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 Encompassed 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 19085 he made his final statement. Davidson first thought that Drake’s landfall had been in San Francisco Bay, 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. Wagner6 and J. W. Robertson.7 Among other contributions relating to the problem of Drake’s anchorage should be mentioned the works of Hubert Howe Bancroft8 and the studies of Edward E. Hale,9 as well as the searching analysis 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 anchored 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 documentary 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 shellmound 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 Francisco bay, 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 analysis of a paraphrased version of The World Encompassed, 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 assured 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 Elmendorf16 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 anchored.18 Of these four bays, Bolinas, Drake’s, Tomales, and Bodega, only two, Drake’s and Bodega, can be considered seriously.
A final piece of evidence, this time archaeological, has recently come to light in the plate of brass 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 brass,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 assume that the post with the plate of brass 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 anchored in Trinidad, Bodega, or Drake’s Bay. It is my purpose here to analyze, as carefully as possible, the ethnographic data contained in Francis Fletcher’s account in The World Encompassed, 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.