Un viaje al Pacífico Norte: primera empresa institucionalizada novohispana, Cabrillo y Ferrer (1540-1543)

Abstract

Through this work, we contribute to enlargement of the cognitive, maritime and territorial borders in the field of the North New Spain of the sixteenth century. It is one of the contributions in a series that considers land and maritime travel from the North of New Spain. To achieve this we make use of the disciplinary convergence, methodologically use historical tools of primary sources, especially in the case “La Relacion”, and interpret them from the theoretical perspective of the sociology of science. The result of the article leads to know some observations of the indigenous population of the region and the development of a sea-crossing that reached up to little beyond the 40 North parallel, as well as the toponymy of Baja and Alta California. As reported in the document, it helped to determine the landforms of the Californian coasts, which ex-panded the geography of the North Pacific.