Portugal – California – Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo 1992 Proof Silver 200 Escudos 35mm (26.5 grams) 0.925 Silver (0.7881 oz. ASW) Reference: KM# 660a REPÚBLICA PORTUGUESA 200 ESC., Legend, Portuguese shield, and sailing ship, a sylized 16th century boat, in front of the cross of the Order of Christ. Denomination below. CALIFÓRNIA 1542 1992 JOÃO RODRIGUES CABRILHO ISABEL C.-F.BRANCO INCM, João Rodrigues Cabrilho, first European to navigate the coast of modern California, standing with a map of California and area to his upper right and a legend to his lower right.
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Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo (Portuguese: João Rodrigues Cabrilho; 1499 – January 3, 1543) was an Iberian explorer (most often claimed to be Portuguese, occasionally Spanish), best known for exploring the West Coast of North America on behalf of the Spanish Empire. He was the first European to explore present-day California, navigating along the coast of California in 1542-1543.
Nationality
Cabrillo’s nationality – Portuguese or Spanish – has been debated for centuries. He was described as Portuguese by Spanish chronicler Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas; in his Historia General de los hechos de los Castellanos en las Islas y tierra firme del Mar Oceano, written 60 years after Cabrillo’s death, Herrera referred to Cabrillo as Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo Português. Several locations in Portugal claim to be his birthplace. However, the source for Herrera’s description is unknown.
Some historians have long believed that Cabrillo was from Spain, and a set of documents discovered in 2015 gave strength to that opinion. A witness from a 1532 lawsuit, named Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, testified under oath that he was born in Palma de Micergilio (now Palma del Río), a town in the province of Córdoba in Spain. Other details of the witness’s biography match known facts about the explorer. A leader of San Diego’s Portuguese community cautioned that the new evidence must be carefully evaluated, and requested that copies of the documents be turned over to the Portuguese government for study.
Lapela, in the parish of Cabril and a municipality of Montalegre (Portugal), is the region where allegedly the nickname “Cabrilha” originated. It became the surname Cabrilho and was pronounced at the time Cabrilhe in Galician and Cabrillo in Spanish, according to the historian João Soares Tavares, biographer of João Rodrigues Cabrilho. The name still exists in Portugal as a surname, and several localities named Cabril in Beira Alta and neighboring regions as Castro Daire, Viseu or Pampilhosa da Serra have been claimed as Cabrillo’s birthplace. In Lapela there is an ancient house where local tradition claims he was born. Local people, and alleged local descendants of branches of his ancient family with the same surname (“Rodrigues Cabrilho”), call the house Casa do Galego (House of the Galician) and Casa do Americano (House of the American).
Voyages
Cabrillo shipped for Havana as a young man and joined forces with Hernán Cortés in Mexico (then called New Spain). Later, his success in mining gold in Guatemala made him one of the richest of the conquistadores in Mexico. According to his biographer Harry Kelsey, he took an indigenous woman as his common-law wife and sired several children, including at least three daughters. Later he married Beatriz Sanchez de Ortega in Seville during a hiatus in Spain. She returned to Guatemala with him and bore him two sons.
Cabrillo benefited from the encomienda system that enslaved the Native peoples of the Americas. In Honduras, for example, he broke up families, sending the men to the mines for gold and to the forest to harvest materials he needed for shipbuilding. The women and girls he gave over to his soldiers and sailors, presumably as slaves.
He accompanied Francisco de Orozco to subdue the indigenous Mixtec people at what would eventually become the city of Oaxaca, in Mexico. Little is known of what Cabrillo did there.
In 1539, Francisco de Ulloa, who had been commissioned by Cortés, discovered the Gulf of California and reached nearly as far north as the 30th parallel. Cabrillo was then commissioned by the new Viceroy of New Spain, Antonio de Mendoza, to lead an expedition up the Pacific coast in search of trade opportunities, perhaps to find a way to China (for the full extent of the northern Pacific was unknown) or to find the mythical Strait of Anián (or Northwest Passage) connecting the Pacific Ocean with Hudson Bay. Cabrillo built and owned the flagship of his venture (two or three ships), and stood to profit from any trade or treasure.
In 1540 the fleet sailed from Acajutla, El Salvador, and reached Navidad, Mexico on Christmas Day. While in Mexico, Pedro de Alvarado went to the assistance of the town of Nochistlán, which was under siege by hostile natives, and was killed when his horse fell on him, crushing his chest. Following Alvarado’s death, the viceroy took possession of Alvarado’s fleet. Part of the fleet was sent off to the Philippine Islands under Ruy Lopez de Villalobos and two of the ships were sent north under the command of Cabrillo.
On June 27, 1542, Cabrillo set out from Navidad with three ships: the 200-ton galleon and flagship San Salvador, the smaller La Victoria (c. 100 tons), and the lateen-rigged, twenty-six oared “fragata” or “bergantin” San Miguel. On August 1, Cabrillo anchored within sight of Cedros Island. Before the end of the month they had passed Baja Point (named “Cabo del Engaño” by de Ulloa in 1539) and entered “uncharted waters, where no Spanish ships had been before”. On September 28, he landed in what is now San Diego Bay and named it “San Miguel”. A little over a week later he reached Santa Catalina Island (October 7), which he named “San Salvador”, after his flagship. On sending a boat to the island “a great crowd of armed Indians appeared” – whom, however, they later “befriended”. Nearby San Clemente Island was named “Victoria”, in honor of the third ship of the fleet. The next morning, October 8, Cabrillo came to San Pedro Bay, which was named “Baya de los Fumos” (English: Smoke Bay). The following day they anchored overnight in Santa Monica Bay. Going up the coast Cabrillo saw Anacapa Island, which they learned from the Indians was uninhabited.
