Center: Monterrey Picus Aureatus (Woodpecker),
Monterey, California, by William Smyth (1800–1877); watercolor, 1825–1827.
This is one of the natural history sketches made by Smyth, a midshipman
and mate on the Pacific voyage of Frederick William Beechey (1825–1828).
A career officer in the British navy and a talented artist, Smyth produced
accomplished drawings of his voyages and of some of the ships on which he
sailed. The Robert B. Honeyman, Jr., Collection of Early Californian and
Western American Pictorial Material, The Bancroft Library, University of
California, Berkeley, BANC PIC 1963.002:1303:17–ALB.
Upper left: L’Ours Gris de L’Amerique Septentrionale
(California Grizzly Bear), color lithograph from Ludovik (Louis) Choris’s
Voyage pittoresque autour du monde, avec des portraits de sauvages d’Amérique,
D’Asie, d’Afrique, et des îles du Grand ocean . . .
(Paris, 1822). Although the California grizzly became extinct in 1922, the
bear is California’s state animal and appears on the seal and flag.
Choris (1795–1828), a Russian artist, made the sketches upon which
he based his later lithographs during his 1816 visit to California as a
member of Otto von Kotzebue’s first expedition to circumnavigate the
globe, 1815–1818. California Historical Society, FN-31314.
Upper right: Armes et ustensiles de Californie
(arms and utensils of California Indians): four decorated baskets, otter
skin quiver with arrows, and bow. Color lithograph from Choris’s
Voyage pittororesque . . . . Honeyman Collection, The Bancroft Library,
BANC PIC 1963.002:0367–B.
Lower right: Male and Female Quail of California, by
Jean-Louis-Robert Prévost, from Jean-François de Galaup, Comte
de La Pérouse, Voyage de La Pérouse autour du Monde
(Paris, 1797). French navigator La Pérouse (1741–1788) embarked
on a circumnavigation of the globe from Brest, in 1785. During the course
of his Pacific travels, he visited Mission San Carlos in present-day Carmel,
California. Although La Pérouse’s expedition ended in shipwreck
on the reefs of the New Hebrides in 1788, the charts and maps from the voyage
survived and were published. California Historical Society, FN-30508.
Lower left: Decorative detail from Maris Pacifici (quod
vulgò Mar del Zur), by Abraham Ortelius (1527–1598) (Amsterdam,
1590). By permission of The British Library, shelfmark Maps.C.2.d.3.
Background: Chumash presentation tray, woven by Juana Basilia
Sitmelelene (1770–1838), ca. 1825. Commissioned by Spanish administrators
in Monterey as a gift for a visiting dignitary, this tray is an example
of the fine basketry for which the Chumash people are known. They first
settled the region of coastal California between Malibu and Paso Robles
and the North Channel Islands 13,000 years ago. Courtesy of the Santa Barbara
Museum of Natural History.
San Antonio regalito (little gift), presented by Father Junípero Serra to Lieutenant José Francisco Ortega, military commandant of the San Diego Presidio, in 1774. The statue, an eighteenth-century polychromed wood carving, depicts St. Anthony of Padua in a Franciscan habit, holding the infant Jesus and a loaf of bread. The niche is a later addition. Photograph courtesy of Patrick Tregenza.
Father Narcisco Durán and Child, unsigned, from Eugene Duflot de Mofras’s Exploration du territorie de l’Orégon: des Californies et la mer vermeille: execute pendant les années 1840, 1841, et 1842 (Paris, 1844), page 200. Father Durán was stationed at Mission San José, the first established by Father Serra in Alta California, during the 1820s and 1830s. Duflot de Mofras, an attaché to the French embassy in Mexico City, explored the west coast of North America on behalf of French business interests from 1840-1842 and provided a remarkably detailed account of the pre-American era Pacific coast. Courtesy of the California History Room, California State Library, Sacramento.
Bell from Mission San Xavier, Baja California, established by the Jesuits in 1699. Following the expulsion of the Jesuits by the Viceroy of Mexico in 1767, the Franciscans were asked to assume responsibility for the missions in Baja California, which brought these outposts under the jurisdiction of Father Junípero Serra. Photograph courtesy of Patrick Tregenza.
View of Fort Ross, 1828, from a sketch by Auguste Bernard Duhaut-Cilly (1790-1849), published in his Voyage autour du monde, principalement à la Claifornie et aux îles Sandwich, pendant les années 1826, 1827, 1828, et 1829 (Paris, 1834-1835). The Russian-American Company established Fort Ross (from Rossiia, the word for Russia) in 1812, as a commercial hunting and trading venture. The company intended for the settlement to supply food to Russian outposts in Alaska and to profit from hunting sea otters. In 1841, with the sea otter population in serious decline, the Russians sold their holdings to John Sutter, owner of the saw mill where gold was discovered in 1848. Fort Ross State Historic Park Photographic Archives.
