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Juana Maria: The Real-life Story Behind "Island of the Blue Dolphins" · Ridiculous History

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Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
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Speaker 1: back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
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Speaker 1: so much for tuning in. Let's give a hand or
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Speaker 1: like a dolphin to our one and only super producer,
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Speaker 1: Mr Max Williams. They called me Ben Noll. Have you
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Speaker 1: ever been stranded in the wild? No, but I went
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Speaker 1: to a dolphin show an aquarium once. It's kind of
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Speaker 1: the same thing, right, I mean, it's I think it's
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Speaker 1: a little sadder. Honestly, I've been to those shows too.
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Speaker 1: Dolphins are just so intelligent. You've probably heard, folks the
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Speaker 1: story called Island of the Blue Dolphins. We're diving into
1:05
Speaker 1: accidental punt accident a wordplay, were punt? That was? That was?
1:11
Speaker 1: I was not think to do that consciously. We are
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Speaker 1: exploring rather uh, the real life inspiration for that story
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Speaker 1: and several other works of fiction. Are you referring to
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Speaker 1: the Caldicott Award medal winning Island of the Blue Dolphins
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Speaker 1: by Scott Hodell. Yes, yeah, Island of the Blue Dolphins.
1:31
Speaker 1: Caldecott books always slap in my opinion. In the book
1:35
Speaker 1: Island of the Blue Dolphins, you'll see that O'Dell calls
1:39
Speaker 1: the main character Karana maybe interesting, tending fans of that
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Speaker 1: book to know that this is indeed based on a
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Speaker 1: real place, a true story, and a real individual. We're
1:53
Speaker 1: talking about a place known as San Nicholas Island. It's
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Speaker 1: it's a tricky name because it's actually uh, it's part
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Speaker 1: of a larger thing in archipelago of the Channel Islands
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Speaker 1: off of the coast of California. And it's not like
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Speaker 1: opulent island real estate. If you pull up a picture,
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Speaker 1: it's it's pretty barren, kind of wind swept, so much
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Speaker 1: so that Uncle Sam once upon a time thought this
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Speaker 1: is where we should test nuclear bombs. They didn't. I know,
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Speaker 1: what's the deal with that. Why is the government always
2:21
Speaker 1: like looking at like beautiful remote pieces of natural beauty
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Speaker 1: to blow up? I don't understand why they why they
2:29
Speaker 1: need that cheaper parking. Mainly I think based on based
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Speaker 1: on the the do D documents are fred We're thankfully
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Speaker 1: not talking about horrible mistakes perpetrated by the U. S.
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Speaker 1: Government today. We are talking about, in fact, a woman
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Speaker 1: who lived on a remote island by herself for many,
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Speaker 1: many years and was discovered. But let's go back in history. Today,
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Speaker 1: we are talking about a series of islands known as
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Speaker 1: the Channel Islands, and um they were in fact discovered
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Speaker 1: in the fifteen hundreds by Juan Rodriguez Cabrio. But long before,
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Speaker 1: you know, like a lot of these things, before they
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Speaker 1: get discovered, there's already stuff going on there. People live there.
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Speaker 1: There's a whole culture that flourished there. The Nicolino tribe
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Speaker 1: had lived there for ten thousand years before this Spanish
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Speaker 1: conqueror dude even set foot there. Of course, as it's
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Speaker 1: usually the case with conquering people, and I would even
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Speaker 1: bother to really ask any questions like hey, well, what's
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Speaker 1: your deal? How long have your people been here? It's
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Speaker 1: mainly just about let's say, let's go ahead and convert
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Speaker 1: you to Catholicism. We just convert you to Catholicism real quick,
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Speaker 1: that'd be great, please, assimilator. We will murder you where
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Speaker 1: you stand, right. So, the Spanish forces arriving in California
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Speaker 1: at this time were primarily missionaries on paper. That's what
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Speaker 1: they were doing, is converting people to Christianity. And the
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Speaker 1: reality of life on the frontier for these folks is
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Speaker 1: pretty brutal because they haven't been part of a community
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Speaker 1: that's lived there for thousands of years. They're open to trading,
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Speaker 1: they're open to learning, relatively speaking for the time, and
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Speaker 1: they don't ask a lot of questions. As we said,
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Speaker 1: this all changed in eighteen eleven. Although they had traded
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Speaker 1: with their neighbors in the islands for a long long time,
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Speaker 1: they didn't understand or they didn't anticipate. I think a
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Speaker 1: group of Russian fur traders who found the island and said,
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Speaker 1: this is paradise for us. Look at all these seals,
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Speaker 1: look at all these sea otters. And because they were
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Speaker 1: interested in these natural resources, these otters and these seals,
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Speaker 1: the Russian forces attacked the Nicolenno community and they assaulted women,
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Speaker 1: they murdered men. All of this meant that the population,
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Speaker 1: which had been about three hundred, dropped down to just
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Speaker 1: a few dozen by eighteen fourteen. With this, I want
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Speaker 1: to shout out a great article on j Store called
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Speaker 1: Stranded on the Island of the Blue Dolphins, The True
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Speaker 1: Story of Wanda Maria by Aaron Blakemore. Everyone wanted a
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Speaker 1: piece of the action, you know, this whole sea on
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Speaker 1: our situation. UH Spanish authorities decided to plant their flag
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Speaker 1: and assert rights over the island. We know how this
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Speaker 1: game goes. You know, it's all about possession, is nine
5:27
Speaker 1: tenths of the law and all of that. And there
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Speaker 1: can of course be legal disputes that can come up
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Speaker 1: in terms of like who conquered what first, But at
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Speaker 1: this point it's literally just like, hey, this is ours.
