Francis Drake and the California Indians, 1579 Part 1

Francis Drake and the California Indians, 1579.

by Robert F. Heizer.

GENERAL BACKGROUND

For nearly a century, historians, geographers, and anthropologists have attempted to solve the problem of locating Francis Drake's anchorage in California, but the opinion of no one investigator has been universally accepted. Indeed, it seems likely that the problem will forever remain insoluble in detail, although it may well be reduced to the possibility that one of two bays, either Drake's or Bodega, was the scene of Drake's stay in California.

Historically and ethnographically, Drake's California visit is exceedingly important. He was the first Englishman to see and describe the Indians of Upper California, and the third Caucasian to mention them. The account of the voyage given in _The World Encompa.s.sed by Sir Francis Drake_ (London, 1628) (of uncertain authorship but usually attributed to Francis Fletcher) gives the earliest detailed description of California Indian life, including such particulars of native culture as ceremonial behavior and linguistic terms. This account is reproduced in Appendix II, below.

Historians and geographers have long since stated their reasons and qualifications for presenting certain conclusions about the location of Drake's anchorage, but anthropologists have never insisted vigorously enough that their contribution might be the most decisive of all in solving the problem. If it can be shown that the Indian language and culture described in the accounts of Drake's voyage to California are clearly those of one or another of the coastal Indian tribes, there will then be definite and unequivocal reasons for believing that in 1579 Drake landed on a part of the California coast inhabited by that tribe.

Preliminary attempts at this type of solution have already been made, first by the greatest authority on the California Indians, Professor A.

L. Kroeber,[1] and more recently by William W. Elmendorf and myself.[2]

In order to establish the background for the present study, it will be advisable to recapitulate the various opinions and claims. They may be listed under the headings: geographical, historical, and anthropological.

_Geographical._--George C. Davidson, eminent and versatile scientist, first approached the problem of the location of Drake's California anchorage in 1858.[3] In the following years, as his familiarity with literary and cartographical sources expanded, he published other works,[4] and in 1908[5] he made his final statement. Davidson first thought that Drake's landfall had been in San Francis...o...b..y, but after more careful study he concluded that Drake's Bay was the anchorage (see pl. 20). Davidson's views have been carefully and critically reviewed by Henry R. Wagner[6] and J. W. Robertson.[7] Among other contributions relating to the problem of Drake's anchorage should be mentioned the works of Hubert Howe Bancroft[8] and the studies of Edward E. Hale,[9]

as well as the searching a.n.a.lysis of Alexander G. McAdie and a more recent but similar paper by R. P. Bishop.[10]

_Historical._--Although the trail was blazed by Davidson, it is Wagner who first claims our attention. He has concluded, after an exhaustive study of all available evidence, that Drake anch.o.r.ed first in Trinidad Bay and later in Bodega Bay. The harbor now called Drake's Bay was not, according to Wagner, the site of Drake's landfall in 1579. Robertson, next mentioned above, is the author of a critical review of previous "arguments advanced by certain historians in their selection of 'The Harbor of St. Francis.'"

_Anthropological._--Wagner's major work on Drake bears abundant evidence that this historian, at least, is cognizant of the value of the ethnographic check method. However, he has not utilized all available doc.u.mentary or ethnographic data to the fullest extent--a procedure of the utmost importance.

Davidson used the ethnographic method of solving the problem when he identified the Limantour Estero sh.e.l.lmound site with the Indian village depicted on the border map _Portus Novae Albionis_ of the Jodocus Hondius map _Vera totius expeditionis nauticae_ (Amsterdam, 1590?)[11]

and cited as evidence a tradition of the Nicasio Indians. In his day, many Coast Miwok Indians from Drake's Bay and Bodega Bay must have been still living. If at that time he had obtained from them the information which can no longer be found, owing to the extinction of the tribe, he would have performed an inestimable service.

In 1908, S. A. Barrett published his important work on Pomo ethnogeography in which he reproduced the California data on the voyage of Drake and made a brief evaluation.[12] After attempting a linguistic check with the word _Hioh_ and directing attention to the feather-decorated baskets as Pomo-like, Barrett concludes that "these facts therefore point further to the tenability of the belief that Drake's landing was somewhere north of San Francis...o...b..y, possibly even north of Point Reyes, though Pomo of the Southern and Southwestern dialectic area may have journeyed down to Drake's bay bringing their boat-shaped and ornamented baskets...."[13]

In Professor Kroeber's _Handbook of the Indians of California_ there is an ethnographical a.n.a.lysis of a paraphrased version of _The World Encompa.s.sed_, together with an inquiry (more searching than that of Barrett's in 1908) into the identification of the words, such as _Hioh_, _Patah_, _Tobah_, and _Gnaah_, which appear in the Fletcher account.[14]

