Geography 417
California for Educators
Exploration of California
Objectives
•
Students will
identify the notable explorers who came to California.
•
Students will
identify and explain the routes taken and obstacles to early exploration.
•
Students will
explain the motivations behind the exploration.
California
Standards
•
4.2.2: Identify
the early land and sea routes to, and European settlements in, California with
a focus on the exploration of the North Pacific (e.g., by Captain James Cook,
Vitus Bering, Juan Cabrillo), noting especially the importance of mountains,
deserts, ocean currents, and wind patterns.
•
4.2.3 Describe
the Spanish exploration and colonization of California, including the
relationships among soldiers, missionaries, and Indians (e.g., Juan Crespi,
Junipero Serra, Gaspar de Portola).
CSET
•
They discuss the
impact of Spanish exploration and colonization, including the mission system
and its influence on the development of the agricultural economy of early
California.
Standards?
•
Why might
historians and politicians believe that the story of “intrepid explorers” is so
important that it gets essentially the same treatment as many other epochs in
California history?
Web Link
•
California
History On-Line
Why did
the Europeans Arrive?
•
California as
Eden, with Amazon Women
•
Gold – plenty in Mexico, kept them pre-occupied.
•
Queen
Califa and the Amazon women.
•
Link
to Spice Islands (Indonesia, Philippines); Provisions, scurvy, problem along
the way home.
•
Strait of Anian
•
Convert the
“Indians” - most important goal of most Spaniards who stayed in Alta California
East Indies map
Cortes
•
Conquered the
Aztecs in 1521
•
Sent
several search parties up the western coast of Mexico looking for the island of
California and the strait that led to Asia.
•
Ulloa proved it
was no island around 1540, but the notion persisted for several hundred years.
1650 Map of California
•
Note that
California is an island.
Coronado
•
Search for
overland routes to the Strait of Anian via New Mexico, Arizona.
•
Explored
much of the interior U.S.
Cabrillo
•
Left searching
for the Strait of Anian in 1542 and reached the Bay of San Diego that year.
•
By winter they
had made it to the mouth of the Russian River, where they turned Southward.
•
First
descriptions of the people of California, including the Tongva, Chumash, etc. Some friendly, some not.
•
Cabrillo dies
from a simple accident on a Channel Island (Santa Rosa?), while they wintered
in 1543.
•
Search continues
the next summer and nearly ends in total catastrophe…but returns to New Spain
in Sp. 1543.
Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo (fig)
Cabrillo
Monument (San Diego)
•
Why do things
like this get built?
•
Do we still build
them?
•
What does it say
about how we “know” and “teach” history today, compared to how history was
taught years ago?
Francis
Drake
•
Sir Francis
Drake, 1579 landed somewhere North of San Diego
•
He hated the
Spanish and they were very interested in his voyages. His maps and ships logs were so secret that
to this day nobody knows for sure where he landed.
•
Still his claims
were extensive and he called what he found Nova Albion, and these claims
carried weight into the negotiations that ended the Mexican-American war nearly
300 years later.
•
Hero
or cruel pirate?
Drake’s
Bay
•
Map
Cermeno
and Vizcaino
•
A
Spanish captain who sought a better way to conduct trade between Manila and New
Spain.
•
Harboring and
re-supplying in California made sense and he found a spot in 1595 at Drake’s
Bay.
•
Later replicated
by Vizcaino
in 1602, who made detailed maps
of California’s coasts.
Other
Exploring Groups
•
James Cook,
famous English explorer also explored California around 1778.
•
He “discovered”
Hawaii, but was killed there on a return visit.
•
Vitus Bering, a
Danish navigator with the Russian Navy explored the NW US coast.
• Most importantly these missions put pressure on the Spanish
to make permanent their claims on Alta California.
Fort Ross, 1812-1841 (Russian River)
–
beaver and sea otter; once they were gone, the Russians
left.
•
French fur
trappers in early 19th Century
–
Early explorers
told some pretty tall tales about California and the wilderness they found.
After all that desert it must have seemed incredible.
Fort Ross
•
Fort Ross as it
appears today, about 12 miles north of the Russian
River and the town of Jenner on the Sonoma coast.