Friday
Costumes de danse de guerre des habitans de la Californie du voisinage de la mission de Sn. Francisco (War dance costumes of the inhabitants of California), by Choris, watercolor, ca. 1816. Notes in pencil identity the Indians as Olompoli and Sactan. Honeyman Collection, The Bancroft Library, BANC PIC 1963.002:0368–B.
The Presidio and Pueblo of Monterrey, by William Smyth, watercolor on paper, 1827. Honeyman Collection, The Bancroft Library, BANC PIC 1953.004-FR.
Liturgical vestments made of Chinese silk, given to Father Serra by Carlos Francisco de Croix, Viceroy of New Spain, in 1771, to celebrate the establishment of Mission San Carlos. Photograph courtesy of Patrick Tregenza.
Chumash coiled rush hat (sumulelu), from California, ca. 1793; collected by George Vancouver (1757-1798) during his 1791-1795 expedition to discover a northwest passage from the interior of Canada to the Pacific Ocean and to settle England’s dispute with Spain over claims to the island that now bears his name. Copyright The Trustees of The British Museum (Ethno Van 168).
Saturday
Detail from Choris’s Armes et ustensiles de Californie (arms and utensils of California Indians). Honeyman Collection, The Bancroft Library, BANC PIC 1963.002:0367-B.
Ein Tanz der Indianer in der Mission in St. Jose in Neu-Californien (Dance of Indians at Mission San José, New California), attributed to Wilhelm Gottlief Tilesius von Tilenau, signed by Georg Heinrich von Langsdorff; ink, wash, and gouache drawing on paper, 1803-1807. German naturalists Tilesius von Tilenau (1769-1857) and von Langsdorff (1774-1852) were members of the first Russian expedition to explore the Pacific Ocean and circumnavigate the globe. Captain Adam Ivan Krusenstern (1770-1846), an Estonian, commanded the voyage. Artwork by the naturalists depicts their fascination with native tattooing practices. Honeyman Collection, The Bancroft Library, BANC PIC 1963.002:1023-FR.
Sun fish, Port San Francisco, California, by William Smyth; watercolor, 1825-1827. Another of the natural history sketches made by Smyth on Beechey’s Pacific voyage. Honeyman Collection, The Bancroft Library, BANC PIC 1963.002:1303:11-ALB.
Detail from Plaza del Presidio de Monte-Rey (Plaza of Monterey Presidio), attributed to José Cardero (1768-after 1800), pencil and ink drawing on paper, ca. 1791-1792. Cardero, a Spanish artist, traveled to California with the Malaspina Expedition in 1791. Honeyman Collection, The Bancroft Library, BANC PIC 1963.002.1308-FR.
Sunday
Detail from a portrait of Father Serra by Andres Caymari, 1790. Born in Petra, Majorca, Miguel José Serra entered the Franciscan order in Palma at the age of sixteen and took the name Junípero in honor of a companion of St. Francis. He was ordained in 1737 and in 1749 volunteered for mission service in Mexico, where he served for twenty years before moving to California. The city of Palma commissioned the portrait after Serra’s death, and it hangs in the town hall. Photograph courtesy of Patrick Tregenza.
Detail from the opening page of the Book of Baptisms at Mission San Carlos, Monterey, 1770, documenting the beginning of the Monterey Indians’ affiliation with San Carlos, the second of the nine missions established by Father Serra. Photograph courtesy of Patrick Tregenza
Rawhide shield and lance fragment belonging to Cayetano Espinosa, a soldier on the expedition commanded by Gaspar de Portolá, governor of Baja California, that brought Father Serra to Alta California in 1769. Photograph courtesy of Patrick Tregenza.
La Californie ou Nouvelle Caroline . . . , by Nicolas de Fer (1646-1720), hand-colored map, (Paris, 1720?). Nicolas de Fer was one of the many European cartographers who persisted in rendering California as an island long after exploration had unequivocally established proof of its attachment to the mainland of North America. Courtesy of The Library of Congress Geography and Map Division.
Monday
Decorative detail from de Fer’s La Californie ou Nouvelle Caroline . . . . Courtesy of The Library of Congress Geography and Map Division.
Iron and braided wire disciplinaria, 18th century, believed to have been used by the Franciscans in California. Photograph courtesy of Patrick Tregenza.
Ohlone winnowing tray, made of sedge and horsetail fern root, weaver unknown, Monterey County, California, ca. 1780. The shovel shape and stitching of Ohlone winnowing trays make them unique specimens. The native people who wove them were decimated by a combination of disease, forced conversion and assimilation, and warfare in Spanish California. Courtesy National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution (05/0785); photograph by David Heald.
Participants
Elk antler and dentalium shell purses, from Tsurai (Trinidad), California, collected by Vancouver ca. 1793. Copyright The Trustees of The British Museum (Ethno Van 168).
