Or was he? In 1901, an amateur archeologist, Philip M. Jones, found on Santa Rosa Island, just east of San Miguel, an old Indian _mano_, or grinding stone, into one of whose sides a cross and the fused initials JR had been incised. The stone was stored in a basement at the University of California, Berkeley, until 1972, when Berkeley’s noted anthropologist, Dr. Robert Heizer, began wondering whether the curiosity might have once marked Juan Rodríguez’s grave. So far extensive examinations have determined nothing about this additional mystery.
The Indians that Cabrillo encountered along the Santa Barbara coast were the village-dwelling Chumash. Their villages were groupings of houses, according to a later traveler, with a sweat-house, store-rooms, a ceremonial plaza, a gaming area, and a cemetery some distance off. The houses were cone-shaped, spacious and comfortable. A hole in the roof admitted light and vented smoke from cook fires. Apart from the brief skirmish at San Diego Bay, Cabrillo found the California Indians a gentle, friendly people.
[Illustration: An early illustration of two fishermen, from George Shelvocke’s _Voyage Around the World_, 1726.]
[Illustration: Artist Louis S. Glanzman’s drawing of a woman with a garment. “They were dressed in skins,” said Cabrillo’s diarist, “and wore their hair very long and tied up with long strings interwoven with the hair ... attached to the strings were many gewgaws of flint, bone, and wood.”]
[Illustration: This stone found on Santa Rosa Island may have once marked the burial place of Cabrillo.]
And then there is the testimony of Cárdenas and Vargas in 1560. They said, without giving dates, that Cabrillo decided to winter on Posesión, which the witnesses called La Capitana, and that on stepping ashore from the ship’s boats he fell between some rocks, broke his shin bone, and died 12 days later. Vargas adds that the fall resulted from Cabrillo’s hurry to help some of his men, who were battling Indians. A splintered shin bone with its possibilities for gangrene sounds more deadly than a broken arm.
On February 18, 1543, after beating around the Santa Barbara Channel for more than a month, exploring and taking on wood and water, Ferrer resumed the trip, as Cabrillo had asked. Standing well out to sea, he scudded north until on March 1 he was opposite—who knows? Cape Mendocino? The California-Oregon border? The mouth of the Rogue River? Wherever they were, the sea, breaking over the little ships with terrifying fury, was driving them irresistibly toward the rock-punctuated shore. They prayed fervently, and suddenly the wind shifted, driving them south “with a sea so high they became crazed.” The storm separated the ships, _San Salvador_ ran out of food, and the sailors were in dire straits until they were able to land at Ventura and later San Diego, where, in addition to food, they also picked up a half a dozen Indian boys to train as interpreters in case of a repeat journey.