Cailfomla

The long process of exploring and settling California began in 1533, when Spanish pilot Fortun Jimenez sailed into a placid Baja California bay and named it La Paz. By the 1540s, the land he visited, which was thought to be an island inhabited entirely by women, was known as California. That name derived from a popular sixteenth-century tale of chivalry that told of an island called California that was home to a race of valiant women. Once Baja California was determined to be a peninsula, both the peninsula and the coast to the north of it became known as California.25

Others’ interest in California served to awaken Spanish interest in settling the remote province. Russian fur traders, moving down the Pacific Coast from Alaska, seemed poised to seize California. In 1759, a Spanish Franciscan published a book with the title Muscovites in California to alert Spanish authorities to the danger. The Spanish also became concerned that the Manila Galleon, which sailed close to the Californian coast on the eastbound leg of its journey, was vulnerable to attack. To ensure the safety of the Galleon, as well as to prevent other European powers from encroaching, in 1768 Carlos III ordered the occupation of Alta California, as the modern U. S. state of California was then known.26

Two ships sailed north to found settlements. Capt. Gaspar de Portola, a minor Catalonian nobleman with thirty years’ military experience, commanded the expedition. The first ship arrived at San Diego on April 11, 1769. The second ship arrived eighteen days later, after many of its crew had died of scurvy.27

An overland expedition from Baja California soon reinforced the Spaniards. Since so few ablebodied sailors remained, in July sixty men and a pack train of mules set out on foot for Monterey Bay. They failed to recognize it and instead stumbled on San Francisco Bay, whose narrow mouth, the Golden Gate, had been previously overlooked by mariners. Fray Juan Crespi, who accompanied them, described the bay as being so large that “doubtless not only all the navies of our Catholic Monarch, but those of all Europe might lie within the harbor.”28

In 1770, Portola ventured back north, located Monterey Bay, and established a presidio there “to occupy the port and defend us from attacks by the Russians, who were about to invade us.” Despite the bravado, the token force in Monterey, 450 miles north of San Diego, could have done little to stop the Russians.29

Visitor-General Jose de Galvez organized the occupation of Alta California with an eye to minimizing the costs to the royal treasury. He ordered California’s missions, which were under the supervision of Father Junipero Serra, a Spanish-born Franciscan, to supply the presidios. To further lower costs, Galvez directed the Franciscans to strip their missions in Baja California to provide supplies. As a result, hundreds of head of livestock, built up carefully over the years, were slaughtered to feed the new settlements.30

Spain’s northward thrust on land ended in 1776 with the establishment of the presidio and mission of San Francisco, the northernmost permanent Spanish settlement in California. Ultimately, the Franciscans would found twenty-one missions in California, most of which were located near the coast, since they were founded in conjunction with the presidios, which sought to prevent foreign incursions. Due to their strategic importance in reinforcing Spain’s claim to California, the Crown subsidized the missions until they could produce their own food.31

Spanish control over California remained tenuous. The long supply lines were stretched so thin that a 1774 report noted some presidial soldiers had only guns, some had only swords, and some had neither. Fortunately for Spain, the only military action the presidios engaged in was firing a lone cannon shot at an unidentified ship that appeared in San Francisco harbor in 1792. The ship sailed away, never identified.32