Nobody spend two decades without human liaison by choice . It happens , but only as the result of horrific position like thegenocide of Indigenous peoplesorextreme spontaneous abortion of justice . But there is an exception : Juana Maria . Long before the “ man of the hole ” was doom to pass hislast 26 yearsin solitude , Juana Maria was stuck , almost totally alone , on an island off the coast of California for around 18 years – and the reason , most likely , was plain luck .
Not much is known for sure about Juana Maria – the cleaning lady remembered today as the Lone Woman of San Nicolas Island . We do n’t experience what language she speak , or what her original name was . We do recognise she was hold toward the beginning of the 19th century – although we do n’t know exactly which yr – and we know she was a appendage of the Nicoleño tribe , from San Nicolas Island , in the Channel Islands territory of southerly California .
Why did she end up living alone for so long ? Unlike the gentleman of the cakehole , she was n’t the last of her kinship group – although she was one of the last . As a child , she would have been witness toa bloody massacreof her tribespeople at the hands of aboriginal Alaskan otter hunters who had sailedfrom what was then Russian Americato hunting for fur .
The Alaskans had lost one of their crewmembers , they said , to a Nicoleño murderer , prompting the killing spree in retribution . By the 1830s , there were only a handful of Nicoleños left – twenty or soat most , according to the recall of the American mountain man , explorer and bona fide “ mountain man”George Nidever .
So , when a radical of Franciscan friars from the mainland ’s Mission Santa Barbara sent a schooner namedPeor es Nada – literally , “ beneficial than Nothing ” – the Nicoleños left the island they ’d call home for the last 10,000 geezerhood or so . Like so many terminate Americans through the centuries , they ended up in Los Angeles .
Except two of them . Juana Maria stayed behind , along with her young son – andnobody really knowswhy . Some said it was just an accident ; others that she had parachute off the gravy boat and swum to shore up after actualise her son had n’t boarded .
“ It kind of sounds a minuscule like the narration , as it matured , became a little more romanticize as elements get added to it , ” Steven Schwartz toldVC Reporterback in 2013 . A U.S. Navy Air Systems Command archeologist , he had spent his life looking for Juana Maria ’s cave abode on San Nicolas , and together with a team of archeologists he aimed to put together as much of the facts of Juana Maria ’s fib as possible – but tell apart the myth from the truth was never going to be gentle .
“ you’re able to say where she had a child , you’re able to interpret where she had two children , you’re able to translate where she erroneously go forth the child behind , run back to get the child , and found that the child had been run through by waste dogs , or you’re able to rule that she jumped off , swam back to shore , only to find that her child did get on the boat , ” he explained . “ [ There are ] so many unlike versions that it does n’t really give you a whole lot of confidence that there ’s any real truth to that . ”
Whatever the reason , the yoke were left on the island alone for the next 18 twelvemonth – several boat give back over the eld , but none ever found them . At some point , Juana Maria ’s Logos , now an adult , was attacked by a shark or an killer off the seashore of the island and died , leaving his mother alone , nearly 100 kilometer removed from her supporter on the mainland .
finally , in 1853 , Juana Maria was find . She was wearing a dress made of plume that she had sewn together with sinew , and living in a house made from whale bones and upsurge ; she seems to have survived on seal fat and Pisces , and despite this resourcefulness she was at once dubbed “ the raving mad char ” of San Nicolas .
“ The handicraft shown in the manufacture of her needle , sewing stuff and nonsense , basketful , water vessels – to make all of which a while of the leaf blade of an one-time knife seems to have been her only tool – is sure enough rummy , ” reported the3 November 1853 editionof the Marysville Daily Herald . “ The water system jugs are made of split ocean - forage woven tightly together in flask form , and the bottom and part of the sides daubed over with asphaltum , springs of which are on the islands . She has a while of netting made of sinew , some eight feet straight , the knitwork of which is precisely similar to that made for fishing . ”
However , even once she had been taken to the mainland , her closing off continued . “ No person has yet been find that can understand or speak her language , ” the clause noted .
The trouble was that , although Los Angeles was home to many Indigenous people by the mid-19th 100 , the Nicoleño lyric seems to have been relatively unique – modern analysesbased on the very few parole we do know she used has placed it as living on the Takic branch of the Uto - Aztecan language family , exchangeable to the Tongva and Tataviam language that were once widespread across what is now Los Angeles County .
There seem to have been a few people around who were able to talk with Juana Maria , and she was well - known for her song , but the details of what she said , and what language on the button she say it in , have been lose .
“ The first thing she saw that really astounded her was a buck , ” say Schwartz . “ She ’d never seen an animal as big as a horse . To see a someone riding a horse must have been something pretty astonishing to her . ”
Unfortunately , life sentence among others seems not to have match with her after near two decades of isolation . She was baptize in October 1853 – a ritual we ’ll never know if she really agreed to – shortly before her death from dysentery in Santa Barbara , California . It had been just seven weeks since she leave San Nicolas .
She may not have had a long time on the mainland of the new State of America , but accounts evoke she did at least have a good fourth dimension .
“ Apparently Lone Woman was quite well-chosen , ” Schwartz tell . “ She was take into this whole new macrocosm ; she would sing and dance quite a bit [ … ] the great unwashed would come and bring her minuscule natural endowment , and of course these gifts had no value to her , so she would give them to all the small kids around the mansion . ”
“ If you were assume to some far - off land somewhere and plopped down , you ’d be kind of astounded and excited about what was going on , too . ”
[ H / TNewsBreak ]