Kroeber summarizes: "The ethnologist thus can only conclude that Drake summered on some piece of the coast not many miles north of San Francisco, and probably in the lagoon to which his name now attaches. He is a.s.sured that the recent native culture in this stretch existed in substantially the same form more than 300 years ago, and he has tolerable reason to believe that the Indians with whom the great explorer mingled were direct ancestors of the Coast Miwok."[15]

A verification of Kroeber's view has recently been presented in a short paper written by Heizer and Elmendorf[16] on the identification of the Indian words in the sixteenth-century accounts of Francis Fletcher and Richard Madox.[17] (Madox's account is reproduced in App. I, below.) In this paper it is shown that Drake must have landed in territory occupied by the Coast Miwok-speaking natives (fig. 1), but the exact location of his landing is not positively indicated since there are four bays along Coast Miwok territory in which Drake might conceivably have anch.o.r.ed.[18] Of these four bays, Bolinas, Drake's, Tomales, and Bodega, only two, Drake's and Bodega, can be considered seriously.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 1. Location of west-central California Indian linguistic groups. A, Bodega Bay; B, Tomales Bay; C, Drake's Bay; D, Bolinas Bay; E, San Francis...o...b..y.]

A final piece of evidence, this time archaeological, has recently come to light in the plate of bra.s.s left by Drake in 1579. This plate was originally found at Laguna Ranch (pl. 21) on Drake's Bay in 1934 (?),[19] was moved elsewhere, and was rediscovered in 1936.[20] Although some skeptics have questioned the genuineness of the plate of bra.s.s,[21] they have not altered the facts establishing the plate's authenticity as shown by the investigations of such scholars as Allen Chickering,[22] Professor Herbert E. Bolton,[23] and Drs. Fink and Polushkin.[24] Consequently, the problem of Drake's anchorage is nearer solution. Although the plate is a portable object, it was probably not carried far. It could have been carried to Drake's Bay from Bodega Bay; but, on the other hand, it could always have been at Drake's Bay. In the absence of evidence that it was moved early in its history, it may not be claiming overmuch to a.s.sume that the post with the plate of bra.s.s was originally erected in Drake's Bay.

So much, then, for an abbreviated review of the opinions on the location of Francis Drake's California anchorage. Arguments have been advanced, by other students, that Drake anch.o.r.ed in Trinidad, Bodega, or Drake's Bay. It is my purpose here to a.n.a.lyze, as carefully as possible, the ethnographic data contained in Francis Fletcher's account in _The World Encompa.s.sed_, with the hope of determining in which of these bays Drake actually stayed in June, 1579. The Trinidad Bay landfall theory will first be investigated, in an attempt to determine whether the Indians mentioned in Fletcher's account are identifiable with the Yurok tribe which, in historic times, occupied this territory.

THE TRINIDAD BAY LANDFALL THEORY

Henry R. Wagner is the chief proponent of the Trinidad Bay theory, and bases his conclusion upon two lines of evidence, (1) cartographical and (2) ethnographical.[25] The Jodocus Hondius map, with a small inset of the _Portus Novae Albionis_, does resemble Trinidad Harbor, but since all admit that the Hondius "Portus" is imperfectly drawn, and only generally impressionistic, it can hardly be maintained that it resembles less the outline of Bodega Bay or Drake's Bay. Wagner points out that there was a Yurok village near the spot indicated on the Hondius map as occupied by an Indian town.[26] But in Drake's Bay and Bodega Bay, the outlines of which also resemble that of the _Portus Novae Albionis_, there are also Indian sh.e.l.lmounds in about the same relative position as the village shown on the Hondius map.

Fletcher's reference to a "canow" has led Wagner to identify this with the Yurok dugout log canoe. If Fletcher's "canow" were described in any detail, it would settle the problem of whether it meant a Yurok dugout log canoe or a Coast Miwok tule _balsa_ such as was used in Drake's or Bodega Bay. Kroeber has also commented upon this unenlightening word, saying, "Either custom changed after Drake's day, or his canoe is a loose term for the tule _balsa_ which was often boat-shaped, with raised sides, especially when intended for navigation." Wagner says in answer, "To this it may be objected that ... tule _balsas_ were in use in Drake's Bay in 1595 and were so recognized without difficulty." They were recognized indeed, _but by a Spanish sailor already familiar with the type_. Fletcher in his offhand manner dismissed the native boat with a word which _he_ was familiar with. Perhaps the strongest argument in favor of identifying Fletcher's "canow" as a tule _balsa_ lies in the fact that he states that a single person came out to the _Golden Hinde_.

