Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo

Origins Little is known about Cabrilho’s early years. His nationality was first addressed by contemporary Spanish chronicler Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas, who, in his Historia General de los hechos de los Castellanos en las Islas y tierra firme del Mar Oceano, referred to Cabrilho as Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo Português. For that reason, most biographies describe him as Portuguese. Still, historian Harry Kelsey, in his exhaustive 1986 biography João Rodrigues Cabrillo, writes that Cabrilho appears to have been born in Spain, "probably in Seville, but perhaps in Cuéllar [curiously, hometown of Antonio de Herrera]." His date of birth and parentage are also unknown, but events in Cabrilho’s life lead Kelsey to believe he was born of poor parents "around 1498 or 1500," and then worked for his keep in the home of a prominent Seville merchant.
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