Mysterious Woman Found Alone on an Island

this is the Channel Islands located at the coast of California and for many years several different native tribes lived here during the 1800s the period of sharp increase of exploration many sailed across seas to discover new land however this sometimes caused conflicts between both parties a prime example of this is the dark history of the island on the far left called the San Nicolas island and this got a lot of people's attention during that time in 1853 a group of explorers went to the island and made a strange discovery they found this woman living all alone in isolation just a quick history of the island it was first sighted by Spanish explorer Sebastian Vizcaino in 1602 and he was the one who named it San Nicholas the island was populated by a native tribe called the Nicolino who lived there for over eight thousand years apart from the 1602 siding from the Spanish explorer not much information on what happened for the next 200 years in 1811 a group of Russian fur traders from Alaska arrived on the island and wanted to create a trading agreement with the native people the Nicolino already had a trading relation with their neighboring tribes living on the nearby islands still the Nicolino agreed to do business with them but this didn't last long since there were repeated quarrels over the amount of fur goods being exchanged and this heated tension eventually led the fur traders to raid the homes of the native tribe and wipe them all out of existence the event went unnoticed for almost two decades and the island was only visited again in 1835 when a Spanish missionary learned what has taken place on the island soin hopes to find any survivor they sent a search team to investigate during the rescue mission in San Nicolas island they found 20 surviving tribe members and were evacuated to Santa Barbara Island the small island just east of the San Nicolas island so the question is if there were already a rescue mission in 1835 why was there still a lone woman that was discovered in the island in 1853 well there are several different on this account it was said that during the boat trip to Santa Barbara a woman who believed to be the one on the photo jumped off the ship insisting that her son was still on the island missing the day of the rescue was hit with heavy rain in terrible weather so the crew were in a rush to get everyone on board and decided to leave her behind while another suggested that while the search crew were on the island the woman hid from them and didn't want to engage in any way the third reasoning was that maybe she wasn't actually originated from the island it could be possible that she was just a person who decided to sail and live on the island and had nothing to do with the Nicolay no tribe at all and the fourth and final one which sounds more plausible is that given the weather at the time the crew didn't make a thorough search and missed her completely 15 years later during the 1850s they received tips from other sailors passing by that they found a hut and several footprints on San Nicolas island but they didn't find any people they thought at the time it may have been left behind by other explorers who also visited the island and left immediately as months passed by several more tips came from different sailors about the San Nicolas island so in 1853 father Jose Gonzales Rubio sent an expedition led by George new diver and seven other men to search the island once more to find answers the ship landed on the northern part of the island they started their investigation throughout the area one of the crew members named Carl Dittman noticed bare human footprints that he knew didn't belong to one of his men since all members were wearing boots as he followed the footprints he also discovered seal blubber that were neatly placed on the ground a left dry at this point he knew they weren't alone he continued to track the prints and it eventually led him to a hut that is made out of whale bones the little shelter was a round brush enclosure with the narrow opening and just beside the entrance Carl found the lone woman preparing her meal scraping the whale meat apart the woman was described to be forty to fifty years of age she wore a handmade dress of feathers which was sleeveless length that reaches her ankle and tied at the waist her hair was long and brownish mainly due to prolonged sun exposure while her teeth were complete it was worn to the gum most likely from eating toughie me despite being alone and isolated on the island she was not skinny the first encounter caught the explorers off-guard most of the time native tribe were very cautious when meeting an outsider the woman was cheerful when she met them and even offered them a meal the woman only spoke her native language called Nicolini oh and because of this they couldn't understand her verbally and they mainly used hand gestures to communicate without any way to know her name the crew members called her the lost woman or the wild woman their main objective was to bring her back to Santa Barbara so they offered her to come with them and without hesitation she accepted the offer and left the island and all her belongings behind [Music] even though she didn't know the language she managed to transition her lifestyle among the locals and accepted her new home this came up as a surprise for many since most tribe members who live on their land for a prolonged period are reluctant to leave because they've been accustomed to their own environment on the island they tried to look for people who can communicate with her so they can better understand her situation and life story there were three members that came from her tribe and those people believed to come from the 1835 rescue mission however though when they went to meet the lone woman they couldn't understand the language she was speaking another attempt to figure out what she was saying they brought a native person that came from another tribe who lived in the Channel Island region called the Chu mask but he too didn't understand her but this didn't stop her from integrating herself with the community she interacted with the residents despite the language barrier and participated in numerous dancing events she was well-liked among her peers and was given various gifts unfortunately her time was cut short just seven weeks after her arrival she caught dysentery a severe cause of abdominal pain caused by several infectious bacteria it is said that she caught this after she ate different foods with a weak immune system since the people knew her time was up and she still didn't have a proper name the priest baptized her before she passed away and gave her the name Juana Maria in an entry father Gonzalez Rubio wrote on the book on October 19th 1853 I gave ecclesiastical burial in the ceremony to the remains of Juana Maria the Indian woman brought from San Nicolas island and since there was no one who could understand her language she was baptized conditionally by father Sanchez The Legend of Juana Maria lives on in 1960 a children novel book was published called Island of the Blue Dolphin written by the famous author Scott O'Donnell the plot strongly correlated to Juana Maria's life story it depicted a 24 year old girl named karana who was stranded all alone on an isolated island in fact this book became well known that it was adapted into a film in 1964 even today the book became one of the most popular novels for young readers in elementary school throughout the United States the story of Juana Maria truly fascinated many in 1939 a group of archaeologists visited the San Nicolas island to further look for more clues about her at the northernmost part of the island they found a whale bone Hut that believed belonged to her it exactly matched the description left by the crew who first found her here is the first look of the hut itself since at the time when Maria was found cameras were not yet widely used for sailors but as you can see the hunt was destroyed over the years due to the weather and strong winds more archaeologists followed suit to this story in 2009 John Earl insin and his team found two red wooden boxes roading from a sea cliff covered by a whale rib inside the box contains several fascinating artifacts that believed belonged to Juana Maria a fishhook a whale baleen hairpin a bird bone pendant abalone shell dishes and many more others all of these items were then kept in the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History in California another big scientific research was in 2012 Steve Schwartz and his students from UCLA made a breakthrough when they discovered the cave that believed to be from Juana Maria the cave itself may be the hiding spot for Maria and her main shelter whenever a strong storm arises despite the archaeologists findings there are still so many questions surrounding her life story like how she managed to live for all the years on the island and most importantly how she ended up on the island all alone the mysterious life of Juana Maria is truly remarkable only if there was somebody who could have communicated with her while she was alive maybe more questions about her could have been answered [Music]

Channel: Vintage Files

Views: 3,395,404

Rating: 4.7588315 out of 5

Keywords: mysterious, discovery, found, mystery, strange, stranded, island, isolated, vintage files, tribe, native american, history, juana maria

Id: pmYTeIpZiJA

Length: 10min 4sec (604 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 23 2019