The Island of California (Spanish: Isla de California) refers to a long-held global misconception, dating from the 16th century, that the California region was not part of mainland North America but rather a large island separated from the continent by a strait now known as the Gulf of California.
One of the most famous cartographic errors in history, it was propagated on many maps during the 17th and 18th centuries, despite contradictory evidence from various explorers.[1] The legend was initially infused with the idea that California was a terrestrial paradise, like the Garden of Eden or Atlantis. This mapping error was not a one-off event. From the mid-1500s to the late 1700s[2] great controversy surrounded the geography of California. For instance, a Spanish map from 1548 depicts California as a peninsula,[3] while a 1622 Dutch map depicts California as an island.[citation needed] A 1626 Portuguese map depicts the land as a peninsula,[citation needed] while a 1630 British map depicts it as an island.[4] A French map from 1682 only shows the tip of the Baja Peninsula.[citation needed] There are slightly over 1,000 maps in Stanford's Glen McLaughlin Collection of California as an Island, the largest collection of such maps in the world.[5]
History
The first known mention of the legend of the "Island of California" was in the 1510 romance novel Las sergas de Esplandián by Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo—the sequel to Montalvo's more famous tales of Amadís de Gaula, father of Esplandian. He described the island in this passage:
Know, that on the right hand of the Indies there is an island called California very close to the side of the Terrestrial Paradise; and it is peopled by black women, without any man among them, for they live in the manner of Amazons.[6]
It is thought that, because of the widespread popularity of Las sergas de Esplandián at the time of European exploration of California, that it is reasonable that the book inspired the naming of California.[7] The book's description is also thought to have prompted early explorers to misidentify the Baja California peninsula as the island in these legends.[7]
In 1533, Fortún Ximénez, a mutineer on an exploring expedition sent by Hernán Cortés, discovered the southern portion of Baja California, around present-day La Paz. He was killed by natives but his men returned to New Spain and reported on their find. In 1535, Cortés arrived in the bay there and named the area Santa Cruz; he attempted to start a colony but abandoned his efforts after several years due to logistical problems. Cortés' limited information on southern Baja California apparently led to the naming of the region after the legendary California and to an initial but short-lived assumption that it was a large island.[8][9]
In 1539, Cortés sent the navigator Francisco de Ulloa northward along the Gulf and Pacific coasts of Baja California. Ulloa reached the mouth of the Colorado River at the head of the Gulf, which seemed to prove that the region was a peninsula rather than an island.[10] Ulloa was quoted as having described the land he saw on his expedition as, "High and bare, of wretched aspect without any verdure."[5] An expedition under Hernando de Alarcón ascended the lower Colorado River and confirmed Ulloa's finding. Maps published subsequently in Europe during the 16th century, including those by Gerardus Mercator and Abraham Ortelius, correctly showed Baja California as a peninsula.
Rather than many cartographers independently making the same mistake, it is thought[11] that maps of California as an island spread due to copying in the early 1600s, since it is known that cartographers of the time frequently made copies of other maps. Interestingly, the first maps depicting California as an island originated after a series of correct maps.[5]Carmelite friar Antonio De La Ascension, a priest at the top of the Spanish church, was the first known person to depict California as an island in 1603.[12]
On the return voyage to Acapulco, Mexico, Friar Antonio's ship was overtaken by Dutch pirates who found and confiscated a map drawn by him that depicted California as an island, effectively leaking state-secret information.[13] Spain was not in the habit of willingly sharing information about their expeditions— in fact, maps produced by Sebastián Vizcaíno, the leader of the expedition that brought Fray Antonio De La Ascension to California, were not published until 1802, two hundred years after the expedition occurred.[14] Shortly after the map was confiscated from Friar Antonio's ship, Dutch maps were published depicting California as an island. At the bottom left corner of a British map from 1630 drawn by Henry Briggs is scribbled "California, sometimes supposed to be a part of the western continent, but since by a Spanish chart taken from Hollanders, it is found to be a goodly island". This stolen map was Friar Antonio's,[12] and this quote provides evidence for the spread of knowledge of California as an island. As the Dutch were reputable cartographers,[2] it is thought that word of California as an island began to spread, as the majority of maps depicting California as an island were published after 1622. Throughout the 1600s, the Dutch, Japanese, French, Germans, British, and more all drew California as an island.
