Juan Rodriquez Cabrillo, the man best known for charting and claiming California, made his career in a remarkable life which was guided by the Spanish conquest of the New World.
According to a 1986 biography of Cabrillo by Harry Kelsey, Cabrillo was not just an explorer, but also an entrepreneur, soldier, master shipbuilder, miner, farmer, author and owner of slaves and large estates. He spent most of his life in the Spanish conquest, participating in a number of roles as a page, a crossbowman, a military leader, and a key figure in building several armadas of ships.
His birthplace and origins are shrouded in mystery and controversy, and scholars still debate whether he is from Spain or Portugal.[1] The name Cabrillo was first mentioned in 1536 and in most Spanish archives, he is listed as Joao Rodriques Cabrilho (a name spelled with an "H"). In his younger life he is simply referred to as Juan Rodriquez, which is just about as common as John Smith nowadays. Typically, in the 16th century, a surname was later given to emigrants in the New World, and it was usually derived from the town, region or province from which they came.
According to Kelsey, Portuguese historian Cestino Soares insists that the explorer is from Portugal, but acknowledges that the name Cabrillo is not known in Portugal. There are, however, several towns, rivers and mountains named Cabril, and they are often described in the Spanish feminine adjectival form such as Cabrilla, Cabrillas and Cabrillanes. But they are never called Cabrillo or Cabrilho.
Manuel Macias, who teaches the history of Latin America at Cabrillo, read Kelsey's book and was convinced that Cabrillo was of Spanish descent.
"What his grandson said should be proof enough," Macias said.
Macias was referring to sworn testimony given by Cabrillo's grandson, Geronimo Cabrillo de Aldana, Dec. 4, 1617. Aldana proclaimed then, "My paternal grandfather, Juan Rodriquez Cabrillo came (to the New World) from the Kingdoms of Spain in the company of Panfilo de Narvaez."
In 1955, historian Maurice Holmes searched for Cabrillo records in Portuguese archives and found none. Eight years later, Joan M. Jensen, trying to resolve the dilemma for the Cabrillo Historical Association of San Diego, traveled to each of the Portuguese villages named Cabril but found no solid evidence of Cabrillo's origins. Yet after observing how the strong Portuguese tradition was attached to Cabrillo's namesake, she believed Cabrillo was surely Portuguese.
In 1973 historian W. Michael Mathes did research into genealogical and historical records in Spain and Portugal and found 124 sailors and soldiers names Juan Rodriquez who came to the New World prior to 1542. In response to insistence by Portuguese historians that Cabrillo came from Portugal, Mathes said they twisted facts in "a desperate attempt to prove a thesis rather than present objective evidence." Mathes concluded that there was not enough evidence to confirm his nationality, but speculated that there was much to suggest that Cabrillo was Castilian.
Kelsey believes Cabrillo first came to the New World in 1509, skipping from island to island in the West Indies with the Spanish military leader Narvaez.
Macias said the Spanish presence in the Indies and its consequent expansion into Central and South America, stemmed from the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas, in which the Pope divided spheres of influence in the New World between the Spanish and the Portuguese. The imperialistic nations were granted authority to subjugate regions in the New World in exchange for their help in spreading Christianity.
Kelsey speculated that Cabrillo, along with his close friend Diego Sanchez de Ortega, served as pages to Narvaez. Both pages, at around ages 10 to 12, were too young to fight. Narvaez apparently recruited his men from the Tierra de Cuellar region in Spain. It's believed both Cabrillo and Ortega came from the area and later moved to Seville, where the Ortegas, a rich merchant family, maintained their home. Kelsey thinks that Cabrillo may have been taken in by the family.
Of Cabrillo and Ortega, Kelsey wrote:
"This Juan Rodriquez and Diego Sanchez... these two had connections with the armies and fleets of the Indies. They were merchants and investors. They had practical educations and the same experience that Juan R. Cabrillo received in his early years...
