California: the first three centuries

October 9, 2024

I’ve been reading about and visiting California quite a lot recently. And I love it. So it feels like something worth writing about. In Britain at least I think people have a reasonable sense of how the east coast of North America came into being. But the west coast is hazier.

Prologue

This blog is going to tell the story of how Europeans discovered and eventually populated California. We’ll go as far as the settlement of San Francisco. But first, a word on what came before. Quoting Kevin Starr:

At the initial moment of European contact in 1492, something approaching one third of all Native Americans living within the present-day boundaries of the continental United States-which is to say, more than three hundred thousand people-are estimated to have been living within the present-day boundaries of California. This claim has been disputed by those who argue for a much larger Native American population for the continental United States, but no matter: the figures, however they compare to the rest of the continent, are still impressive. For centuries, hundreds of thousands of Native Americans had been making their homes, living their lives, in the place now called California.

Is this true? My sense is that it's an active area of debate amongst historians. Here is a map of the population distribution of pre-columbian North America from 1957(!). So take it with fistfuls of salt etc.

Hopefully, LIDAR, genetics, and other sources help us improve our estimates. Here’s a Reddit thread about that map if you’d like to read some more discussion about this.

Beginnings

Kevin Starr has a great opening line for his book: “California entered history as myth”.

The myth was the 1510 novel Las Sergas de Esplandián (The Adventures of Esplandián) by Garci Ordonez de Montalvo. In Montalvo's tale the Californians were dark skinned Amazon's who travelled from their island east of the Indies to fight in the siege of Constantinople. The Spanish seem to have treated these novels like we do Arthurian legends, forever on the lookout for evidence that the story has a basis in reality. The novel certainly captured the minds of many a Spaniard over the following century. So much so that Miguel Cervantes made it the first book burnt by the abbot Don Quixote, blamed for driving the romantic knight mad.

In the early decades of the 16th century, the Spanish swept across the Caribbean and central America. Hernán Cortés arrived in Hispaniola in 1504, took part in the conquest of Cuba in 1511, and led the conquest of the Aztec empire from 1519. For more on Cortes I recommend this big Matt Lakeman post and the series of episodes the Rest is History did on the conquest.

In 1513, Vasco Nunez de Balboa, on the run from creditors, became the first European to lay eyes on the Pacific.

The possibility of reaching the spice islands of the East Indies by sailing west, and an underestimate of the Earth's circumference inspired Ferdinand Magellan set out west in 1519 on his circumnavigation of the world, to be completed by Juan Sebastián Elcano in 1522. For more on this I highly recommend Jimmy Maher’s series.

In 1532, having been passed over for the post of Viceroy of New Spain, Cortez was in search of a new big score. He commissioned Fortun Jimenez to sail west from Mexico. The following year Jimenez sailed across what is now called the Gulf of California and landed on what was believed initially to be an island. Remembering Montalvo’s romance, a member of this crew was probably the person to first refer to this land as “California”.

In 1535, Cortes himself crossed the gulf and arrived in Baja California at what is now La Paz. He named it Santa Cruz and spent two years trying to found a colony there. Forever searching for the city of gold across the next mountain, in 1538 he sent Francisco de Ulloa to explore the sea between Mexico and the “island” of California. Ulloa reached the head of the sea and discovered that it is in fact a peninsular.

Even though it only took a few years for Ulloa to show that Baja California is not an island, the misconception persisted into future centuries. For instance, here is a Dutch map made in 1650.

Cortes returned to Spain in 1541. In 1540, Antonio de Mendoza, the man whom he’d been passed over in favour of, sent Hernando de Alarcon to explore the lands to the north of the peninsular. Alarcon travelled 200 miles up the Colorado River. Either he or Melchor Diaz crossed the river near present day Yuma, Arizona and became the first European to set foot in Alta, or Upper, California.

In 1542, Mendoza sent Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo north along the western edge of Baja California to find a strait linking the Pacific and Atlantic. Cabrillo anchored in San Diego bay. He took his ships as far as Point Reyes with an infected shoulder. Then back to San Miguel island where he died. His lieutenant, Bartolome Ferrer, went as far north as the present border of California and Oregon before returning.