Another contributing factor may have been the second voyage of Juan de Fuca in 1592. De Fuca claimed to have explored the western coast of North America and to have found a large opening that possibly connected to the Atlantic Ocean — the legendary Northwest Passage. Finding a Northwest Passage was something that motivated many of the explorers coming to the California coast at the time, as it would be extremely profitable for Europe if a northern trade route to Asia could be found.[15] In fact, explorers like Sebastián Vizcaíno were operating under orders to sail north until they found the Northwest Passage, and only to turn around if the coast veered northwest, which would imply that there was no waterway and the land was actually connected to Asia.[5] De Fuca's claim remains controversial because there is only one surviving written account of it found, his account as related to an Englishman, Michael Locke. Nonetheless, this account claims de Fuca found a large strait, with a large island at its mouth, at around 47° north latitude. The Strait of Juan de Fuca is in fact at around 48° N, as is the southern tip of the large island now called Vancouver Island, while the northern reach of the Gulf of California terminates much farther south, at about 31° N. It is possible that explorers and mapmakers in the 17th century could have confused the two (if, in fact, they were aware of de Fuca's voyage), and in any case further exploration was inevitable. Indeed, the famed British explorer James Cook narrowly missed the Strait of Juan de Fuca in March 1778, almost 200 years later. Cook even named Cape Flattery (at the northwest tip of modern Washington state) which is at the mouth of the strait, and stopped in Nootka Sound just off the west coast of Vancouver Island at about 49° N. His account states "we saw nothing like [the Strait of Juan de Fuca]; nor is there the least probability that ever any such thing existed."[16] However, Cook describes some bad weather in his account around this time, and did continue on to map most of the outer Pacific coastline of North America from modern-day northern California to the Bering Strait in Alaska on the same voyage.
A key role in changing ideas about California seems to have been played by an overland expedition led by the founding governor of Santa Fe de Nuevo México, Juan de Oñate. The expedition descended the Colorado River in 1604 and 1605, and its participants believed that they saw the Gulf of California continuing off to the northwest (presumably behind the Sierra de Los Cucapah into the Laguna Salada Basin and Lake Cahuilla, but was more likely due to the California Superflood of 1605, in which the flooded Central and Indio Valley basins did essentially appear to extend the peninsula hundreds of miles northward).
Reports from Oñate's expedition reached Antonio de la Ascención, a Carmelite friar who had participated in Sebastián Vizcaíno's explorations of the west coast of California in 1602 and 1603. Ascención was a tireless propagandist in favor of Spanish settlement in California, and his later writings referred to the region as an island. As older maps confirm, Spanish authorities and local residents were well aware where the actual northern terminus of the Gulf of California lay, but by extending the coastline north past Cape Mendocino and eventually even into Puget Sound, Francis Drake's claim of Nova Albion for England (1579) could be invalidated by the priority of Cortes' claim (1533).
The Jesuit missionary and cartographer Eusebio Francisco Kino revived the fact that Baja California was a peninsula. While studying in Europe, Kino had accepted the insularity of California, but when he reached Mexico he began to have doubts. He made a series of overland expeditions from northern Sonora to areas within or near the Colorado River's delta in 1698–1706, in part to provide a practical route between the Jesuits' missions in Sonoran and Baja California but also to resolve the geographical question. Kino satisfied himself that a land connection must exist, and the 18th century Jesuits generally followed his example. The first report of Kino's discovery and his map from 1701 showing California as a peninsula were sent to Europe by Marcus Antonius Kappus, a Jesuit missionary from Kamna Gorica (Duchy of Carniola, now Slovenia). In a June 1701 letter, he wrote about that to his friend Philippus Alberth in Vienna and thus acted as an important intermediary in the dissemination of this knowledge. However, Juan Mateo Manje, a military companion on several of Kino's treks, expressed scepticism; European cartographers remained divided on the question.
Jesuit missionary-explorers in Baja California who attempted to lay the issue finally to rest included Juan de Ugarte (1721), Ferdinand Konščak (1746), and Wenceslaus Linck (1766). The matter was settled beyond all dispute when the expeditions of Juan Bautista de Anza traveled between Sonora and the west coast of Alta California in the period of 1774–1776.
↑ "History". California as an Island in Maps - Spotlight at Stanford. February 7, 2016. Retrieved February 9, 2023.
1 2 Leighly, John, Robert Grabhorn, and Andrew Hoyem. California As an Island: An Illustrated Essay. San Francisco, [Calif.: Book Club of California, 1972. Print.
↑ Gastaldi, Giacomo (1548). Map of California. Glen McLaughlin Collection of California as an Island. McLaughlin map number 1189. Green Library, Stanford University, Stanford, CA.
