The Lone Woman of San Nicolas Island: 18 Years Alone

Imagine being completely alone on a remote, windswept island, not for weeks or months but for 18 years. You may recognize the premise from Island of the Blue Dolphins, but the real woman behind that story was far more than a romantic castaway. She was the last survivor of her people.This episode tells the unvarnished history of Juana Maria, the lone woman of San Nicolas Island. It contrasts the Victorian fantasy of a tragic castaway with the harsh reality of a woman who engineered survival out of whale bones and sinew, then died in a world that couldn't understand a single word she spoke.How the 1814 massacre by Alaskan otter hunters nearly wiped out her Nicoleno tribeWhy she was left behind in 1835 by the schooner Peor es Nada, and how the 'jumped overboard to save her brother' story was a later inventionHer remarkable survival: a hut of whale bones and a skirt of cormorant feathers sewn with seal sinewThe tragedy of total linguistic isolation, with no one on the mainland able to understand her Uto-Aztecan languageHer death from dysentery just seven weeks after rescue, and the toggling harpoon tips that may have come from her people's attackers