"These (entrepreneurs) were typically young industrious members of powerful commercial families of Seville, sent to the Indies with cargoes of goods for sale or trade. Their letters contain no pretensions to scholarship, no allusions to classics or Scripture. The messages are brief and direct in all business but clear and homey."
Cabrillo first arrived in the New World in Jamaica and then traveled with Narvaez to Cuba in 1511 joining a force of several hundred Spanish soldiers who were led by Diego Velazquez, later made the first Spanish governor of Cuba. The Spanish were claiming the island for the kingdom of Spain. Narvaez led a cuadrilla of 30 crossbowmen, each served by a Jamaican slave. Kelsey believes Cabrillo went on the mission with Narvaez, who pursued a bloody, grisly march into the interior of Cuba.
According to Kelsey, the chaplain who accompanied the Narvaez expedition, Bartolome de las Casas, was horrified by Narvaez's slaughter of the Indians. Las Casas charged Narvaez himself with killing 2,000 Indians and said countless others were killed by the horsemen and foot soldiers bearing swords and crossbows. Kelsey wrote:
"One evening after a long and thirsty march in the interior, Narvaez and his army arrived at the village of Caonao, where the Indians greeted them with food and calabashes of water. Thus refreshed, the Spaniards were invited to enjoy a fish dinner prepared by the villagers. While the soldiers ate, the natives looked on, examining the horses -- those peculiar animals the Indians had only heard about but not seen -- and marveling at the dress and equipment of the Spaniards. As the curious villagers pressed closer, a soldier suddenly drew his sword and began hacking away at the bystanders. This was a signal for all to join in the slaughter, killing young and old, men and women, even domestic animals."
Las Casas, horrified by the scene, abandoned the expedition and said, "You and your men can go to the devil."
Las Casas later documented the brutal encomienda system which granted Spanish masters and other proprietors vast tracts of land in which the residing natives were forced to pay annual tasaciones. These new rulers were called encomenderos who collected taxes or "tributes" from the indigenous people in the form of goods or services rendered. Encomenderos were supposed to indoctrinate the indigenous people with Christianity and provide protection from external enemies. If the native people refused to pay the tasaciones or acknowledge Spanish authority, Las Casas said they were branded as slaves and marched off to the many goldmines in 16th Century Cuba.
Las Casas, himself an encomendero, saw whole Cuban villages where no men were left to work in the fields, and as a consequence, women were so undernourished they could no longer nurse their babies. He said within a period of three months 7,000 infants died, and 70,000 children died of starvation. Men in the mines, given little food and rest, also succumbed. As Cuban slaves became harder to find, the Spanish imported Indians from other islands and Blacks from Africa to replace the indigenous slaves that died.
Spain's official royal historian, Oviedo, said much gold was extracted, but the human cost was immense. Kelsey asserts that in these early days of the conquest, the young Cabrillo received his training for the subsequent conquest of Latin America.
In 1520 Cabrillo, serving as a crossbowman, arrived in Mexico with Narvaez. The Spanish force was sent with the intent of replacing the renegade Hernan Cortes, who left Cuba with 300 men to conquer Mexico without the crown's permission. Using some trickery, Cortes outmaneuvered Narvaez's larger force and absorbed Narvaez's troops with the promise of Aztec treasure.
Cabrillo was soon made a captain of a cuadrilla, and later served a vital role in bringing about the fall of Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital at the site of present day Mexico City. Cabrillo was charged with the construction of 13 brigantines launched on Lake Xochimilco which surrounded the islands of Tenochtitlan. The small ships were used to shuttle Spanish soldiers around the water-locked capital. The Spanish had to make use of available raw materials. Normally, ships were sealed with boiled pine pitch cattle tallow.
Cabrillo's problem was this: neither the Aztecs nor the Spanish had any cattle, and therefore, no beef tallow available. According to Kelsey's book, the pitch makers, determined to get the job done, improvised by butchering the bodies of dead Indians. The human fat was rendered into tallow and applied to the boats with the pine pitch.
