Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo And The Building Of The San Salvador

21 Alvaro de Paz, testimony given 15 December 1563, AGI, Justicia 290,
fol. 81v, 20 May 1559; AGI, Patronato 62, fol. 3-3v; letter from the
Indians to the King, 15 March 1547, AGI, Guatemala, 52.
22 Testimony given in August 1541, AGI, Justicia 280, fol. 25v. In addition
to their religious names, Spanish ships were commonly called by the
names of their owners or masters. In Alvarado’s fleet, the Diosdado
was owned by Antonio Diosdado and the Figueroa by Santos de
Figueroa, etc.
23 Diaz del Castillo, Historia verdadera, chap. 149, p. 330.
24 Kelsey, Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, 69-70; Testimony of Luis González, 28
April 1560. AGI, Justicia 290, fol. 63v.
25 The fleet is described by Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo in his
Historia general y natural de las Indias, isles y Tierra Firme del Mar
Oceano (Madrid: Imprenta de la Real
Academia de la Historia, 1853), 4:20,
23, and by Alvarado in his letter to
the King, 28 March 1541, Colección
de documentos, ser. 2, vol. 2, pp.
1-3. Alvaro de Paz, mayordomo for
Alvarado, also confirmed the number.
See his testimony of 20 May 1559, AGI,
Patronato 62, fol. 3v.
26 Testimony of Luis González, 20 April
1560, AGI, Justicia 290, fol. 63v.
27 See Bjorn Landstrom, The Ship: An
Illustrated History (Garden City, N.Y.:
Doubleday & Co., 1961), pp. 112-113.
28 Testimony of Luis González, 20 April
1560, AGI, Justicia 290, fol. 63v.;
statement by Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo,
ca. August 1541, AGI Justicia 280,
fol. 25-26.
29 A ducado in 1500 was worth about
$4.00 according to a study made in
1941 by J. Villasana Haggard, author
of the Handbook for Translators
of Spanish Historical Documents
(Austin: University of Texas, 1941). It
is extremely difficult to place a value
on Spanish gold coins of previous
centuries because of the variables
depending on new discoveries made
from time to time.
30 Testimony of Ginovés (Gines) de Mafra, 2 September 1540, AGI,
Justicia 280, fol. 25-30; Testimony of Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, August
1540, AGI, Justicia 280, fol. 25v.-16.
31 Kelsey, Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, 83-113
32 Arthur S. Aiton, Antonio de Mendoza: First Viceroy of New Spain
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press), 146, note 19.
33 Iris H.W. Engstrand, “Seekers of the Northern Mystery,” in Ramon
Gutierrez and Richard Orsi, eds., Contested Eden (Berkeley and Los
Angeles: University of California Press, 1998), p. 83.
34 Nearly half of the residents of the city of Santiago were killed including
the governor, Alvarado’s family, and 600 Indians. The account written
in 1541 by Juan Rodríguez is called Relación del espantable terremoto
que agora nuevamente acontecido en las Indias en una ciudad
llamada Guatimala. Facsimile reprint in Ramón Menéndez Pidal,
ed., Colección de incunables Americanos, 1: no page numbers. See
Kelsey, Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, 90-91. Most authorities attribute the
Relación to Cabrillo since there was no one else in the city named Juan
Rodríguez.
35 Ruy López de Villalobos commanded a fleet of six ships, including the
Santiago as the flagship, and headed for the Philippines on 25 October
1542. After extensive exploration of the area and having named several
islands Las Islas Felipinas (The Philippine Islands) for Philip II of Spain,
López de Villalobos and his men were driven out by hostile natives.
They fled to the Moluccas but were imprisoned by the Portuguese.
López de Villalobos died in a prison cell on 4 April 1544, although
more than one hundred crew members survived and were sent
to Lisbon. Some thirty, including Ginés de Mafra who produced a
manuscript on Magellan’s circumnavigation, chose to remain. It was
published in 1920.
36 The volume written by García Ordoñez de Montalvo, called Las
Sergas de Esplandián or The Deeds of Esplandián was a fifth volume
in the popular stories of chivalry in a series about Esplandián’s
“father” Amadis of Gaul. Ordoñez edited the first edition of Amadis
of Gaul under the name Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo. In later
editions he used Ordoñez. Las Sergas de Esplandián was published
by Jacob Cromberger in Sevilla between
1508 and 1510 and was widely read by
seafaring mariners.
37 Donald Cutter, “Sources of the Name
California,” Arizona and the West,
(1961): 233-244.
38 Cabrillo’s original log or journal has
not been found. See note 42.
39 Herbert E. Bolton, ed., “Diary of
Antonio de la Ascensión,” Spanish
Exploration in the Southwest: 1542-
1706; W. Michael Mathes, Vizcaíno
and Spanish Expansion in the Pacific
Ocean: 1580-1630 (San Francisco:
California Historical Society, 1968).
Kelsey, Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, 144,
reports that Guacamal was the name
the Indians gave to the Spaniards.
40 Herbert E. Bolton, ed., “A Summary
Account of Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo’s
Voyage,” Spanish Exploration in the
Southwest: 1542-1706, 23.
41 Ibid., 24.
42 AGI, Patronato 290, fols, 68-72v.
Kelsey, Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, 150,
228.
43 One of the islands called Limu in the
narrative of Lazaro de Cardenas and
Francisco de Vargas is the one now
called Santa Catalina.
44 Ibid., 25. Kelsey, Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, 158. Geaves Kenny, a
yachtsman with many years’ experience sailing and anchoring in the
Channel Islands believes that a skillful navigator/captain who had
spent several months in the Channel Islands would not have chosen
to spend December and January on San Miguel, but would have
returned to a protected harbor on the lee side of Catalina, most likely
at the Isthmus. Personal interview, 20 August 2008.
45 There have been attempts to locate any archeological evidence
of Cabrillo’s burial place on Catalina, San Miguel, Santa Rosa and
perhaps other islands, but so far no remains have turned up.
46 The lack of information because of Cabrillo’s missing journal is
explained by Kelsey, Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, pp. 112-115. The first
summary account was prepared in 1543, and contains only eight
folio pages. For an analysis of authorship of this “log” see ibid.,
168-70.
47 Details of the journey have been taken from several accounts of
the voyage compiled after 1543. Possible authors include Juan León
(1543) and Andrés Urdaneta.
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