In 1564, Luis de Velasco, the new Viceroy of New Spain in Mexico City, commissioned Miguel de López de Legazpi to establish a Spanish presence in the Philippines.

It’s worth pausing to dwell on how extraordinary this story is. López de Legazpi was a second son from the Basque country who left for New Spain in 1528 aged ~26 seeking new opportunities. His career in New Spain saw him work in the mint, the courts, government, and the inquisition, and as well as a marriage that produced 9 children. In 1559 his wife died. By 1564, López de Legazpi was an old man, yet in 1565, after 93 days of sailing, 5 ships under his command arrived in the Philippines.

López de Legazpi had to fight and negotiate his way through an archipelago of peoples following Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, and animism, and resist attacks from the Portuguese. Yet somehow he did and by 1571 had established himself as governor in the new capital of Manilla.

Spain would continue to rule the Philippines from Mexico city until 1822. And the Philippines was a Spanish possession until 1898.

For an economics paper with lots of historical context about the Spanish galleon trade across the Pacific see this paper by Fernando Arteaga, Desiree Desierto, and Mark Koyama.

Drake’s circumnavigation

In 1573, during an expedition to raid the Spanish silver train off the isthmus of Panama. Francis Drake climbed to the top of a tree with John Oxenham, his Lieutenant, and Pedro, the leader of the escaped slaves known as the Cimarróns. From this viewpoint, Drake and Oxenhome became the first Englishmen to see the Pacific.

Fulfilling the vow he had made at the top of the tree to sail the Pacific, Drake set off on his “famous voyage” in 1577. The practical goals were to:

Reach the Pacific through the Strait of Magellan.
Plunder Spanish cities and ships on Pacific coast.
Search for a northwest passage to England, claiming territory on route.
Cross the Pacific to the East Indies

This was the first circumnavigation of the world in 58 years. It would become only the second to be accomplished as a single expedition, and Drake would be the first person to circumnavigate the world as captain while leading it the entire way.

Drake suffered great attrition to disease during the Atlantic leg of his expedition to disease and damage. But in 1578 he entered the Pacific and raided and captured his way up the Pacific coast of South America. Reduced from 5 ships to just the Golden Hind, herself with only a 100 tons burden carrying 30 tons of treasure, Drake carried on north.

The expedition passed Baja California in 1579 in search of a place to prepare for their journey back to England, possibly via the rumoured Strait of Anián. They proceeded perhaps as far as the present state of Washington before turning south.

On 17th June, the expedition pulled into what is now known as Drake’s Bay on the Point Reyes peninsula to repair the ship for 5 weeks. Drake explored the surrounding area and had friendly interactions with the native Coast Miwok tribe. The first Book of Common Prayer services were performed in North America during this time. Drake left behind a brass plaque claiming the territory for the crown as “New Albion”.

15 months later, on 26th September 1580, the Golden Hind returned to England with Drake and 59 crew on board having crossed the Pacific and rounded the Cape of Good Hope. The queen's half-share of the cargo surpassed the rest of the crown's income for that entire year.

Back to the Spanish galleon trade

In 1584, Francisco de Gali discovered that the best way to get from the Philippines to New Spain was to follow the Japanese current eastward to the coast of Alta California off Cape Mendocino, then sail down the coast of Alta and Baja California to Mexico. However this journey still took 200 days. So a plan formed in the mind of Pedro de Moya y Contreas, Viceroy of New Spain, to find and develop a port in Alta California to break the journey.

The following year, Sebastian Rodriguez Cermeno was tasked with a mission to take the galleon San Augustin across the pacific and explore Alta California for possible ports. Cermeno anchored in the same port as Drake had and named it the Bay of San Francisco. However, a storm drove the ship aground and his crew had to limp back home in a makeshift launch, missing San Francisco bay on the way south.

Clearly it made much more sense to explore Alta California via an expedition northward from Mexico instead of from across the Pacific.

In 1602, three vessels under the command of Sebastian Vizcaino sailed from Acapulco to the bay of San Diego. They sailed up the coast to a bay he named after the Viceroy, the Conde de Monterrey, but missed San Francisco Bay. The expedition sailed as far north as Cape Mendocino before turning back. Maps were made and Vizcaino promoted the use of Monterrey as a port. But ultimately he went on to an illustrious career where he was involved in mapping Japan and nothing was done about Alta California for another 167 years.

