Golden
Nuggets Newsletter
Historical Vignettes from Rincon Publishing
Where in the world is San Diego?
Did
you ever wonder what Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo was doing sailing along
the coast of California in 1542? Do you suppose 
someone
higher up said, Juan why don't you go claim a new land for us? Maybe
you've never thought about it, but Cabrillo's voyage wasn't an isolated
act of exploration.
To begin with, Cabrillo was not a navigator, he was a ship builder. He appears in the records in 1519 as part of Hernan Cortéz's army of conquest. Later, he went to San Salvador before settling in Guatemala where he became a rich businessman.
The young men who followed Columbus to the new world were all in search of treasure. They were the second and third sons of Spanish noblemen with no promise of inheritance. So the New World beckoned to them as a place to enrich themselves. Finding that the easy riches had already been taken by Cortez and Pizarro, and disinclined to work for a living, they begin to go a field in search of wealth.
It was a time when the famous names of Spanish exploration were roaming the south and southwest of what became the U.S. Ponce de Léon, DeSoto and Coronado were all actively seeking treasure in the 1530s and 1540s. So was Pedro de Alvarado, governor of Guatemala and a veteran of Pizarro's Inca conquest. He decided to outfit an expedition of four ships to sail in search of treasure in the Western Sea and commissioned Cabrillo to build them.
Alvarado was killed in an Indian battle before his ships set sail nevertheless. His partner, Antonio de Mendoza, viceroy of Mexico, took over the project, dispatching two ships under López de Villalobos toward the Philippine Islands and two ships, the San Salvador and Victoria, with Cabrillo as expedition leader and Bartolomé Ferrelo as chief pilot, to the north. They left from the port of Navidad on June 24, 1542.
There were at least two possible goals: first, they might find the seven cities of Cibola, which some believed lay close to the Pacific. More primary was the hope Cabrillo would find the storied Straits of Anian and a quick route to China and the riches of the Spice Islands.
Cabrillo failed to reach either goal. He also failed to find Monterey and San Francisco Bays. In the process he lost his life. His band, under Ferrelo, returned to Mexico in 1543; the expedition was considered a great failure.
But Cabrillo did find San Diego Bay in September 1542. And he did manage to plant Spain's flag on its soil, thereby claiming all of Alta California for King Carlos I.
A Person of Interest: William Heath Davis
William Heath Davis is definitely a Person of Interest if you want first hand accounts of life in California from the 1830s until the early days of the 20th century. Davis came to Alta California with his father from Hawaii and became a trader. Not well know because he played no prominent politic role, Davis nevertheless became one of the wealthiest of the early Yankees to settle the Golden State, owning much of downtown San Francisco before the turn of the century.
Dark,
portly, with heavy brows and bushy mutton chops that flow into mustache
and beard, Davis is the picture of prosperity in boiled shirt, cravat
and frockcoat. He married into one of the most prominent Bay Area Californio
families and shared the confidence of almost everyone who met him.
Davis was a friend and business associate of Captain José de la Guerra y Noriega, retired comandante of the Santa Barbara Presidio. Davis wrote of his "immense wealth in lands, cattle, horses, sheep and money." Here's how he described de la Guerra's wealth. "…Noriega took me to the attic of his house, where he kept his treasure, the room being exclusively for that purpose. There was no stairway, the attic being reached by a ladder, which was removed when not in use. In this room were two old-fashioned Spanish chairs and ranged round about were twelve or fifteen strong, completely woven baskets… of which contained gold, some nearly full. I was astonished to see so much coin in the possession of one man in a country where the wealth consisted mainly of horses and cattle."
Davis continued, "Being the wealthiest man in that part of California, and having so much ready money, at least $250,000, he was applied to by the rancheros for loans whenever they were in need of funds." But the rancheros weren't the only ones in need of funds.
"Some of the old gentleman's boys were a little wild," Davis wrote of de la Guerra. "Knowing that their father had plenty of money and the place where it was deposited, they devised a plan to secure some of it for their own use. The ladder was kept in the old captain's bedroom, beyond their reach, so they climbed to the roof from the outside and took off two or three tiles, beneath which were standing these baskets of gold. Reaching down into the baskets with an improvised pitchfork they drew out as many coins as they thought it advisable to take. The trick was soon discovered and reported, and this mode of abstraction was brought to an end."