As a reward for his military service, Cabrillo was granted large encomiendas in highland Guatemala near present-day Coban. Cabrillo prospered at farming and mining and became very influential in Guatemala. In 1536 the Spanish governor of Guatemala, Pedro de Alvarado, commissioned Cabrillo to build a fleet of ships to cross the unexplored Pacific to Asia.
The construction of two fleets of about 20 ships of different sizes on the West Coast of Guatemala was an incredible feat considering the logistics involved at the time. The timber and other materials were obtained from the raw resources of Guatemala, and the necessary hardware, such as anchors, sails and rope and other gear, was imported from Spain and carried overland on a road constructed across rugged Guatemala. Cabrillo's shipbuilding campaign, originally planned for journeys to Asia, led to exploration of California.
The voyage began in 1540, traveling up the coast of Mexico but was delayed by the death of Alvarado in an Indian uprising. The Spanish Mexican governor, Antonio de Mendoza, changed the sailing plans and requisitioned the superior part of the fleet for a journey to the Philippines by Lopez de Villalobos. A devastating earthquake in Guatemala in 1541 further delayed Cabrillo, who described the results of the disaster in one of the first secular writings in the New World Spanish kingdom.
On June 27, 1542, Cabrillo left for California with two ships, including his personal ship, the San Salvador, manned by conscripts and natives.
Juan Rodriquez Cabrillo, the legendary figure for whom the school and a local freeway are named, spent the last year of his life in an epic sailing voyage that charted the coast of California and claimed it for the king of Spain.
Cabrillo, who is often credited with being the first European to discover California, may have really followed on the heels of Hernan Cortez. Spanish royal historians say Cortez first discovered this place in 1536, just a decade after his conquest of the Aztec civilization.
Cabrillo's trip was motivated by many factors. Spain wanted an easier route to the Pacific than the long loop around South America. Early explorers, including Cabrillo, were hoping to find a route through the American continent via the alleged northwest passageway called the Strait of Anian.
"Imagine Cabrillo coming up the coast of California. Every time he sees a big river, he wonders whether he's found the passage," said instructor Manuel Macias, who teaches the history of Mexico at Cabrillo. "A lot of time was spent investigating water channels."
Macias said that the broad expanse of the Pacific Ocean was unknown to navigators, who believed it to be much smaller than its actual size. China was thought to be adjacent to the New World, and California was thought to be "on the right side of the Indies," as described in a legendary novel.
The Spanish explorers placed their beliefs in Garci Ordonez de Montalvo's Las Sergas de Esplandian, a mythical adventure story about the island of California ruled by Amazons, a society of black women who carried gold weapons and were ruled by their queen, Calafia. The conquistadors dreamed of finding the Seven Cities of Cebola and seizing gold treasure beyond the wealth taken from the Aztec and Incan empires of Mexico and Peru. Montalvo's novel was a sequel to a Portuguese novel written 300 years before and it reinforced the earlier mythical story.
Cabrillo's journey to California began in 1540, but was delayed at the Mexican port of Navidad. The Guatemalan governor, Pedro de Alvarado, who commissioned the voyage, was sent to quell an Indian uprising, but was crushed under his horse. The Viceroy of New Spain, Antonio de Mendoza, took control of Alvarado's armada of over a dozen ships and split it into segments. Mendoza sent the better part of the fleet to the Philippines with Ruy Lopez de Villalobos in 1541. Other ships were sent to the gulf and coast of California. The ships that traveled up the coast, led by Francisco de Bolanos, wound up marooned on the west coast of Baja California. The ships heading for the gulf were instructed in vain to look for the army of Francisco Vasquez de Coronado, which was on an overland march in the Southwest.