Detail from the Sitmelelene Chumash presentation tray (see Home page). Courtesy of the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History.
Detail from the Bucareli Monstrance, Mexican silver with gilt finish; donated to Mission San Carlos by Don Antonio Bucareli y Ursúa, viceroy of New Spain, in 1777, at the request of Father Junípero Serra (1713–1784), the founder of nine of the original twenty-one California missions. Serra used this monstrance regularly at Mission San Carlos to display the consecrated host for veneration. Photograph courtesy of Patrick Tregenza.
Tishle blade (paddle) for a Chumash tomol, a seagoing plank canoe; California, ca. 1793. Collected by Vancouver during his expedition, this is the sole surviving artifact of its kind. Copyright The Trustees of The British Museum (Van 157).
Conference Arrangements
Cholovones à la chasse dans la baie de St. Francisco (Northern Valley Yakut Indians hunting on the bay of San Francisco), by Choris, from his Voyage Pittororesque . . . . Honeyman Collection, The Bancroft Library, BANC PIC 1963.002:0368-B
Detail of the California poppy, Eschscholzia californica, drawn and engraved by Friedrich Guimpel, from Horae Physicae Berolinensis (Bonn, 1820). This print accompanied the first published description of the poppy that was to become California’s state flower. Adelbert von Chamisso (1781-1838), a naturalist on von Kotzebue’s first voyage of circumnavigation, found the plant in the hills surrounding San Francisco Bay in the fall of 1817 and named it in honor of his shipmate, Johann Friedrich Gustav von Eschscholtz (1793-1831), ship’s physician and fellow naturalist. Courtesy Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Library.
Inhabitants of California and their respective dresses, by Choris, from Voyage Pittororesque . . . . The bird feather costume of the woman with the bow and arrows signifies that she is a person of distinction, unlike the woman on the left, who wears an ordinary deerskin cape. Honeyman Collection, The Bancroft Library, BANC PIC 1963.002.0369-B.
Detail of the California poppy. Courtesy Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Library.
Getting There
Details from Vera Totius Expeditionis Nauticae . . . (Circumnavigation of the Globe), by Jodocus Hondius (1563-1611), (Amsterdam, ca. 1595). This image depicts Sir Francis Drake’s ship, The Golden Hind; a portion of the double-hemisphere world map appears next to it.
Hondius’s map records Drake’s voyage of 1577-1580 and that of Sir Thomas Cavendish, 1586-1588. Courtesy of The Library of Congress Geography and Map Division.
Accommodations
The Manner of Curing the Sick in California, copper plate engraving from Miguèl Venegas, A Natural and Civil History of California . . . (2 vols., London, 1759), facing the title page. Venegas (1680-1764), a Jesuit missionary to the Indians of Mexico and California, based his account on his large collection of documents on the history and geography of California. The interest his work aroused was attested by its translation from Spanish into English, French, and Dutch. Courtesy of the Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Library.
La chasse au bison (Bison hunt), by Victor Adam (1801-1866), hand colored lithograph, 19th century. This scene of mounted vaqueros and Indians hunting buffalo was published in Paris by Dusacq & Cie. Honeyman Collection, The Bancroft Library, BANC PIC 1963.002:0739-D.
Eighteenth-century bake irons for making altar breads. The irons, decorated with religious symbols, were shipped to Alta California in 1769, at the request of Father Serra. Photograph courtesy of Patrick Tregenza.
Local Attractions
Miwok Indians greet Sir Francis Drake, copperplate engraving from Theodore de Bry’s Americae pars VIII (Frankfurt, 1599). Created from source material obtained by de Bry, this engraving, supposedly the earliest published image of California, depicts the initial contact between California Indians and English-speaking people in June 1579, during Drake’s 1577 expedition in search of Spanish treasure on the high seas and in the Americas. Detailed descriptions of the local people and their customs by members of the voyage led anthropologists to conclude that the English had encountered Coast Miwok, many of whom lived on the Point Reyes peninsula in what is now Marin County. Although the English assumed that the Indians’ ceremonial behavior comprised acts of worship and acceptance of English sovereignty, it is more likely that the Miwoks were instead engaged in mourning rituals, believing their visitors to be resurrected relatives. The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
Sorcerers of California, a copper plate engraving from Venegas’s A Natural and Civil History of California . . . . Courtesy Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Library.
Mission of San Carlos and Bay of Carmel, Upper California, by William Smyth, from Alexander Forbes’s California: A History of Upper and Lower California from their first discovery to the present time . . . (London, 1839), facing page 167. The first book relating exclusively to California to be published in English, Forbes’s account relied on reports from his agents there and was considered accurate and reliable. Forbes (1778–1862) did not visit California until after the book’s publication. Courtesy of the Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Library.
Maps
Maris Pacifici (quod vulgò Mar del Zur), by Ortelius. By permission of The British Library, shelfmark Maps.C.2.d.3.
Prévost’s California quail (see Home page, above).