If it had been a Yurok dugout, and particularly in the open bay of Trinidad, one man could not have managed the canoe. For example, the Bruno de Hezeta account of Trinidad Bay in 1775 states: "Before they [the Spaniards] drew near the land to drop anchor four canoes carrying twenty-four men came out to receive them. They drew near the ships and were given food and beads, with which they went away without fear...."[27] It might also be worth noting that Fletcher states that the person in the canoe remained "at a reasonable distance staying himself," and would accept only a hat, "refusing vtterly to meddle with any other thing...." One other account may be cited to support the identification of the "canow" with the _balsa_. Sebastian Cermeno, in 1595 at Drake's Bay, wrote, "... many Indians appeared on the beach and soon _one of them_ got into a small craft which they employ, like a cacate of the lake of Mexico."[28]

By inference, the native house described by Fletcher has been identified as a Yurok house. I do not think this claim will hold, since the house in Fletcher's account is described as semisubterranean, circular, conical-roofed, covered with earth, and with a roof entrance, whereas the Yurok dwelling (_not_ the sweathouse), built wholly of planks, is rectangular, is a surface structure except for an interior rectangular pit, has a round door entering just above the ground and through the side wall, and bears a double-ridged roof with two slopes.[29] Thus, the house described by Fletcher cannot be a Yurok house of Trinidad Bay. On the other hand, as will be shown in detail later, the house described by Fletcher is the central California earth-covered dwelling, typical of the Coast Miwok of Drake's Bay and Bodega Bay.

Wagner, in his attempt to show that Drake landed at Trinidad Bay, makes a further point. He says: "An additional indication that Drake was in this bay [Trinidad] may be gleaned from the finding there of knives in 1775 by Bruno Heceta.... It seems probable, then, that the knives found at Trinidad by Heceta were relics of Drake's expedition."[30] It is scarcely credible that numbers of iron knives, sword blades, and such implements could have been preserved through two centuries of use. Since the wooden-sheathed knives were expressly stated to be ill-made, and in view of Fray Miguel de la Campa's statement in 1775 that "one of them [i.e., one of the Indians] made his [knife] from a nail which he had found in a piece of wreckage and had beaten out with a stone,"[31] it is more than likely that the Trinidad Indians' knives were pounded out of pieces of iron found imbedded in local sea-borne wreckage.[32] Logic and probability lead inevitably to the conclusion that there is nothing in the fact that knives were found at Trinidad Bay in 1775 from which to suspect or to postulate Drake's presence in that place two centuries earlier.

Now for a brief comparison of some specific Indian culture elements and examples of the language, as reported in _The World Encompa.s.sed_ and in Richard Madox's narrative, with those of Yurok Indian culture. Madox was chaplain on Edward Fenton's expedition of 1582, and in his diary are some notes on California which he jotted down after conversation with some members of the crew which had sailed with Drake two years earlier.

The flat sh.e.l.l disk beads of the account are not an element of Yurok material culture. The standard Yurok sh.e.l.l bead is the hollow tusk sh.e.l.l (_Dentalia indianorum_), which is long, cylindrical, and of small diameter. The feathered net caps may possibly find cognates in the flicker headbands of the Yurok, though these bands were known over the whole of interior and coastal California (cf. pl. 18, _a_). The feathered baskets, however, cannot possibly be Yurok, since their manufacture and use is restricted to the Pomo-Miwok-Wappo tribes which lived far to the south of the Yurok. The "canow" of Fletcher, as had been pointed out, can hardly be equated with the heavy Yurok river- and ocean-going dugout canoe. This brief comparison should be convincing evidence that Drake's chronicler did not describe the Trinidad Bay Yurok; but there is added evidence in the word forms of the Madox vocabulary. Madox gives "bread" as _Cheepe_, which the Yurok render _pop-sho_. "Sing" is given as _Gnaah_ in _The World Encompa.s.sed_, the Yurok word being _wer-o-rur_. "Chief" is given by Fletcher and Madox as _Hioh_ or _Hioghe_, the Yurok word being _si-at-lau_.

The decision of whether or not Drake entered Trinidad Bay, which is not convenient as a port, and is, moreover, rock-studded,[33] must rest in part upon a study of the Hondius _Portus Novae Albionis_, of which, Wagner says, "... perhaps a very close approximation to the actual configuration of the bay [in which Drake anch.o.r.ed] cannot be expected."

Certainly the native customs, houses, and language do not offer the slightest support to the theory that Drake observed the Yurok Indians.[34]

THE ARGUMENTS FOR THE BODEGA BAY OR DRAKE'S BAY LANDFALL

Wagner, then, has attempted to prove that Drake landed in Bodega Bay; Davidson and McAdie, that he anch.o.r.ed in Drake's Bay; whereas Kroeber, Heizer and Elmendorf, Barrett, and Bancroft failed to reach a decision on which bay gave anchorage to the _Golden Hinde_.