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Speaker 1: We say so, we're protecting you, we're defending it. Try
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Speaker 1: to take it from us, we hear you. So they
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Speaker 1: actually arrested one of these Russian hunters, a guy named
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Speaker 1: Bois Tasarov, but by this point the badger was already
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Speaker 1: out of the bag. As as Ben says on stuff,
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Speaker 1: they don't want you to know. There were just a
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Speaker 1: few Nicolino tribesmen left, but like they'd essentially all but
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Speaker 1: killed off the Sea Honor popular Asia. So that left
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Speaker 1: the folks that were remaining on the island particularly vulnerable,
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Speaker 1: and the Catholic missionaries absolutely capitalized on that, all of
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Speaker 1: the scarcity and and the dangerous tenuous situation that these
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Speaker 1: folks found themselves in in order to kind of attract
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Speaker 1: these folks to their mission system, where then they were
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Speaker 1: forced into essentially unpaid labor but also forcibly converted to
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Speaker 1: catholicis right. Yeah, the idea was, look at this, our
6:33
Speaker 1: mission is an area of stability and safety. We just
6:38
Speaker 1: need you to do what we say. And this was
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Speaker 1: common in this era in history, also the Channel Islands. Overall,
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Speaker 1: we're encountering problems like this. We know that various groups
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Speaker 1: on the Channel Islands, which are about fifty three miles
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Speaker 1: off the modern day Californian coast, these islands, these people
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Speaker 1: were running into diseases they had never encountered before, technology
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Speaker 1: they had never encountered before, and belligerent, hostile foreigners. And
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Speaker 1: it's complicated here. There are a couple of things that
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Speaker 1: are left up to interpretation even today. But we do
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Speaker 1: know that by the early eighteen thirties, with the entirety
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Speaker 1: of the native population, that area in decline and a
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Speaker 1: lot of village is already abandoned. The authorities that the
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Speaker 1: missions organized the removal of all remaining people from the
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Speaker 1: entirety of the archipelago, the entirety of the Channel Islands.
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Speaker 1: The very last island to be evacuated, San Nicholas. And
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Speaker 1: that's kind of where our story begins, at least the
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Speaker 1: mystery part of our story. They knew in eighteen thirty five.
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Speaker 1: They've being some Franciscan friars from Mission Santa Barbara. They
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Speaker 1: knew that there was just a very small group, a
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Speaker 1: couple of dozens or so of Nicolanos on this island,
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Speaker 1: so they sent a ship, a schooner called Pure s Nata.
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Speaker 1: A k better than nothing, to say Nicholas Uh and
8:15
Speaker 1: his spirit. Yeah, his stories are right. His stories are
8:19
Speaker 1: still divided on whether this was like a well intentioned
8:22
Speaker 1: rescue mission or whether it was a forced eviction. Like
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Speaker 1: many things in history. I imagine there were multiple motivations,
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Speaker 1: so what happened next is indeed also the subject of
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Speaker 1: some debate. The captain of the Pure As Nada, Charles Hubbard,
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Speaker 1: had pretty good luck persuading the Nicolaneas people who were
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Speaker 1: left on the island to get on his ship to
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Speaker 1: travel to Santa Barbara, but they realized that a woman
8:52
Speaker 1: and a child who were part of their group were
8:55
Speaker 1: not on board. Other historians believe that Uh, there was
8:59
Speaker 1: a a men that realized that her young son was
9:02
Speaker 1: still left on the island, kind of a hall alone situation.
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Speaker 1: She jumped off the boat and swam back to shore. Uh.