The fleet spent the next week in the islands, mostly anchored in Cuyler Harbor, a bay on the northeastern coast of San Miguel Island. On October 18 the expedition saw Point Conception, which they named “Cabo de Galera”. Cabrillo’s expedition recorded the names of numerous Chumash villages on the California coast and adjacent islands in October 1542 – then located in the two warring provinces of Xexo (ruled by an “old woman”, now Santa Barbara County, California) and Xucu (now Ventura County, California).
On November 13 they sighted and named “Cabo de Piños” (possibly either Point Pinos or Point Reyes), but missed the entrance to San Francisco Bay, a lapse that mariners would repeat for the next two centuries and more. The expedition reached as far north as the Russian River before autumn storms forced them to turn back. Coming back down the coast, Cabrillo entered Monterey Bay, naming it “Bahia de Los Piños”.
On November 23, 1542, the little fleet arrived back in “San Salvador” (Santa Catalina Island) to overwinter and make repairs. There, around Christmas Eve, Cabrillo stepped out of his boat and splintered his shin when he stumbled onto a jagged rock while trying to rescue some of his men from attacking Tongva warriors. The injury became infected and developed gangrene, and he died on January 3, 1543 and was buried. A possible headstone was later found on San Miguel Island. His second-in-command brought the remainder of the party back to Navidad, where they arrived April 14, 1543.
A notary’s official report of Cabrillo’s expedition was lost; all that survives is a summary of it made by another investigator, Andrés de Urdaneta, who also had access to ships’ logs and charts. No printed account of Cabrillo’s voyage appeared before historian Antonio de Herrera’s account early in the 17th century.
Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic (Portuguese: República Portuguesa), is a country on the Iberian Peninsula, in Southwestern Europe. It is the westernmost country of mainland Europe, being bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the west and south and by Spain to the north and east. The Portugal-Spain border is 1,214 km (754 mi) long and considered the longest uninterrupted border within the European Union. The republic also includes the Atlantic archipelagos of the Azores and Madeira, both autonomous regions with their own regional governments.
The territory of modern Portugal has been continuously settled, invaded and fought over since prehistoric times. The Pre-Celts, Celts, Phoenicians, Carthaginians and the Romans were followed by the invasions of the Visigothic and the Suebi Germanic peoples, who were themselves later invaded by the Moors. These Muslim peoples were eventually expelled during the Christian Reconquista. Portuguese nationality can be traced back to the creation of the First County of Portugal, in 868. In 1139, Afonso Henriques was proclaimed King of Portugal, thus firmly establishing Portuguese independence, under the Portuguese House of Burgundy.
In the 15th and 16th centuries, under the House of Aviz, which took power following the 1383-85 Crisis, Portugal expanded Western influence and established the first global empire, becoming one of the world’s major economic, political and military powers. During this time, Portuguese explorers pioneered maritime exploration in the Age of Discovery, notably under royal patronage of Prince Henry the Navigator and King João II, with such notable discoveries as Vasco da Gama’s sea route to India (1497-98), Pedro Álvares Cabral’s discovery of Brazil (1500), and Bartolomeu Dias’s reaching of the Cape of Good Hope. Portugal monopolized the spice trade during this time, under royal command of the Casa da Índia, and the Portuguese Empire expanded with military campaigns led in Asia, notably under Afonso de Albuquerque, who was known as the “Caesar of the East”.
The destruction of Lisbon in a 1755 earthquake, the country’s occupation during the Napoleonic Wars, the independence of Brazil (1822), and the Liberal Wars (1828-1834), all left Portugal crippled from war and diminished in its world power. After the 1910 revolution deposed the monarchy, the democratic but unstable Portuguese First Republic was established, later being superseded by the “Estado Novo” right-wing authoritarian regime. Democracy was restored after the Portuguese Colonial War and the Carnation Revolution in 1974. Shortly after, independence was granted to all its colonies and East Timor, with the exception of Macau, which was handed over to China in 1999. This marked the end of the longest-lived European colonial empire, leaving a profound cultural and architectural influence across the globe and a legacy of over 250 million Portuguese speakers today.
Portugal is a developed country with a high-income advanced economy and high living standards. It is the 5th most peaceful country in the world, maintaining a unitary semi-presidential republican form of government. It has the 18th highest Social Progress in the world, putting it ahead of other Western European countries like France, Spain and Italy. It is a member of numerous international organizations, including the United Nations, the European Union, the eurozone, OECD, NATO and the Community of Portuguese Language Countries. Portugal is also known for having decriminalized the usage of all common drugs in 2001, the first country in the world to do so. However, the sale and distribution of these drugs is still illegal in Portugal.
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