In the following pages I shall a.n.a.lyze by comparative ethnographic technique the cultural data relating to the California Indians as given in the several accounts of the Drake visit in 1579. These sources are:

1. The _World Encompa.s.sed_ account, which I judge to be the fullest and most reliable.[35]

2. The _Famous Voyage_ account, which is abbreviated and therefore less complete in detail.[36]

3. The second declaration of John Drake (1582), a brief independent account of the occurrences in California (see below, App. I).[37]

4. Richard Madox's notes on "Ships Land" (New Albion), which contain a revealing vocabulary of the Indian language.[38]

An exhaustive ethnography of the Coast Miwok has never been published.

The main sources of Coast Miwok ethnography used in this paper may be enumerated as follows:

1. Data contained in various historical accounts. These are, for the most part, incidental data and are not, even in total amount, extensive. The accounts will be cited at the appropriate places below.

2. Published ethnographic notes such as are given in S. A.

Barrett's _The Ethno-Geography of the Pomo and Neighboring Indians_, A. L. Kroeber's _Handbook of the Indians of California_, and many others which likewise will be cited below.

3. The extensive ma.n.u.script notes on the Coast Miwok in the possession of Dr. Isabel Kelly. Dr. Kelly has kindly lent her material for the purpose of checking ethnographic items.

a.n.a.lYSIS OF THE WORLD ENCOMPa.s.sED ACCOUNT

On June 17 (Old Style), Drake's ship entered "a conuenient and fit harborough." The next day, "the people of the countrey shewed themselues; sending off a man with great expedition to vs in a canow."

On the 21st, the ship was brought near sh.o.r.e, her goods were landed, and defense works were erected. Numbers of natives made their appearance for a brief time, then returned to their homes in a near-by village. At the end of two days (June 23), during which no natives had been seen, there appeared "a great a.s.sembly of men, women, and children." As the narrator says, the local people seen on the 23d had probably "dispersed themselues into the country, to make knowne the newes...." There follows in the narrative a long and detailed account of the activities of the natives who remained a.s.sembled near the camp of the English. Finally, after three more days (the account says June 26), word of the strange newcomers had spread even further, and there "were a.s.sembled the greatest number of people, which wee could reasonably imagine, to dwell within any conuenient distance round about." Among these were the "king," the _Hioh_ of the Indians, and "his guard, of about 100 tall and warlike men."

This sequence of visits is of some interest. If Drake landed at Drake's Bay, the natives seen by him on June 18 and 21 were certainly local Coast Miwok living close at hand around the bay. The influx of people on the 23d probably means that they were drawn from relatively near-by Coast Miwok villages--from near Olema, or from both sh.o.r.es of Tomales Bay. But even larger crowds of natives came on the 26th, and among them were the _Hioh_ and his retinue. The group arriving on the 26th probably came from some distance. If this crowd gathered at Drake's Bay, they could well have been recruited from Bodega Bay, and possibly included a number of Southern Pomo neighbors. The elapsed time (i.e., between June 21 and June 26) can be readily accounted for by two factors: (1) time for communication to be established from Drake's to Bodega Bay and for the return of the Bodega people, and (2) time for convocation of the group, decision on a plan of action, and preparation for the elaborate ceremony performed at the English camp on the 26th.

If, however, Drake landed in Bodega Bay, the situation would be somewhat different. The visitors of the 18th and 21st would be Bodega Coast Miwok. Those arriving on the 23d could have been Tomales Bay or Olema Coast Miwok, and the arrival on the 26th of the _Hioh_ with his retinue and followers might mark the presence of Southern Pomo, or, less probably, Central Pomo who were concentrated in the interior some fifty miles north of Bodega Bay.

It is credible, then, that Drake landed in either Drake's Bay or Bodega Bay, since the native words listed by Fletcher and Madox all belong to the Coast Miwok language and not to any Pomo dialect.[39] It is improbable that the ceremonies, customs, and material culture forms described by Fletcher can be _specifically_ attributed to the Pomo, as intimated by Wagner,[40] for at least three reasons: (1) Northern Coast Miwok and Southern Pomo cultures are practically indistinguishable; (2) the words _Hioh_ and _Gnaah_ seem to be Coast Miwok words rather than words of Pomo attribution; and (3) if Drake landed in Coast Miwok territory it is unlikely that the Pomo would be permitted to enter the territory of their southern neighbors and to perform a ceremony which the Coast Miwok themselves were as well able to do.

Following is an examination of the day-by-day account of Fletcher.

_June 18._--A single man in a "canow" (probably a tule _balsa_) came out to the ship and delivered an oration. The canoeman also brought with him, and threw into the ship, a bunch of black feathers tied in a round bundle, and a small basket filled with an herb ("Tobah"), both of which were tied to a short stick.