Explaining the gap

Why didn’t anything happen during this time? Kevin Starr has two explanations:

The economic explanation - although it would have been nice to have a port for the galleons, the Spanish empire was already overstretched and didn’t have the capacity or need to expand into Alta California.

The political explanation - the Spanish empire was governed under a series of regulations drawn up in the 1570s and organised into the laws of the Indies in 1680. In minute detail including things like town planning these called for the integration and interaction of ecclesiastical and secular societies. Church and state were to cooperate in a way that would promote the worldly and other-worldly being of the colonists. The Spanish were able to bring this system as far north as Santa Fey, founded 1609. But didn’t have the resources to expand further.

The work of colonising Arizona and Baja California, with a view to Alta California in the future would be taken up by the Jesuits. Italian born missionary Eusebio Francisco Kino, having spent 1683 to 1685 trying to start a mission in Baja California, established a string of them through Sonora into present day southern Arizona, then west to the confluence of the Gila and Colorado rivers on the present border of California.

In 1691, Kino was joined by fellow Italian Juan Maria de Salvatierra. Both were suspicious of mixing missionary work with secular ambitions and disapproved of how the secular Spanish authorities treated natives who didn’t comply with them. They secured permission in 1697 for the Jesuits to enter Baja California where they established the first Jesuit mission of Our Lady of Loretto. Eventually there would be 18 missions in Baja California running north in tandem with the ones established by Kino in Sonora and southern Arizona on the other side of the gulf of California.

Kevin Starr describes the Jesuits and their system like so:

Under the Laws of the Indies and accepted church practice, mission theory had as its goal the evangelization of Native Americans and their education in religion and the manual arts during a period of residency and transition in a mission, leading eventually to their introduction into secular society as gente de razón, which is to say, full-fledged "people of reason," baptised Catholics and useful citizens. At this point (at least in theory), the missions were to put themselves out of business and be replaced by a diocesan parish structure staffed by secular clergy under the control of a local bishop. So much for theory. The reality, especially in missions entrusted to Jesuits - the Reductions (mission colonies) of Paraguay, most notably - was far more complex.

Founded (three years before Cabrillo was exploring the California coast) by Ignacio de Loyola, a Basque soldier turned priest-reformer, the Company (or Society) of Jesus, more commonly known as the Jesuits, rapidly developed into a powerful order of scholars, educators, missionaries, and advisers to the great and powerful. The Jesuits were also an international organisation of far-reaching influence. As missionaries they were unsurpassed, beginning with the efforts of one of their original co-founders, Francis Xavier, in the Far East.

The Jesuits believed in enculturation, that is, the adaptation of Catholicism (as far as orthodoxy permitted) to the culture of those being evangelised. They also sought to protect such peoples and their cultures from catastrophic disruptions by soldiers and civilians. Established in the late sixteenth century in Paraguay, the Jesuit Reductions were fashioned as theocratic communities blending Spanish and Native American cultures, quasi-autonomous as far as secular authority was concerned, but thoroughly under the controlling guidance of Jesuit missionaries. Such was the Jesuit strategy - the protection of Indians in enclave utopias - but it was also the problem as far as secular authorities were concerned, especially after Enlightenment attitudes began, however tentatively, to enter Spanish thinking and a growing resentment began to coalesce against the power of the society.

The Jesuits' growing power and autonomy concerned the Spanish crown. They accumulated wealth through the labour and resources of the missions, and their influence extended beyond purely spiritual matters. This autonomy was viewed with suspicion, especially as the Jesuits operated independently of secular colonial authorities. The crown feared that the Jesuits could become a state within a state, undermining royal control.

Meanwhile, geopolitical threats were looming. Russia was expanding southward from Alaska, establishing settlements along the Pacific coast. The British and French were also increasing their presence in North America. Spain realised that it needed to assert control over Alta California to prevent other European powers from encroaching on its territories.