↑ Briggs, Henry (1625). Map of California. Glen McLaughlin Collection of California as an Island. McLaughlin map number 2. Green Library, Stanford University, Stanford, CA.
1 2 3 4 McLaughlin, Glen. Glen McLaughlin Collection of California as an Island, Stanford Libraries. Accessed 15 Feb. 2023.
↑ Rodríguez de Montalvo, Garci (1526) [1496]. Las sergas de Esplandián[The Adventures of Esplandián] (in Spanish). Sabed que a la diestra mano de las Indias ovo una Isla llamada California mucho llegada a la parte del paraiso terrenal la qual fue poblada de mugeres negras sin que algun varon entre ellas oviesse: que casi como las amazonas ... (The first mention of "California" occurs on the unnumbered (verso) page after page CVIII, in the right column.)
↑ Portillo, Álvaro del (1982) [1944]. Descubrimientos y exploraciones en las costas de California, 1532–1650[Discoveries and explorations along the coast of California, 1532–1650] (in Spanish) (2nded.). Madrid: Ediciones Rialp. p.140. ISBN9788432121890. Sin embargo, es indudable que Cortés, el envidiado, habló de una isla de riqueza fantástica." ["However, it is clear that Cortés, with envy, spoke of a fantastic island of wealth."] (The 1944 edition was the author's doctoral thesis.)
The Strait of Juan de Fuca is a body of water about 96 miles long that is the Salish Sea's main outlet to the Pacific Ocean. The international boundary between Canada and the United States runs down the centre of the Strait.
The Baja California peninsula is a peninsula in northwestern Mexico. It separates the Gulf of California from the Pacific Ocean. The peninsula extends from Mexicali, Baja California, in the north to Cabo San Lucas, Baja California Sur, in the south.
La Paz is the capital city of the Mexican state of Baja California Sur. The city had a 2020 census population of 250,141 inhabitants, making it the most populous city in the state. It is in La Paz Municipality, which is the fourth-largest municipality in Mexico in geographical size and reported a population of 292,241 inhabitants on a land area of 20,275 km2 (7,828 sq mi).
Francisco de Ulloa was a Spanish explorer who explored the west coast of present-day Mexico and the Baja California Peninsula under the commission of Hernán Cortés. Ulloa's voyage was among the first to disprove the cartographic misconception of the existence of the Island of California.
Fortún Ximénez Bertandoña was a Spanish sailor of Basque origin who led a mutiny during an early expedition along the Pacific Coast of Mexico and is the first European known to have landed in the Baja California peninsula.
Fernando Consag, known in his native Croatian as Ferdinand Konščak, was a Croatian Jesuit missionary, explorer and cartographer, who spent most of his life in Mexico, in Baja California.
Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo was a Castilian author who arranged the modern version of the chivalric romance Amadís de Gaula, originally written in three books in the 14th century by an unknown author. Montalvo incorporated a fourth book in the original series, and followed it with a sequel, Las sergas de Esplandián. It is the sequel that Montalvo is most often noted for, mainly because within the book he coined the word California.
The human history of the west coast of North America is believed to stretch back to the arrival of the earliest people over the Bering Strait, or alternately along a now-submerged coastal plain, through the development of significant pre-Columbian cultures and population densities, to the arrival of the European explorers and colonizers. The west coast of North America today is home to some of the largest and most important companies in the world, as well as being a center of world culture.
Juan de Fuca was a Greek sailor who served PhilipII of Spain. He is best known for his claim to have explored the Strait of Anián—now known as the Strait of Juan de Fuca—between Vancouver Island and the Olympic Peninsula.
Father Eusebio Francisco Kino, SJ, often referred to as Father Kino, was an Italian Jesuit, missionary, geographer, explorer, cartographer, mathematician and astronomer born in the Territory of the Bishopric of Trent, then part of a partially German-speaking area of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. For the last 24 years of his life he worked in the region then known as the Pimería Alta, modern-day Sonora in Mexico and southern Arizona in the United States. He explored the region and worked with the indigenous Native American population, including primarily the Tohono O'Odham, Sobaipuri and other Upper Piman groups. He proved that the Baja California Territory was not an island but a peninsula by leading an overland expedition there. By the time of his death he had established 24 missions and visitas.
Calafia, or Califia, is the fictional queen of the island of California, first introduced by 16th century poet Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo in his epic novel of chivalry, Las sergas de Esplandián, written around 1510. She is the namesake of the California region encompassing the U.S. state of California and the Mexican states of Baja California and Baja California Sur.
