6 Additional Russian Expeditions and the Expedition of Portola Rovirá

This trip by Bering and Tschirikov was followed by several expeditions of companies of Russian merchants in search of furs, who reached 60 degrees latitude in their different navigations. In an interesting encrypted letter, written by the Count of Lacy, Lieutenant General and ambassador to the courts of Sweden and Russia, dated in St. Petersburg in March 1773, there is a summary of the different expeditions carried out by the Russians during the second half of the 18th century. The ambassador tells that during the expedition of Bering and Tschirikov, they arrived up to 60 degrees latitude, “where they found land but came back wondering if it was an island or continent, and that between 55 degrees and 60 they found many islands.” In 1764, Russian Empress Catherine II assigned three boats the same attempt. Captains Estelhacor and Panewbafew commanded the expedition, and they “unanimously stated that from 49 to 75 degrees, everything is dry land but almost always covered with a very dense fog.” Hispanic authorities called the entire Northwest Coast of the American continent the Coasts of Northern California, and the Russians used the same name for those territories. Thus, we can read in the said encrypted letter that “the mainland as they say and believe here is California which in this case extends to 75 degrees.” The same was true of where the Russians merchants have been established by order of their empress is at 64 degrees: “here they do not doubt that it is in California,” a land of which they make a pleasant description in terms of its conditions and resources. In April 1773, the Count of Lacy also referred to two geographical charts with the discoveries of the Russians in Kamchatka and North America, and another in which he narrated his interview with an inhabitant of Kamchatka, named Popow. This interview indicated that the Russians would have even thought of making common cause with the English of the Hudson Company to prevent the Spanish people from approaching those areas, but as they thought that the Spaniards “have not reached higher than 48 degrees, the Russians were persuaded that we ignored their establishments that are in 64 and 65 degrees, and therefore did not take other measures.” For that reason they considered that it was not necessary to initiate any alliance with the English.

Thus, Russia had entered an area that the Hispanic Monarchy considered its own. Although the Russians’ main purpose was the fur industry, the Spaniards were afraid that their intentions were to expand southwards until they reached New Spain. So, after receiving the Count of Lacy’s correspondence, the Spaniards shared copies of all the information sent from Russia with the Viceroy of Mexico, Antonio María de Bucareli y Ursúa, so that he could adopt appropriate action in order to prevent Russian expansion that threatened California and, by extension, New Spain. In this way, by order of the King, the Secretary of the Navy and Indies, Julián de Arriaga, sent a copy of all the documentation to Bucareli, who in a letter by the reserved route, dated in Mexico in September 1744, realized that it stayed within his possession “the geographical calendar printed in St. Petersburg for this year and the copy of news given by Count Lazy ( …) to serve the purposes that may be agreed to the service of Your Majesty in explorations of Russian establishments on our northern shores.” Bucareli also took the opportunity to express his opinion to Arriaga about Count Lacy’s news:

(…) about trade with the English established in Hudson Bay, which may not be difficult from the Kamtschatka Seas if the English have extended their possessions, but this seems to me far from us, that it does not add to our cares, and that it has the same made up appearance as the intended passage from that bay to our South Sea of which public news spoke so much about.

The viceroy also notified of the departure from the port of Monterrey of an expedition with the instruction to sail north, continue the discoveries of the California coast to explore, take possession, in the name of the King, of all discovered lands, and try to find Russian establishments on the North American West Coast. The immediate result of all diplomatic reports on the expansion of the Russians was that in Madrid all the alarms were turned on, and the authorities immediately ordered that New Spain should take appropriate action to find out whether it was really true that the Russians had arrived on the American continent. If it was true, New Spain planned to expel them from these settlements, in the full conviction that Russian ventures had been carried out illegally, since it was land under the sovereignty of the Hispanic Monarchy. However, the Russians were not the only potential problem, as the French and English had also been trying to find the Northwest Passage between the Atlantic and the Pacific. As Ignacio Ruiz Rodríguez indicated in his work “The Northern Frontiers of the American Pacific: Spaniards, Russians and English in the Conquest of Alta California,” it is at this time that we are at the beginning of what became a huge and great endeavor: that of the trips made by sea and land to the north of California. But we are also faced with a new vision of international law in the lands of America, since the content of the famous Bulls of Donation from Pope Alexander to the Catholic Kings at the end of the 15th century lacked any meaning for nations unrelated to the pontifical power. Nor could the equally famous Treaty of Tordesillas be displayed to other colonizing powers, as was the case with Russia. For all this, a series of expeditions were launched during the second half of the 18th century in order to certify the presence of the Hispanic Monarchy in the lands of the North American Pacific.

EXPEDITION OF GASPAR DE PORTOLÁ ROVIRA

The first expedition in the series was carried out by Gaspar de Portolá Rovira in 1769. When Carlos III decreed the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767, the viceroy of New Spain, the Marquis de Croix, by way of general visitor José de Gálvez, entrusted to Portolá the task of making it effective, and the latter moved to the Loreto prison in Baja California, from where he dedicated himself to the military organization and administration of all the California territories. One year later Portolá would receive visitor Gálvez, who stayed for eight months in those territories, organizing the military defense against Russians and the English from the north.

Thus, in the spring of 1769 Portolá initiated his expedition towards northern California, with the mission to find and take possession of Monterrey. The expedition was divided into four groups of soldiers, missionaries and colonists. Two of them would travel on the San Carlos and San Antonio ships that would sail from the port of La Paz, while the other two groups would go out by land. Portolá would go on one of these expeditions through land, accompanied by his friend and missionary, fray Junípero Serra.

At the beginning of July, the two ships and both land expeditions had already reached San Diego; at the end of October they met in San Francisco and, after a long journey in which they were able to take measurements of the nearby islands, the expedition returned to San Diego without having found the bay of Monterrey. Retrospectively, they must have passed by, but the meteorological conditions didn’t allow them to view it. Portolá initiated a new expedition on the 17th of April; the ship San Antonio would go by sea and Portolá would go by land. They arrived at Monterrey on the 23rd of May, finally taking possession of the territory at the beginning of June, 1770. They immediately began constructing Fort San Carlos de Monterrey, to be able to control the territory with the military. Portolá left towards the port of San Blas on the 15th of June, to later travel to Mexico and inform the Viceroy of everything that happened during the recent travels to Northern California.

While the viceroy of New Spain, the Marquis of Croix, received news of Portolá’s trips, information on the settlements that the Russians had established in America continued reaching the ears of Hispanic authorities via Ambassador Marquis de Almodóvar. The Spanish ambassadors in Russia, the Viscount of La Herrería, the Count of Lacy and the Marquis de la Torre continuously received information regarding Russian intentions. It seemed, therefore, that it was the moment to organize new expeditions to those lands, apart from those that were already being carried out. During the following decades, between 1774 and 1793, the Spanish Monarchy would send several expeditions from Mexico to the north, both to strengthen and reaffirm its historical demands as to continue the exploration of the Pacific coast of North America.