for Panama, had the memorable name Cacafuego ("Shitfire") and was grappled to the Hind off Lima. It was found to contain so much booty--twenty-six tons of silver bullion, eighty pounds of gold, plus weapons, gunpowder, clothing, and religious artifacts--that it took three days for Drake's pinnaces to transfer the cargo to his flagship.

The master mariner sailed on and spent a month in the summerof 1579 on the California coast, careening, refitting and provisioning the Golden Hind, and claiming the land, which he named Nova Albion, for his patron, Elizabeth I. Drake may have entered the Golden Gate, though he made no mention of the spectacular bay that lay inside the headlands. He did trade with the Miwok Indians of the northern coast and may have journeyed as far north as the future Bodega Bay before sailing west for Mindanao, Java, the Indian Ocean, the Cape of Good Hope, and home to Plymouth in September, 1580, completing his circumnavigation of the globe in two years and nine months.

 

 

The Englishman's claim of New Albion does not seem to have greatly disturbed the Spanish crown or its viceregal authorities in the New World, but since a port was needed for the Manila galleon trade, Spain did send several expeditions to the California coast in the years following Drake's foray.

The most significant of these explorations was that of the adelantado (merchant-adventurer) Sebastian Vizcaíno, who set out from Acapulco with two ships in the spring of 1602. In December, he arrived off Cabrillo's Bay of San Miguel, which he renamed for his flagship San Diego, then moved north, bestowing names, most of them holy names, on the islands, points, and inlets he spied--Santa Catalina, Santa Barbara, Punta Concepción. At Santa Catalina, he saw many Indian canoes made of cedar and pine, their seams caulked with brea from seepages along the coast, some of them carrying fifteen men who rowed like galley slaves.

The prize discovery of Vizcaíno's expedition was the sighting of a magnificent harbor. It was, he said, "the best port that could be desired, for besides being sheltered from all the winds, it has many pines for masts and yards, and live oaks, and white oaks, and water in great quantity, all near the shore." He spoke of the bay being "excellent for shipping," sheltered from the winds, ideal to provide securityand protection for ships from Manila, and a climate resembling that of Castile.

He named it for the viceroy of Mexico, the Conde de Monterey.

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By the time the Spaniards made their first mission foothold there in 1769, the immense and still unmapped land they called California was...