Multiple theories regarding the origin of the name California, as well as the root language of the term, have been proposed, but most historians believe the name likely originated from a 16th-century novel, Las Sergas de Esplandián. The novel, popular at the time of the Spanish exploration of Mexico and the Baja California Peninsula, describes a fictional island named California, ruled by Queen Calafia, east of the Indies. The author of the novel, Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo, also known as Ordóñez de Montalvo, is thought to have derived the term California from the Arabic Khalif and/or Khalifa, but he might also have been influenced by the term "Califerne" in the 11th-century epic French poem The Song of Roland.
The Portolá expedition was a Spanish voyage of exploration in 1769–1770 that was the first recorded European exploration of the interior of the present-day California. It was led by Gaspar de Portolá, governor of Las Californias, the Spanish colonial province that included California, Baja California, and other parts of present-day Mexico and the United States. The expedition led to the founding of Alta California and contributed to the solidification of Spanish territorial claims in the disputed and unexplored regions along the Pacific coast of North America.
Juan María de Salvatierra, S.J., was a Catholic missionary to the Americas.
Las Sergas de Esplandián is a novel written by Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo in the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century. The novel is a sequel to a popular fifteenth century set of chivalric romance novels, Amadís de Gaula. The novel achieved particular notability in 1862, when Edward Everett Hale concluded that the novel was the origin of the name California.
The Spanish missions in Baja California were a large number of religious outposts established by Catholic religious orders, the Jesuits, the Franciscans and the Dominicans, between 1683 and 1834. The missionary goal was to spread the Christian doctrine among the Indigenous peoples living on the Baja California peninsula. The missions gave Spain a valuable toehold in the frontier land, and would also act as a deterrent to prevent pirates from using the peninsula of Las Californias as a jumping off point for contraband trade with mainland New Spain. Missionaries introduced European livestock, fruits, vegetables, and industry into the region. Indigenous peoples were severely impacted by the introduction of European diseases such as smallpox and measles; furthermore, the expulsion of the Jesuits from the Spanish Empire in 1767 ripped the social fabric of the peninsula, although Franciscans were sent to replace them. In 1769, the Franciscans moved to Upper California, leaving Dominicans in charge of Baja California. By 1800 indigenous numbers were a fraction of what they had been before the arrival of the Spanish, yet even today many people living in Baja California are of indigenous heritage.
Mission San Bruno was a short-lived Spanish mission established by Jesuit order on October 7, 1684, in what is now the Loreto Municipality of Baja California Sur, Mexico. The mission was the first Spanish mission established on the Baja California Peninsula.
The Haro Strait is one of the main channels connecting the Strait of Georgia to the Strait of Juan de Fuca, separating Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands in British Columbia, Canada from the San Juan Islands of Washington state in the United States.
During the Age of Discovery, the Spanish Empire undertook several expeditions to the Pacific Northwest of North America. Spanish claims to the region date to the papal bull of 1493, and the Treaty of Tordesillas signed in 1494. In 1513, this claim was reinforced by Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa, the first European to sight the Pacific Ocean, when he claimed all lands adjoining this ocean for the Spanish Crown. Spain only started to colonize the claimed territory north of present-day Mexico in the 18th century, when it settled the northern coast of Las Californias.
The exploration of North America by European sailors and geographers was an effort by major European powers to map and explore the continent with the goal of economic, religious and military expansion. The combative and rapid nature of this exploration is the result of a series of countering actions by neighboring European nations to ensure no single country had garnered enough wealth and power from the Americas to militarily tip the scales over on the European continent. It spanned the late 15th to early 17th centuries, and consisted primarily of expeditions funded by Spain, England, France, and Portugal. See also the European colonization of the Americas.
References
Laylander, Don, 2004. "Geographies of Fact and Fantasy: Oñate on the Lower Colorado River, 1604–1605". Southern California Quarterly 86:309–324.
León-Portilla, Miguel. 1989. Cartografía y crónicas de la antigua California. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico City.
McLaughlin, Glen, with Nancy H. Mayo. The Mapping of California as an Island: An Illustrated Checklist. Saratoga, CA: California Map Society, 1995 .
Tooley, R. V. 1964. California as an Island: A Geographical Misconception Illustrated by 100 Examples from 1625–1770. Map Collectors' Circle, London.
MacDonald, Gregory (2019). Isle of the Amazons In the Vermilion Sea. Kansas City, MO: 39 West Press. ISBN978-1-946358-14-1. An anthology of writings that describe Baja California, and the Gulf of California, from sources dated from the mid-sixteenth century to present.
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