In 1765, King Carlos III sent inspector general Jose de Galvez to New Spain with the task of suppressing the Jesuits. In 1767, he issued the Pragmatic Sanction, expelling the Jesuits from all Spanish territories. The expulsion resulted in more than 5,000 Jesuits being moved to the Papal States for protection. This was part of a broader movement across Europe, where Jesuits were seen as too independent and influential.

In 1768, Galvez arrested and exiled the Jesuits from Baja California. Gaspar de Portola was appointed Governor of Las Californias. He seems to have been sympathetic to the Jesuits and organised their deportation with diplomacy and kindness, though still to the consternation of the Indians whose numbers in Baja California fell dramatically.

To replace the Jesuits, Galvez appointed Franciscans under Father Junipero Serra, a man of extreme piety even by the ascetic standards of his order. Discovering to his dismay the state of the missions under Spanish solidiors, they were supported by Galvez, who transferred control to the friars.

The settlement

These three men, Galvez, Portola, and Serra, would be the ones to initiate the settlement, finally, of Alta California.

On 9th January 1769, three newly built ships: the San Carlos, San Antonio, and San Jose set sail for La Paz en route to San Diego. On 24th March, two overland land parties of 300 men set off from Baja to Alta California.

The San Jose sank before it could reach San Diego. The San Antonio completed the journey to San Diego in 54 days. The San Carlos took twice as long and made landfall with a crew crippled by scurvy. When the parties consolidated on 1st July half of the members of the expedition were already dead. And more would carry on dying as the San Antonio sailed back to La Paz for supplies and reinforcements.

On 16th July, as they waited for the ship to return, Serra dedicated the Mission San Diego de Alcala. Portola led a scouting party north and reached the Bay of Monterey. They found it was much smaller than the exaggerated report made by Vizcaino nearly two centuries before. So they carried on north and found San Francisco Bay.

Now into 1770, Portola turned his party back on 24th January. He found the camp in San Diego sick and dying. A party of 40 fit men was organised to head back to Baja California for relief. However, the expedition was to be saved on 19th March when the San Antonio returned with supplies and reinforcements.

On 3rd June, after the San Carlos had returned with supplies, Portola established a settlement at Monterey: the Mission San Carlos Borromeo.

The same tensions that had existed in the Jesuit period between missionary and secular motives remained. Only San Jose de Guadalupe (1777) and Los Angeles (1781) were chartered as pueblos, or secular townships.

The tensions between the secular and spiritual authorities didn’t end with the expulsion of the Jesuits. Serra quarrelled with the military governors over many things, particularly the violence of the soldiers. He journeyed back to Mexico City to demand Portola’s successor Pedro Fages be removed. He also quarrelled with the next two governors, Fernando Rivera y Moncada and Filipe de Neve.

There was also the problem that no one wanted to live this far out on the California frontier. Villa de Branciforte (1796) was established as a retirement settlement for soldiers but ended up being used as a penal colony. Soldiers were posted to Alta California as punishment.

The Viceroy to whom Serra appealed, Antionio Maria Bucareli, was another major figure in establishing California. He sent Juan Bautista de Anza on two missions, to reconnoitre a land route between Mexico and California, and to establish a settlement on San Francisco Bay.

In 1774, Anza set forth from Tubac, south of present day Tucson. He found a route to Los Angeles and Monterey before returning to Tucson to assemble the party to settle San Francisco Bay. This party 1776 would arrive on the site of modern San Francisco on 27th June. Meanwhile in 1775, the San Carlos under Juan Manuel de Ayala found the mouth of San Francisco Bay: the Golden Gate.

California under the Spanish was a coastal enclave. The settlers were surrounded on all sides by violent hostile forces. The first mission established by Serra, San Diego de Alcala, was burnt down by natives within months. The San Diego mission was attacked in 1775. Yuma people massacred people travelling along Anza's overland route in 1781, closing it off for the next 40 years.

The missions would expand slightly north over the next decades: San Rafael Arcangel was established in 1817 and San Francisco Solano was in 1823. Yet the most interior mission, Nuestra Señora de la Soledad, founded in 1791, was just 30 miles from the coast.

Junipero Serra died in 1784 at San Carlos Borromeo. He had personally founded 9 missions, of an eventual total of 21. You can see an animated timeline and map of their foundations here