Terms Chp 3,4,5

Juan Bautista de Anza

Juan Bautista de Anza (1736-1788) was the Mexican-born, Spanish captain, who opened a trail from Sonora to Alta California. "He led two expeditions to California, one to explore the trail and the other to bring " a large group of settlers into the region. Some of the settlers de Anza led to Alta California settled near the site he had chosen for the Mission San Francisco de Asís, commonly referred to as the Mission Dolores (Rawls and Bean 41-42); and, over the decades, this community evolved into the town of San Francisco, [although it was referred to as Yerba Buena for many years].

Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo

Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo (c. 1500-1543) was a Portuguese explorer in the employ of the Spanish monarchy, who is noted for his exploration of North America's Pacific Coast. He was searching for the "long-rumored though mythical Strait of Anián, later sought by the English under the name of the Northwest Passage (Rawls and Bean 23). He was the first European explorer to navigate the coast of present day California in the United States, and discovered (among other places) San Diego, San Pedro, Santa Monica, and Ventura (Rawls and Bean 24).

Gabriel Moraga

LieutenantGabriel Moraga (1765-1823) had been brought to California by his father [José Joaquín Moraga] in 1775. His father had been a soldier in both of de Anza's California expeditions, and he became the first commandant of the presidio of San Francisco. Gabriel grew up in California and between 1805 and 1817 he led a number of expeditions into the Central Valley. He named many of the Valley's rivers and place names, including El Rio de Nuestra Senora de la Merced [the River of Our Lady of Mercy].

Sebastian Rodriguez Cermeño

Sebastian Rodriguez Cermeño (c. 1560-1602) was a Portuguese merchant-adventurer who, in 1595 was entrusted with the command of the Manila Galleon on the condition that he would explore the California coast "in search of the best site for a port of call." He is believed to have landed somewhere near Cape Mendocino and also at Drake's Bay (Rawls and Bean 28).

Sebastián Vizcaíno

Sebastián Vizcaíno (1548-1624) was a Spanish-Basque soldier, explorer, and diplomat who visited the Philippines, the Baja California peninsula, the California coast and Japan. In 1602 he explored the California coast for the Conde de Monterey, the Viceroy of New Spain. He named Monterey Bay after the Spanish Viceroy.

Father Junípero Serra

Father Junípero [Miguel José] Serra (1713-1784) was a member of the Franciscan Order. Before coming to the New World, he had been a professor of philosophy at the University of Majorca. At the age of 35 he decided to become a missionary, travelled to Mexico and served in the missions there for many years. In 1769, he accompanied Captain Gaspar de Portola on the "Sacred Expedition" and became the first "father-president" of the California missions. Before he died, Father Serra founded nine of California's twenty-one missions (Rawls and Bean 34-35).

Felipe de Neve

Felipe de Neve (1724-1784) was a Spanish soldier and administrator. He served as the Governor of "las Californias" between 1775 and 1782. He was an excellent administrator, who established two agricultural pueblos, one at San Jose in 1777 and another at Los Angeles in 1781, to stabilize their respective region's food supply (Rawls and Bean 44).

Sir Francis Drake

Sir Francis Drake (c. 1540-1596) was an English privateer. He is best known for circumnavigating the globe (1577-1580) with his ship, the Golden Hind, [and for helping the English defeat the Spanish Armada in 1588]. Within the context of California history, he is important because he explored the northern California Coast and (probably) landed at Drake's Bay in 1579 to make emergency repairs on the Golden Hind. At that time, Drake had been seeking the Northwest Passage to Asia. He named the place where he landed Nova Albion (New England), claimed the country for Queen Elizabeth I, and "erected a plate of brass with a chiseled inscription with a hole for a sixpence bearing [Elizabeth's] picture" (Rawls and Bean 27). The plate has never been found.

Californio

The term Californio refers to the Spanish settlers of California and their descendants. Many of these people immigrated to California from New Spain. During the era of Mexican rule, many Californios received land grants from the United Mexican States. These Californios established themselves over the Native Americans and the less prosperous Californios as a ruling elite. They supported themselves by rearing cattle on large ranchos and by selling the hides and the tallow derived from the cattle to Yankee and South American merchants.

Fort Ross

"In the early nineteenth century, the Spanish claim of exclusive rights to settlement in California was challenged by the establishment of a Russian fur-trading outpost north of San Francisco...In 1812 the Russian-American Fur Company built a fortified village, which it called Ross, a name derived from the same root as the word 'Russia'" (Rawls and Bean 54-55).

