blow came in 1767, when Spain’s King Charles
III ordered all Jesuits expelled from Spain and
its territories on suspicion of promoting polit-
ical unrest. Friars of the Franciscan order were
assigned to replace the Jesuits.
The Jesuit expulsion in Mexico was over-
seen by José de Gálvez, who had been sent by
Charles III to reform Mexico’s financial affairs,
but whose office of visitor-general gave him
extraordinary power. The ambitious Gálvez
decided to bolster Spain’s hold on Alta (Upper)
California, the same land claimed earlier by
mariners Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, Bartolomé
Ferrer, and Sebastián Vizcaíno. A stronger pres-
ence on the coastline, Gálvez believed, would
protect Spanish claims against English and
Russian challenges. Gálvez himself journeyed
to Baja California to organize an expedition.
Two groups of soldiers commanded by Captain
Gaspar de Portolá would march up the Califor-
nia peninsula. Fray Junípero Serra, a former
theology professor and new president of the
formerly Jesuit missions of Baja California, was
to oversee the expedition’s missionary aspect.
Two ships, the San Carlosand the San Antonio,
would sail up the coast and meet the overland
expeditions in the north near San Diego.
After blessing the departing San Carloson
January 6, 1769, Father Serra left the south-
eastern Baja California seaport of Loreto on
muleback, riding north to catch up with the
departed Portolá expedition. Serra was in
great pain for much of the journey. Taking the
Franciscan denial of worldly pleasure to great
extremes, the asthmatic friar habitually
refused any medical assistance for a leg infec-
tion that plagued him for much of his life.
Land and sea expeditions all met as
planned at San Diego on July 1, 1769. Scurvy
had killed most of the sailors aboard the ships.
Two days later, Serra described the area and its
Ipai inhabitants in a letter to his friend and
later biographer, Father Francisco Palou:
The tract through which we passed is gener-
ally very good land, with plenty of water....
We found vines of a large size, and in some
cases quite loaded with grapes; we also
found an abundance of roses, which
appeared to be like those of Castile. We have
seen Indians in immense numbers, and all
those on this coast of the Pacific contrive to
make a good subsistence on various seeds,
and by fishing. The latter they carry on by
means of rafts or canoes, made of tule [bull-
rush] with which they go a great way to sea.
They are very civil.... We found on our jour-
ney, as well as in the place where we stopped,
that they treated us with as much confidence
and good-will as if they had known us all
their lives. But when we offered them any of
our victuals, they always refused them. All
they cared for was cloth, and only for some-
thing of this sort would they exchange their
fish or whatever else they had.Serra set to work building the first mission
in the present state of California, at San Diego
de Acala. Captain Portolá continued up the
coast, following Gálvez’s orders to reach the
wonderful harbor Vizcaíno had reported in
1603 to exist at Monterey.
Portolá and his men arrived at Monterey
on October 1, 1769, but did not recognize the
bay because it did not fit Vizcaíno’s grand
description. They continued northward along
the mountainous coast, sighting the Farallon
Islands in the distance. One evening, a hunt-
ing party commanded by Sergeant José Fran-
cisco Ortega returned to camp. Fray Juan
Crespi, the group’s chaplain, noted in his
diary, “[A]t about eight o’clock at night on the
third[of November], the scouts came back
from their exploration, firing off a salvo, and
reported on arrival that they had come upon a
great estuary, very broad, that must reach
about eight or ten leagues inland.” ThisThe Road to California B 149