Two Fictitious Accounts of Ortega’s “Third Voyage” to California

Abstract

Sinaloa and Sonora defied, for nearly two centuries, all efforts at conquest and settlement. Ships were fitted out, sailors, soldiers, and would-be colonists were recruited by hopeful generals, admirals, and explorers. From the first try under Cortes in 1535 until the successful expedition of Father Juan Maria de Salvatierra in 1697, there were numerous attempts to establish towns and missions in Lower California.' Spanish sovereigns from Charles I to Charles III were anxious to establish ports of call on the west coast for the Manila Galleon. Reputed wealth in the form of pearl beds along the east coast and the precious mineral deposits throughout the peninsula contributed further motives for conquest. The unconverted natives, so close to the flourishing missions on the mainland, offered a promising field for evangelization. Even the absurd geographic and cartographic errors of the times helped to lend importance to the sterile region.2 Friar Antonio de la Ascension, who accompanied Sebastian Vizcalno on his second expedition, made of the Californias-from the southern tip at about twenty-three degrees north latitude to Cabo Mendocino at about forty degrees-a huge island. California was considered not only a veritable continent, but also a region controlling the entrance into the lonf-souiht-for Northwest Passage. The nation which held California * The author is Director of the American Division of the Jesuit Historical Institute (St. Louis-Rome). 1. Cortes' 1535 expedition to lower California is studied by Henry R. Wagner, Spanish Voyages to the Northwest Coast of America in the Sixteenth Century (San Francisco, 1929), pp. 6-7; Salvatierra's successful entry is discussed by me in Juan Maria de Salvatierra . . . (Los Angeles, 1971), especially pp. 33-34, 81-141 . 2. Nearly all that I have to say here on the cartography of the Californias is taken from my monograph, Kino and the Cartography of Northwestern New Spain (Tucson, 1965), abbreviated in this article as KC.