So her infant child wasn’t torn to shreds by wild dogs, and she wasn’t completely alone for 18 years. But she did watch a ferocious sea monster kill her teenage son while he was fishing in a canoe, and was mostly solo for the decade that followed, save for some passing ships. That’s the more true but still tragic life of the Lone Woman of San Nicolas Island, who stayed on the remote Channel Island when the other natives left in 1835 and remained until 1853, when she came willingly to Santa Barbara with Captain George Nidever.
Christened Juana Maria once baptized on the mainland, the woman’s life story was fictionalized in Scott O’Dell’s classic 1960 book The Island of the Blue Dolphins, and her Robinson Crusoe-esque saga remains a fascinating tale for people of all ages. But the real reason she stayed on San Nic remained rather nebulous until a team of researchers scoured the archives to paint a more complete picture of her life.
“Really, it’s been the technology that has allowed us to do all this new research and change our view of the whole story,” said Steven Schwartz, who recently retired after serving for the U.S. Navy as San Nic’s primary archaeologist for 25 years. “We can tell a much different story now than we could have even just 10 years ago.”