History of Monterey/Carmel Part Two

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(Excerpted from my book Our Summer in Carmel, Amazon.com)
In what the Spanish called Alta California, there was not the relentless effort to colonize, proselytize and claim territory that there had been in Mexico, Peru and the Eastern coasts of the new world. But change was coming, none the less. Perhaps the first Spaniard to see the Monterey area was Juan Rodriguez Carbrillo. The records are sparse and historians are uncertain. Carbrllo had come to Mexico in 1519 as part of an expedition to reprimand Hernan Cortes for exceeding his authority in dealing with the Aztecs. Rather than reprimanding Cortes, he instead joined him, and was instrumental in Cortes' defeat of the Aztecs. Twenty years later, Cabrillo, then a prosperous landowner, a founder of Guatemala City, and a settled married man was asked by the Governor of Spain's empire in Central America, to lead an expedition to explore the possible riches further up the coast to what is called Alta California. (I will skip here the politics of why it took over two years to set sail, and uundermanned at that, but a brief summary is contained in the book.) Cabrillo discovered and named (all to be changed later) San Diego, Catalina Island, and Los Angeles. Sailing further north, he encountered a series of difficulties. He broke his arm in a storm, continued sailing north despite declining provisions, and on November 11, 1542, was again stricken by a storm off of present day Point Pinos at nearby Monterey Bay. No sooner had they sighted this landmark that the ships were blown back out to sea and the expedition was finally forced to turn around, making landfall at San Miguel, present day San Diego. While waiting out the severe winter storms, the brave Cabrillo succumbed to gangrene, never having seen the Monterey area. From Cabrillo's misadventures more than fifty years would pass before Spain would pay any attention to his expedition. It was later events, on a larger scale, that finally prodded Spain into action

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