The lone woman of San Nicolas – 18 years in isolation

Towards the earlier part of the 1800s, the west coast of America was recognized as a gold mine, literally. Massive deposits were found in California and the surrounding areas, and settlements sprang up rapidly all over the state. This meant vast amounts of people coming to the area who were all interested in money, which was bad news for the native people who already lived there.

(Statue of Juana Maria, at the intersection of State Street & Victoria Street in Santa Barbara, California)

One such native tribe was called the Nicoleños and they lived on San Nicolas Island, a small island about 70 miles southwest from the coast of modern-day Los Angeles. It’s unknown how long they lived there because they didn’t have a written language and didn’t keep records, but when the settlers arrived in the area, they saw the island as more territory and wanted the locals out. The primary method they used to clear the islands was to send missionaries there to convert and convince people to move to the mainland, but this didn’t work with the Nicoleños.

They repeatedly refused the missionaries until one day in 1811, a large group attacked the island. The attackers were apparently Alaskan otter hunters who were hired by a Russian fur trading company, but the exact reason behind the attack is unknown. They killed dozens of the Nicoleños tribe and left the island covered in bodies and burned down homes, which was enough to make the tribe consider moving to the mainland, for safety if nothing else.

This is when the story of Juana Maria begins, as she is the only one who refused to be taken to the mainland. There was a book written about her experience called “Island of the Dolphins” which makes the claim that she jumped off the boat at the last minute to be with her son, but this is likely false. Whatever the reason, she stayed on the island and did have a son with her, but it isn’t clear if he was already on the island or she was pregnant when everyone else left.

(One of the pictures from Island of the Dolphins, the book which was later written about her)

Her son was only a few years old when he died, which apparently happened when he was in a small boat that flipped over and she couldn’t find him again. But now she was completely alone on the island and rarely saw anyone else sail close to it, leaving her without a single person to talk to for years.

She survived by living in a small hut she made which was constructed from whale bones, and she also had a second dwelling in a cave nearby to the hut. The fishing and coastal foraging are excellent around the island and a small variety of root vegetables and fruits grew in large enough amounts to sustain her. She would dry meat to make it last longer and hunted seals for their skins and blubber to use as fuel for lamps and cooking, but this lonely way of life was now normal to her, and she didn’t go insane like so many people left alone would.

In September 1853, a group of hunters landed on the island and found Juana, who decided that she’d had enough of living alone and went with them to mainland California. Because of her tribe’s long isolation, she wasn’t resistant to the diseases of the settlers and seven weeks after she landed, she died of dysentery on October 19, 1853.

A Navy archaeologist named Steven Schwartz has studied artifacts found on San Nicolas island for over 20 years and heard of Juana’s story. He claims that when she arrived on the mainland, there was no one who spoke her dialect so she could only partially communicate with certain Native Americans. The only two things she said that were written down were about how she lived on the island with her son for a number of years, and how he was in a boat, then there was some disruption in the water, the boat flipped and the boy was gone.

There were around 300 Nicoleños who originally went to the mainland before Juana, and when she arrived none of them were to be found. Today the Nicoleños and known descendants no longer exist, and San Nicolas Island is US territory and reserved for use by the Navy.