9:09
Speaker 1: That's yeah, totally exactly. A few boats did eventually return
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Speaker 1: to the island to look for them, but they were
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Speaker 1: never found m M. And this is when the rumors,
9:21
Speaker 1: the legends began. There were still it was still an
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Speaker 1: active fishery. Even though the Russians had really done a
9:29
Speaker 1: number on the otter and seal population, there were there
9:32
Speaker 1: were still a lot of fish to be had, So
9:34
Speaker 1: there was still a fishing industry, and just not all
9:37
Speaker 1: the time, not super frequently. Every once in a while
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Speaker 1: fisherman would say, I saw someone running along the shore
9:47
Speaker 1: of that that one weird island, that creepy island that
9:50
Speaker 1: no one lives on. And this is also beautifully depicted
9:55
Speaker 1: in l a times great read with Island dig Halted
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Speaker 1: Lone Woman Still is Stinging Mystery by Louis Sahagun. So
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Speaker 1: the thing about these sightings is that they all kind
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Speaker 1: of matched, They all had commonalities. This person, this individual
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Speaker 1: was always described as female and appearance light complexion, somewhere
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Speaker 1: between twenty two thirty years old. And the thing is,
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Speaker 1: there's a lot of mist on the island because of
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Speaker 1: its its location by the coast, So she would disappear
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Speaker 1: into the mist and then reappear and After those initial sightings,
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Speaker 1: she was not seen again for eighteen years. I love
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Speaker 1: a good disappearing into the mist situation. So the Piero
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Speaker 1: s Nada did intend to return when the miss cleared
10:41
Speaker 1: and the rough weather conditions improved, but the ship actually
10:45
Speaker 1: struck something when it was getting to San Francisco and
10:48
Speaker 1: it sank. There were efforts made later to send boats
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Speaker 1: back to find the quote unquote last Indian, but none
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Speaker 1: of them ever succeeded. That is until all, I guess,
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Speaker 1: the hero of our story, or a essential figure of
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Speaker 1: our story, Captain net Ever discovered her in eighteen fifty
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Speaker 1: three discovery. Because she discovered rescued. What I'm saying like
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Speaker 1: this didn't nobody she didn't ask to be rescued. Well yeah, well,
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Speaker 1: well we'll see. It's just I always bring this up
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Speaker 1: when we talk about things like people discovering the extinct
11:27
Speaker 1: ceiling can't anyway, there's a lot of stuff in common
11:30
Speaker 1: with cryptids and uh stories of ferald children. Here, you'll
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Speaker 1: see what we're talking about, fellow ridiculous historians. So yes,
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Speaker 1: eighteen fifty three, she is rescued, taken to the mainland,
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Speaker 1: and immediately people are saying, look, at this we found
11:45
Speaker 1: a real life Robinson Crusoe, just like Tom Hanks in
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Speaker 1: a later film. She's been living alone for a long time,
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Speaker 1: and she had become pretty self sufficient, especially considering there
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Speaker 1: weren't a ton of resources on the island. You'll hear
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Speaker 1: depictions of her having fish. She lived on seals, wild ducks.
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Speaker 1: She had made a house, actually had a whale bones.
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Speaker 1: She was living on seal fat and she she had
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Speaker 1: kind of a carefree attitude. She was singing songs. She
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Speaker 1: was affable, amicable with people, but no one knew what
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Speaker 1: she was singing, because by the time she was discovered
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Speaker 1: and taken back to civilization, no one understood her language
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Speaker 1: at all. And one scholar of of the time minds
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Speaker 1: you wrote that apparently, um, she actually told Nite her
12:36
Speaker 1: when he came that her child was torn to pieces
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Speaker 1: by the wild dogs with which the land is overrun.
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Speaker 1: That's heavy. It was pieces. Yeah, And and there's there's
12:51
Speaker 1: another interesting thing that occurs though, because honestly, it didn't
12:54
Speaker 1: seem like she let this get her down when she
12:57
Speaker 1: met the crew. If you've ever been to a re
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Speaker 1: enactment village, she was doing something very much like that.
13:03
Speaker 1: For their crew. She would have them follow around and
13:06
Speaker 1: watch her daily activity. She would sing them songs, she
13:09
Speaker 1: would show them the good hunting and fishing spots. They
13:12
Speaker 1: took to calling her better than nothing, which sounds mean
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Speaker 1: until you remember they were basically naming her after that schooner,
13:19
Speaker 1: and they thought she was the bee's knees. They thought
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Speaker 1: she was so cool. They loved hanging out with her,
13:25
Speaker 1: and she seemed to get the vibe as well. So
13:27
Speaker 1: when they headed back to Santa Barbara, she hopped on
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Speaker 1: with them, and Captain did ever pretty much one or over.
