DAY THREE, JUNE 11, 1775:
At dawn of the third day, Heceta sent a party of armed men to locate the path leading to the summit of the Head, and there to clear a rectangular opening and construct a chapel "for celebrating the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass."

On the beach below, the ship's carpenter nailed together a large Cross. A great many Indians were arriving from distant villages. At midday, the two Captains, the officers and men from both ships, again in dress uniform and armed, along with the two Franciscans in their long brown robes, rowed ashore and set up the cross on the chill beach. The friars sang "Te Deum Laudamus." Then Heceta drew his sword from its sheath, raised it over his head, and stalked up and down, slashing at the pepperwoods and clumps of grasses, kicking aside stones.

All the while, he intoned in a loud voice: "In the name of his Majesty, King Charles III...I am seizing... possession of this land.. which I discovered... as a personal possession (belonging) to his Majesty by reason of the gift and bull that the.. sovereign Roman Pontiff issued...in a gift of half the world in 1593...Therefore, I am taking....possession of these said lands, seas, rivers, inlets, ports, bays, gulfs. archipelagoes....without any hostile resistance." Witnesses signed the document that was sent in triplicate back to Spain.

Although such intoning was familiar ceremonial practice, the watching Indians must have been confused when the Spanish Captain began to charge up and down their narrow beach. Yet, if they had been able to understand what he was actually yelling about, they would have called him stark raving mad.

For tiny Tsurai, like every Yurok village, had its own established patterns of ownership: borders and boundaries, privately-owned house sites, rights to acorn, berry and hunting tracts, rights to fishing rocks and sea stacks - individual rights, family rights, communal rights, intra-village and regional rights. Heceta's sword slashing wildly into the mist-filled air was in fact slashing not at pepperwoods, beach grasses and rocks, but into the heart of an ancient system: the right to own, occupy, and utilize a bit of land; the right to one's own borne-place.

Next, as if approaching Calvary, the Officers formed into a line and heaved the heavy wood cross onto their shoulders. In battle order and singing a litany, followed by the men and the two Franciscans, they climbed up the narrow path which led to the crest of the Head. Sandspit II, Chapter 11 [To Top]