It may be surprising that anything new could be learned from the Spanish conquistadores and their documents, recently neglected and even maligned as historians seek alternate perspectives on the early contact and colonial period. Two new books from Wendy Kramer show that surprises can still lay hidden within these most European of sources.
No one, including Kramer herself, expected to discover that Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, the first European to explore the upper Californian coast, was Spanish rather than Portuguese. Generations of San Diegans have lauded the “Portuguese navigator sailing under the flag of Spain” whose monument in San Diego Bay was funded in part by the Portuguese government. Cabrillo has also long been known as one of the original conquistadores of Guatemala, on whom Kramer has compiled data her entire career. Reviewing another conquistador's files, Kramer discovered a court case in which the witness Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo identified his birthplace...
