1542 As it would prove so often in the future – to the Forty-Niners looking for gold, the Okies for jobs, and electronics engineers for cutting-edge opportunities in Silicon Valley – people imagined California as their promised land before they experienced its actuality. In fact, California had existed in literature for some time before it was discovered – in Las Sergas de Esplandián (The Adventures of Esplandián) by the 15th-century Spanish author of Amadís de Gaula, Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo:
[A] la diestra mano de las Indias existe una isla llamada California muy cerca de un costado del Paraíso Terrenal; y estaba poblada por mujeres negras … de bellos y robustos cuerpos, fogoso valor y gran fuerza.… Sus armas eran todas de oro … porque en toda la isla no había otro metal que el oro.1
At almost the same time as Las Sergas appeared, Columbus was entering into the diary of his first voyage in 1492 another story – this one told by the natives – of an island inhabited by women. Just 32 years later, the conquistador Hernán Cortés reported to the king of Spain that one of his captains had heard yet another tale of a paradisal island ‘rich in gold and pearls’, inhabited only by women.
Another of Cortés’ captains, Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, fought as the head of a crossbow detachment in the conquest of Mexico, before settling in what is now Guatemala. Brought up as a shipwright, he was unusual among explorers in being able to build his own ships. He was also a canny adventurer and a hard employer, using the Indians virtually as slaves to carry supplies to his Guatemalan gold mine, and pitch from the mountains to waterproof his ships.
In 1542 Cabrillo was charged by Pedro de Alvara, then Captain General of Guatemala, to explore the west coast of what is now the United States, not least to settle those old rumours of golden islands and dusky beauties. Arriving at Ensenada, Baja California on 17 September 1542, they sailed north until they entered San Diego Bay on the 28th, which Cabrillo named San Miguel and described as ‘a closed and very good harbour’, landing at Ballast Point and claiming the area for Spain. They then coasted what is now California as far north as the Russian River in present-day Sonoma County, north of San Francisco, before coming back south. Cabrillo died of infection following a leg wound sustained while scrambling ashore at Catalina Island, off Los Angeles.
But no Amazons, alas – and no gold either; it would take a foreman working a watermill for a German-Swiss immigrant in 1848 to start up the California Gold Rush.
1 ‘To the right of the Indies there is an island called California, very close to the coast of the earthly paradise; and it was inhabited by black women … with strong, beautiful bodies, fiercely brave and very strong.… Their armaments were made completely of gold … because in all the island there was no metal other than gold.’