The Manila Galleon

"Manila was a...gathering point for luxury goods from...east Asia, to be exchanged for silver and gold from the mines of Mexico" (Rawls and Bean 27). During the 1560s, Spanish fleets began sailing from Manila to Acapulco. In 1593, the Spanish government "decreed...that the Manila galleons must be limited to one a year" (Rawls and Bean 27). Even though the Manila Galleon was limited to one per year, it still constituted one of the single most important sources of wealth for the merchants of New Spain. Due to the length of the voyage (6 to 7 months), disease (scurvy), and the difficulties associated with carrying enough supplies for the long journey, many sailors died in route. Another problem the Manila Galleons experienced was piracy. Hoping to alleviate these problems, the Spanish government became interested in establishing a safe port on the California coast, where the Manila Galleon could take on fresh food and water, as well as pick up another escort vehicle as it travelled along the California Coast (Rawls and Bean 27-28).

Herbert Eugene Bolton

Herbert Eugene Bolton (1870-1953) was the victim of one of the most famous hoaxes in the history of California. He was a history professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who verified that a plate discovered in 1937 was, in fact, the plate that Sir Francis Drake had left on the California coast. This discovery was later revealed to have been a hoax perpetrated on Bolton by some of his colleagues who were members of E Clampus Vitus, a fraternal order [dedicated to studying the history of the American West; its members were/are also known for their sense of humor] (Rawls and Bean 27).

Hernán Cortés

Hernán Cortés (1485-1547) was a Spanish conquistador. He led the Spanish army that defeated the mighty Aztec empire in Mexico in 1519-1521. Within the context of California's history, he is important because he was "chiefly responsible for the European discovery of the lower part of what the Spanish ultimately called 'the Californias'....Cortés was following the lure of various tales of magnificent wealth [and in 1533 he] dispatched the expedition that discovered Baja (Lower California)" (Rawls and Bean 22).

Garcí Ordnóñez de Montalvo

Garcí Ordnóñez de Montalvo (1450-1504) was the author of The Exploits of Esplandián (Las Sergas de Esplandián). Written about 1500, the novel tells a fictional tale of the defense of Constantinople. According to the novel, Esplandián and his father, Amadís of Gaul, defended Constantinople against a formidable force of Muslims, who were besieging the city. Among these besiegers was Calafía, the queen of the mystical island of California. California, as described by Montalvo, was a "terrestrial paradise" lying on the "right hand of the Indies." It was inhabited by beautiful Black women, who--like the legendary Amazons--were great warriors. They fought with gold weapons (since gold was the only ore that was mined in California), and, during the siege of Constantinople, they unleashed terrifying man-killing griffins upon the city's Christian defenders. While Montaolvo's novel was not a literary masterpiece, it was popular in sixteenth-century Spain. Consequently, when Baja California was first discovered by the Spanish conquistadors, they named it California after Calafía's fictional island kingdom (Rawls and Bean 23).

Gaspar de Portolá

Gaspar de Portolá (c. 1723-1784) was the Spanish captain who led the "Sacred Expedition" into Alta California in 1769. Working with Junípero Serra, he established a settlement/mission at San Diego and another at Monterey. Members of this expedition also discovered San Francisco Bay.

Secularization

One of the goals enunciated by Mexico's liberal reformers was secularization of the missions. Secularization, the process through which control of the missions would pass from the Franciscan friars to the Native Americans working on the missions and to secular priests who would oversee their spiritual lives, was a popular issue in California. Employing the liberal discourse of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, many Californios decried the exploitation of the Native Americans by the Franciscan friars and accused them of amassing too much temporal wealth (Rawls and Bean 62). Responding to Californio demands, in 1834 California's Mexican governor, José Figueroa, initiated the process of secularizing the missions. The Franciscan friars lost control of the missions, and the missions' lands, cattle, and other properties were turned over to private interests. Although the Native Americans were supposed to be given half of the missions' property, this did not happen: ownership of the missions' properties went primarily to the region's Californio elite.

[Spanish Colonization—Harvey Explanation

When establishing colonies in its Empire, Spain typically employed three institutions to assert its hegemony over the indigenous peoples: missions, presidios, and pueblos. The missions were religious institutions, but they were also social and economic institutions. Under the direction of Spanish clergy, the indigenous people were taught Christianity, as well as the Spanish language. The goal of the missionaries was to encourage the indigenous peoples to embrace Spanish traditions, customs, and beliefs: in effect, to make them Spanish. Each mission was guarded by a few soldiers. Typically, however, there was also a presidio (a military post) in the vicinity. The presidios represented the military aspect of Spanish domination. They were fortified outposts, charged with protecting and governing the Spanish settlements. In California, four presidios were established in the eighteenth century, the presidios of San Diego, Monterey, San Francisco and Santa Barbara. The pueblos (towns) were civil institutions, which were intended to be agricultural communities that could help the presidios and the missions satisfy their material needs.]