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marine-based resources from the littoral mainland and nearby islands.
Santa Rosa Island’s early human inhabitants, whom today we generically
refer to as Chumash, are the first link to a parade of later visitors. The
Chumash were in residence when the wealthy merchant-adventurer Juan
Rodriguez Cabrillo (1498?-1543) sailed into Santa Barbara Channel in
1542, claiming for the Spanish Crown the islands that now comprise
Channel Islands National Park. Some sources say that Cabrillo named them
Las Islas de San Lucas
after Saint Luke the Apostle, though that moniker is
now largely lost to history and may have referred to Santa Cruz Island only.
Other sources say Cabrillo called Santa Rosa Island by the Chumash name
of “Nicalque,” and that he observed three Indian villages there. Although
no hard evidence exists as to whether Cabrillo actually went ashore on
Santa Rosa Island, it’s one of three locations that have long been debated
as his possible burial site. Even the novelist-adventurer Clive Cussler once
mounted an expedition to search for Cabrillo’s remains on Santa Rosa Island,
inspired by the 1901 discovery there of an intriguing stone (a possible grave
marker) bearing the initials “JRC” with an upside down “pitchfork.” It’s an
implement that would definitely have been familiar to the sheep and cattle
ranchers who later occupied the island, whose workers left their own graffiti
on the wooden planks of a dusty barn in the late nineteenth century.
Cabrillo’s voyage was the catalyst for recorded history in what is now
the western United States, even though it was a long while before there
was anything else to note. Although Spain was eager to claim ownership
of the California coast and its offshore islands, it didn’t bother to send
anyone back to settle there for 227 years. In the interim, the Chumash
culture presumably continued relatively unchanged on both the mainland
and Santa Rosa Island until Gaspar de Portolà (1716-1784) arrived
with the first overland expedition from México. He reached today’s
Santa Barbara in 1769, arriving on the nineteenth day of August. The
Presidio and Mission were built shortly thereafter, and colonization and
Christianization of the natives began in earnest.
Some Chumash continued to live on Santa Rosa Island until 1812,
when the last remaining Indians permanently decamped for the mainland.
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