In late January 1774 the Spanish ship, Santiago, set sail from the Spanish port at San Blas, off the coast of Panama, with 88 men on board, including sea men, officers, crew, a surgeon, and two priests. At its helm was pilot Juan Perez. The priests were Fr. Tomas de la Pena and Fr. Juan Crespi. For the first time the Word of God, as planted and nourished by the Catholic Church, was on its way to the Pacific Northwest. On the East Coast of North America, the Spanish dream of sovereignty in the New World, beginning with Columbus in 1492, had long been dashed by British and French colonization. But, along the West Coast, there was still a chance for Spain and they had every intention of making good. 

Russian explorations were beginning to stretch farther south into the land we now call Alaska. The Spanish announced that they would send ships north to claim lands for Spain. For five years Perez had sailed up and down the coast ferrying men and supplies to the growing chain of missions and settlements in lower California. But now, Perez already had a proposal on the viceroy's desk that he would sail as far north as 45 degrees (about to Salem, Oregon) or 50 degrees (to the middle of Vancouver Island), and plant crosses in the time honored custom of claiming new lands. 

Perez's plan was approved. He was ordered to be a good diarist, to keep notes on the sailing conditions, the people they encountered, and the natural advantages of the land. Perez was also given detailed instructions on the necessary ritual of claiming land for God and Carlos III: He was to plant crosses. A stone base for the cross was to contain a copy of the written ritual of claim, stuffed into a sealed bottle. The written words served as a minimum example of "improving" the land and further showed their intention to claim the souls of the natives for Jesus Christ. 

It is from Perez's detailed diaries that we learn of the first recorded death of a Catholic with the full rites of the Catholic Church in the Pacific Northwest. 

July 25, 1774 - "About six in the afternoon it began to rain, and it came down harder after nightfall. All day the contrary wind from the east had kept up, preventing us from approaching land, but in the night it veered off to the southeast and the south. A little before seven the sailor to whom we had given the sacraments today died. He was named Salvador Antonio, and was a native of the town of Guainamota. Anima eius requiescat in pace." 

Tuesday, July 26 - "Day dawned misting and the weather was very dark, with a fog. For this reason it was possible to say only one Mass, which was celebrated by the father companion for the soul of the deceased already spoken of, with the body present, which was consigned to the water with the customary ceremonies as soon as the Mass was concluded. . ." 

And with that, the first Catholic Funeral Mass and burial, albeit at sea, in the area we now call Washington State was finished. 

While a handful of Europeans approached the Northwest by sea in the intervening years, it was more than 30 years before the Lewis and Clark expedition reached the mouth of the Columbia River in 1805 overland from St. Louis. In 1836 Marcus Whitman's party had crossed into Washington near present-day Walla Walla. The Catholic faithful established cemeteries in Vancouver and the Cowlitz prairie by the late 1830's. Louise Tchinouk, a native American convert, was the first known Catholic to be buried in the land now known as the Archdiocese of Seattle. This was on January 11, 1839 in the cemetery at Fort Vancouver. And yet, by 1853, when Washington Territory was created, and almost 80 years after Salvador Antonio's Funeral Mass and burial at sea off our present day coast, the white population was less than 4,000.