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Speaker 1: He wrote about this a lot, by the way, in
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Speaker 1: his memoirs, We're doing our damnedest to pronounce this guy's name, right.
13:42
Speaker 1: I think we're going with the most obvious pronunciation. But
13:44
Speaker 1: what if it ends up basically like Ni Diver you know,
13:46
Speaker 1: I don't know, just nitty vera, like Bonnie Vair. You know,
13:51
Speaker 1: let's let the mean emails fly. Actually got me this
13:54
Speaker 1: mean emails? But um tweet at us or something? Do
13:58
Speaker 1: you get the email? Now, get any emails? I think
14:00
Speaker 1: we still have a dead email. The best for us,
14:06
Speaker 1: but yeah, this this dude. Uh. He wrote a memoir
14:09
Speaker 1: that was very humbly entitled The Life and Adventures of
14:14
Speaker 1: George Nittiva. The rescue party was him Uh, a hunter
14:19
Speaker 1: named Charlie Brown, and according to his own account and irishman,
14:22
Speaker 1: we called Colorado sounds like a good time. It was
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Speaker 1: because of his florid complexion. Four sure was and then
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Speaker 1: there were four mission Indians. They docked on the island
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Speaker 1: or I guess, I don't know. I don't have a dock.
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Speaker 1: I guess that we call that. He beached uh in
14:39
Speaker 1: July um and they were planning for several months of hunting.
14:45
Speaker 1: But shortly after they found what they described as an
14:48
Speaker 1: old woman stripping blubber from a piece of seal skin.
14:53
Speaker 1: And again from his book, ninevah was I guess a
14:56
Speaker 1: little bit um confused to see her reaction that she
14:59
Speaker 1: did not turn tail and run and terror. In fact,
15:03
Speaker 1: she smiled and gave a nice little bow and just
15:06
Speaker 1: started talking at them. I say at them, because there
15:10
Speaker 1: was no understanding there. It was in this language they
15:13
Speaker 1: had no way of comprehending. Um. She described as being
15:16
Speaker 1: of medium hied about fifty years old, but strong and
15:20
Speaker 1: clearly someone who's very active, with a very pleasant looking,
15:25
Speaker 1: you know, disposition, very very nice, smile warm, always smiling,
15:30
Speaker 1: he described. And her clothing was a single garment of
15:34
Speaker 1: skins that were that he described. Also, I believe there
15:37
Speaker 1: were some feathers uh and so over other outfits pretty
15:41
Speaker 1: much homemade. And this is this is where, uh, this
15:44
Speaker 1: is where our captain nit ever has an epiphany of sorts.
15:49
Speaker 1: He's pictured him like the meme from a beautiful mind,
15:52
Speaker 1: where all the equations are going forth and visibly in
15:55
Speaker 1: front of his face, and he says, hold on, I
15:58
Speaker 1: remember what the padres over the mission we're telling me.
16:01
Speaker 1: They said, if we ran into some lost lady over
16:04
Speaker 1: on the island, then we should bring her back. And
16:07
Speaker 1: so they kicked it with her again. They vibed hard,
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Speaker 1: and about a month later they did take her with
16:12
Speaker 1: them to Santa Barbara, to the mission. And this lady,
16:18
Speaker 1: it would later be called Wa Maria or you know,
16:21
Speaker 1: better than nothing. She loved it. She's delighting in the
16:26
Speaker 1: sounds of the sensory experiences of civilization. She super super
16:32
Speaker 1: gets into horses, she likes ox carts half. She becomes
16:36
Speaker 1: like the town's first really big celebrity. People come to
16:40
Speaker 1: see her. The captain says, hey, you can stay at
16:43
Speaker 1: my place, and my wife will like help kind of
16:47
Speaker 1: assimilate you into society and care for you. And the
16:51
Speaker 1: issue now right is they want to figure out how
16:55
Speaker 1: to communicate more effectively. And they say, Okay, we don't
16:59
Speaker 1: speak whatever language she is speaking, but we have a
17:03
Speaker 1: lot of native people who live in and around the mission,
17:08
Speaker 1: so they probably speak her tongue. This was a reasonable assumption,
17:13
Speaker 1: but it was one that would prove to be incorrect.