On July 27, 1542, Cabrillo's two ships, La Victoria and the San Salvador, and a smaller brigantine, left Navidad and rounded the tip of Baja California. The construction of the San Salvador had been financed by Cabrillo himself who had amassed it large fortune from his estates' goldmines in highland Guatemala. Cabrillo proceeded on the voyage slowly, possibly in order to give his crew of conscripts more sailing experience. By Aug. 20, the ships had arrived at Cape Deceit, the furthest northern point known to Spanish explorers.
On the following day, Cabrillo's ships arrived at a sheltered bay where they landed, made repairs to their ships and met a group of Indians. The Indians told Cabrillo of a large force of Spaniards just a five-day walk away. They were frightened of the Spanish because of a previous violent encounter with an inland Spanish army led by Coronado. This army had wandered for two years, terrorizing the Southwest and reaching far into the interior of the continent to present-day Kansas. Cabrillo attempted to send a letter to Coronado via these Indians.
On Sept. 17, 1542, Cabrillo claimed California for the Spanish Crown. "Every place he (Cabrillo) discovered, he was to take possession for the king of Spain," said Macias. "All explorers were told that when they encountered a new group of Indians, they were required to read them this explanation, called a requerimiento. It was an act of taking possession of the land."
Macias said the requerimiento was read in Spanish and Latin, neither of which languages the Indians understood. A ritual ceremony was also performed: four pebbles were tossed in four directions and water was spilled on the land as a physical act of taking possession. Macias said the requerimiento instructed the Indians to submit to Spanish authority under religious justification as ordered by the pope.
The beginning of the letter, translated into English read: "On the part of the King, Don Fernando, and of Dona Juana, Queen of Castile and Leon, subduers of the barbarous nations, we their servants notify and make known to you, as best we can, that the Lord our God, Living and Eternal, created the Heaven and the Earth, and one man and woman, of whom you and I, and all the men of the world, were and are descendants, and all those who came after us. But, on account of the multitude which has sprung from this man and woman in the five thousand years since the world was created, it was necessary that some men should go one way and some another, and that they should be divided into many kingdoms..."
Macias said that Cabrillo was one of the better conquistadors, and that his treatment of the California Indians was humane in comparison to the earlier exploits of the Spanish. He pointed out that before this trip, Cabrillo normally served as immediate subordinate to other Spanish leaders. Macias said too, that though the Spanish were ordered to befriend the Indians, they could not always comply with the king's instructions.
Cabrillo's ships arrived in San Diego Bay, which Cabrillo originally named St. Miquel, on Sept. 28. Again, local Indians reported on the Coronado army which was making the Indians weary of the Spaniards.
The ships left San Miquel harbor Oct. 3, only to encounter inclement weather. California's winter storms proved to be formidable obstacles to their passage. In the Santa Barbara Channel the ships faced rough water and had to anchor off Santa Catalina Island, where they were greeted by shooting and dancing Indians.
Crossing the channel to the bay of Santa Monica the next day, the Spanish found a densely populated region overhung by the smoke of countless Indian campfires. Cabrillo gave it an appropiate name: La Bahia de la Fumos or the Bay of Smokes. The place names chosen by the Spaniards often described the physical attributes. At present day Ventura, where the Spanish arrived Oct. 10, Cabrillo named the Indian town El Pueblo de las Canoas for the numerous canoes he saw there. Up the coast, the Spanish met a group of Indians who provided them with sardines. The village, near present day Gavopta Pass, was named El Pueblo de las Sardinas.
A few attempts were made to round Point Conception just north of El Pueblo de las Sardinas, but the ships were pushed back by the pounding winter sea. Finally, the ships rounded the cape and by Nov.11 reached the coastline of San Luis Obispo. The Spanish were not impressed with the area, finding it sparsely populated, mountainous and without a safe harbor. A storm separated the ships that night. Cabrillo's flagship, the San Salvador, had to strike out to the open sea to avoid being run aground the rocky shore. La Victoria lost its deck cargo and took some damage.
