Pedro Fages (1734–1794) was a Spanish soldier, explorer, and first lieutenant governor of the province of the Californias under Gaspar de Portolá.

Also on board were Franciscan friar Fernando Parrón, engineer and cartographer Miguel Costansó, surgeon Pedro Prat, and 25 soldiers under Fages' command along with a crew of sailors.

"[4] Costansó, while branding the Kumeyaay as "lazy idlers," noted that "they have bestowed great affection upon Don Pedro Fages and they also respect him very much.

Armed with bows and arrows tipped with "very sharp flints," the Kumeyaay men initially viewed the Spaniards' guns as "simple sticks."

"Upon hearing the noise and seeing the destruction so close at hand, the Indians changed their expressions and some of the more timid ones left, giving very clear signs of their surprise and fear.

"[6] On July 14, 1769, Fages set out from San Diego with a party of 74 men on the Portolá expedition to locate Monterey Bay.

The party included Catalan volunteers, leather-jacketed soldiers, Christian Indians from Baja California, and friars Juan Crespí and Francisco Gómez, along with other military officers.

On Sundays, they had to carry a week's supply of wood for Fages' kitchen and fetch their own water from the Carmel River some six miles away; clean their weapons; and pass inspection.

News of the soldiers' harsh treatment and poor conditions gradually reached Mexico, and Alta California became an undesirable assignment.

[9] In late June 1771, Fages wrote to viceroy Carlos de Croix in Mexico to inform him that the Monterey presidio had been built, sending along a simplified map.

Fages had also started a large vegetable garden with an irrigation supply, and three plots dedicated to growing wheat, barley, rice and beans.

Others use the green and dry tule interwoven, and complete their outfit with a deerskin half tanned or entirely untanned, to make wretched underskirts which scarcely serve to indicate the distinction of sex, or to cover their nakedness with sufficient modesty.

Following the bay around to the east, Fages' group climbed the slopes of Mount Diablo and became the first Europeans to see the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, the Central Valley of California and the Sierra Nevada mountain range.

[19] Fages' first tenure as commander in Monterey ended in 1774, after he quarreled with Father Junípero Serra, president of the Alta California missions.

He reckoned those qualities — along with the foggy and windy climate, shortage of potable water, high death rate, and language barriers — accounted for the painfully slow progress of mission Carmel.

She journeyed to Mexico City with her mother and brother to join her father Agustín Callis, captain of the Free Company of Volunteers of Catalonia formed to suppress rebellions by Pima and Seri Indians of Sonora.

The friars, feeling it improper for them to host the pregnant señora gobernadora, feigned ignorance of governor Fages' insistent requests.

Friar Matías de Santa Catalina Noriega concluded that Eulalia still had the obligation to live with her husband and tried to persuade her to reunite with Pedro.

When Fages returned from a trip to Baja California — during which time Eulalia lived at mission Carmel — she finally agreed to move back into her husband's house.

In August 1785, aging friar Francisco Palóu arrived at Monterey from mission Santa Clara, planning to return to Mexico and retire.

[24] In January 1787, Fages wrote a letter to padre Palóu, in which he reported: "[About] six months ago Eulalia suddenly called me one morning with a thousand protests, tears, and humility and asked my pardon for all the past.

She voluntarily confessed that everything had been a pretense and falsehood and that she herself had bribed the Indian girl to take part in the plot… Thank God we are now living in union and harmony.

"[25] The place Fages entered in the San Joaquin Valley is a California Historical Landmark number 291 signed on June 27, 1938.

Bartlett also sets the tensions between Eulalia and Pedro within the complex interplay between Spanish military officers and Franciscan missionaries in Alta California.

Pedro Fages appears as a minor character in the 1955 film Seven Cities of Gold, which presents a fanciful and historically inaccurate account of the founding of Spanish California.

Pere Fages is the protagonist of the historical novel La última conquista (2005) by Ramón Vilaró and is a secondary character in Los acasos (2010) by Javier Pascual.