‘A murderer, a slaver and a sex trafficker.’ Why Spanish explorer is still worth studying

Spanish explorer Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo was the first European to navigate California’s coast. He was also “a murderer, a slaver and a sex trafficker,” according to some critics.

In June, someone poured red paint over a statue of Cabrillo at the entrance to San Pedro’s Cabrillo Beach and spraypainted the word “colonizer” on the sculpture.

Cabrillo College in Aptos is considering changing its name in response to the controversy over Cabrillo’s legacy, the Santa Cruz Sentinel reported July 21.

“Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo took part in the genocide of the Americas,” Martin Garcia, an English instructor at the college, told the Sentinel. “He was a murderer, a slaver and a sex trafficker, ultimately dying of gangrene. ... Personally, I would rather have the college named Gangrene College than Cabrillo College.”

In 1521, Cabrillo slew numerous Aztec warriors in the battle of Lake Texcoco to save Cortez’s besieged soldiers, who were stranded on the islands of Tenochtitlan in what is now México City. His role in constructing boats covered with animal hides to protect the crossbow armed soldiers played a major role in defeating the warriors who lined the shore.

He was rewarded with a large slice of the encomienda system, which permitted the conquistadors to enslave the native peoples of the Americas.

In Honduras, he enslaved hundreds of men and boys to work in the gold mines.

He had several children by a Native American woman before returning to Spain to marry Beatriz Sanchez de Ortega. He brought Ortega back to his estanza in Guatemala, where she bore him two children.

Cabrillo had gone from being an almost penniless boy on the streets of Seville to marrying into a noble family and becoming wealthy in the Americas.

He partnered with another conquistador who came from a noble family, Pedro de Alvarado. They constructed a fleet of ships in El Salvador to sail in search of new lands and fortunes.

Shortly before departure, Alvarado’s horse fell on him in a skirmish.

After Alvarado’s death, the new viceroy of Mexico, Pedro de Mendoza, seized Alvarado’s fleet.

Most of the fleet was dispatched to the Philippine Islands commanded by Ruy Lopez de Villalobos. The 200-ton galleon San Salvador, the 100-ton La Victoria, and the 26-oared San Miguel were sent north under the command of Cabrillo.

Cabrillo sailed from Navidad on June 27, 1542.

On Sept. 28, 1542, Cabrillo sailed into a bay that he named San Miguel — modern-day San Diego.

He met with Indians who told him that “in the interior men like us were traveling about.” They were referring to the 1540 Coronado expedition in the Colorado River basin or the Francisco de Ulloa voyage to explore the Gulf of California in 1539 and 1540.

Cabrillo sailed north, visiting Santa Catalina Island, which he and his crew found totally delightful. His visit to what is now San Pedro was far less satisfying. He named the harbor Bahia de los Fumes, or the “Bay of Smokes.”

The Native Americans set fires in the canyons around the Los Angeles basin to prevent too much buildup of undergrowth and to drive out the game. The smoke from those fires was caught in the famed “inversion layer” that brings both good weather and smog.

Harry Kelsey’s 1986 biography, “Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo,” is the first full-length life history of the mariner.

Kelsey documents an event at the mouth of Goleta Creek in late October 1542, when Cabrillo, fearful that some of his crew were about to have sex with Native Americans, forced the men back on his ships at gunpoint. His motives had more to do with his feeling that his crew might refuse to leave the enticements of the “comely appearing youthful women” than protecting the women from rape.

Cabrillo fought a northerly storm in trying to round Points Concepción Argüello and may have sailed north as far as Cape Mendocino or further, missing the entrance to San Francisco Bay.

He returned to Catalina Island on Nov. 23, 1542. There, on Christmas Day, Tongva tribe members attacked an onshore party.

Cabrillo rushed ashore and in leaping from a small boat, splintered his shin when he stumbled onto a jagged rock. The wound became infected and he died of gangrene on Jan. 3, 1543.

The leader of the first European exploration of the California coast was a man of his times when life was short and brutal, and selfish pleasures and great cruelty prevailed among those who held power.

Unlike Christopher Columbus in the Caribbean, Cabrillo’s discoveries did not lead to an immediate rush to exploit the riches of Alta California because he did not find any.

By the time that Spain did attempt to colonize Alta California, the age of conquistadors was long past.

As a professional historian, I find value in studying Cabrillo as a record of how outsiders observed our region nearly 500 years ago. We do not have to honor the man, but we need to know about things such of the presence of smog in the Los Angeles basin in 1542.

And while students at UC Santa Cruz take pride in their banana slug mascot, I doubt that many would be happy to attend neighboring Gangrene College.

Correction: An earlier version of this story mistakenly said that Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo died in 1503. The error has been corrected.

This story was originally published July 26, 2020 at 5:05 AM with the headline "‘A murderer, a slaver and a sex trafficker.’ Why Spanish explorer is still worth studying."