The storm kept the San Salvador out at sea for two days before the crew was able to return to the coast. The crew spotted Pt. Reyes Nov. 13, naming it Cabo de Pinos for its Douglas fir and pine forest. Observing the sun's position with an astrolabe, the crew pegged the point at 40 degrees latitude. The ship had missed most of the Central Coast, including the Monterey and San Francisco Bays. The San Salvador continued for 40 miles to the mouth of the Russian River, but in frustration, not finding the great inland waterway, Cabrillo ordered the ships to turn back.
On the return trip, Cabrillo again missed the mouth of San Francisco Bay, as did many subsequent mariners for hundreds of years. The weather along the North Coast was extremely cold, part of a long-term, cool-moist climate trend that started in 1370 and lasted 400 years. Off the coast, near the Santa Cruz Mountains, Cabrillo reunited with his two other vessels. One ship was leaking severely. The men were exhausted and suffering from the extreme cold, which made it more difficult to sail.
The fleet entered Monterey Bay Nov. 16. While the leaking ship made hasty repairs, again Cabrillo searched for the great inland waterway and found none.
Sailing south, the crew saw Cypress Point on the Monterey Peninsula densely covered with snow. The mountains behind Monterey, the Gabilans, were likewise covered with snow. Cabrillo named the range the Sierra Nevada, or the Snowy Mountains.
The Big Sur coastline, part of the Santa Lucia Range, was also covered with snow and ice -- very unlike the present dry, warm conditions that began in 1860. The crew were understandably awestruck by the high cliffs, which seemed so high that they thought the bluffs "were about to fall on the ships." Tired, the beleagered armada sailed to their favored home base in the Channel Islands.
Cabrillo returned to safe anchorage of La Posesion on Nov. 23, the site of San Miquel Island, one of the Channel Islands. The Spanish took up anchorage for the winter and made repairs to their ships. There, the Indians, at first friendly with the Spanish, became tired of their foreign visitors. Relations soured and a series of battles ensued. On Christmas Eve, several of Cabrillo's men were attacked by the Indians while they were attempting to get fresh water on the island.
Cabrillo, upon landing to help rescue his men, fell and broke his arm. Some accounts say the captain splintered his shin bone in the mishap. It was the beginning of the end for the doomed captain. Cabrillo insisted on remaining on the island to get his men released, and by the time he returned to the ship, the surgeon found that gangrene had set into his wound. Knowing his death was near, Cabrillo named his chief pilot, Bartolome Ferrer, to command the fleet. He ordered Ferrer to make another attempt north to find the elusive Strait of Anian.
Cabrillo died Jan. 3, 1543. He was buried on St. Miquel Island, sometimes called San Salvador, after his ship, or El Capitana. The ships, under Ferrer, made it as far north as Point Arena, naming it Cabo de Fortunas. Storms swamped the ships on their way, and badly provisioned, they returned south to the Channel Islands. There was no longer any desire to return north. The ships were battered, supplies were extremely low, and several other sailors, besides Cabrillo, had died on the journey. All had suffered from sickness and hardship.
The fleet returned to the port of Navidad on April 14, 1543, some nine months after the journey began. Though a good portion of the California coast had been explored, the trip, by imperial standards then, was an abysmal failure. The fabled inland passage could not be found, and no gold, nor the Seven Cities of Cebola, were ever found. There was no news about the Villalobos expedition to the Philippines, and there was little useful information about the whereabouts of Coronado's inland army. No one ever reported back from the Spice Islands or China. Viceroy Mendoza, perturbed, ordered the Royal Historian Juan Leon to interrogate the survivors from the fleet and to prepare a report for the king and royal audiencia.
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[1] Note: Harry Kelsey said that the royal historian Herrera, who ordinarily is fastidious with facts, inadvertantly ascribed Cabrillo as being Portuguese, confusing the navigator's nationality with someone else on the California voyage. Subsequent historians, who thought Herrera correct, also said Cabrillo was Portuguese. The state of California also claims this false fact.
* Published in the Cabrillo College Voice in two installments: 20 November 1995; 4 December 1995.