17:16
Speaker 1: No one at the mission could understand her. Also, the
17:19
Speaker 1: people who had traded with the Nicolo in the past,
17:22
Speaker 1: the Chumash, they couldn't speak her language. And so the
17:25
Speaker 1: missionaries sent for some of people from the tongue Va
17:29
Speaker 1: community in Santa Catalina Island, which is not like just
17:33
Speaker 1: up the way from Sam Nicholas, and they also couldn't
17:37
Speaker 1: speak with her, so no one knew No one knew
17:42
Speaker 1: what she was saying. I think they learned a couple
17:43
Speaker 1: of words maybe, but even that is unconfirmed. We talked
17:46
Speaker 1: about that forced labor from a lot of the native
17:50
Speaker 1: folks that were assimilated and brought into these missions. They
17:53
Speaker 1: were used to raise thousands of heads of cattle as
17:56
Speaker 1: are really prosperous farm actually this mission. So they were
18:00
Speaker 1: essentially helping enrich their kidnappers. How's that for? What's it
18:06
Speaker 1: called Stockholm syndrome? And in those subsequent years, during that period,
18:12
Speaker 1: many many of these people died there from harsh conditions.
18:15
Speaker 1: In one, six years after the Nickelingeons were evacuated to
18:20
Speaker 1: this farm, the priests that ran the place recorded the
18:23
Speaker 1: deaths of three thousand, nine hundred and nineties seven Chumash
18:28
Speaker 1: people they referred to as neophytes or native workers. And
18:32
Speaker 1: this was likely due to another all too familiar trope
18:35
Speaker 1: in stories of conquering people, epidemics, diseases that one people
18:42
Speaker 1: are immune to or have been exposed to and and
18:44
Speaker 1: are you know, are protected against. And another people have
18:47
Speaker 1: not seen it at all, and it just ripped through them,
18:49
Speaker 1: you know, um, like the hand of death essentially, And uh,
18:54
Speaker 1: that's what happened here. Epidemics swept through the mission's labor
18:58
Speaker 1: force like a plague. Um. The mission's assets were eventually
19:03
Speaker 1: sold and liquidated in the Santa Barbara. That's kind of
19:06
Speaker 1: what led to Santa Barbara, right, the city that we
19:09
Speaker 1: know today. It's a lovely, you know, beachside community. It
19:12
Speaker 1: was a very new, very active, young city that was
19:16
Speaker 1: also going to get a big boost from the gold Rush,
19:19
Speaker 1: uh and had all kinds of people because of these beginnings. Yeah,
19:23
Speaker 1: and if you want to learn more about the role
19:26
Speaker 1: that disease played in European expansion into modern day North
19:31
Speaker 1: and South America, then I would highly recommend checking out Guns, Germs,
19:37
Speaker 1: and Steel by Jared Diamond. It's not a perfect book,
19:40
Speaker 1: but it's a very interesting read. There's the place you
19:44
Speaker 1: should go for more information. And if you want to
19:46
Speaker 1: learn more about how diseases affects society in general, check
19:50
Speaker 1: out Norman Canters in the Wake of the Plague, which
19:53
Speaker 1: is about the Black Death through Europe and through Asia.
19:56
Speaker 1: It's amazing anyhow, Yes, yeah, this is a boom town
20:01
Speaker 1: now and it had to be a sensory overload situation
20:08
Speaker 1: for Wata Maria four better than nothing. But she took
20:11
Speaker 1: it in stride and it was almost like the way
20:14
Speaker 1: it's depicted in newspapers of the time. It sounds like
20:19
Speaker 1: the first act of Emily or something. She's going around
20:22
Speaker 1: finding her favorite things. Shellfish, I love shellfish, coffee, what's this, oh, liquor,
20:28
Speaker 1: I'll take any kind. There's another current of discourse here
20:40
Speaker 1: that that we have to mention. So people interacted with
20:45
Speaker 1: her had started telling each other that she had reverted
20:48
Speaker 1: to a semi wild or feral condition. And during this
20:53
Speaker 1: time in history, people were particularly fascinated with the idea
20:58
Speaker 1: of feral children. We have some episodes relating to this,
21:01
Speaker 1: like on language experiments and so on. This is also
21:05
Speaker 1: kind of in the nascent days of of you know,
21:07
Speaker 1: psychological experimentation and just the the field of psychiatry and psychology.
21:14
Speaker 1: So there were a lot of very morally dubious experiments
21:17
Speaker 1: going on with like some of these, for example, feral
21:20
Speaker 1: children or doing twin studies and stuff like that, you know.
21:23
Speaker 1: So it was kind of this wild West of of
21:26
Speaker 1: of enlightenment and all that, but usually at the cost
21:28
Speaker 1: of of of your you know, subjects. Yeah, and people
21:32
Speaker 1: even people had asked her to perform some of these
21:36
Speaker 1: songs that she loved so much, I mean, for decades
21:39
Speaker 1: alone on this island. It was one of the way
21:41
Speaker 1: she entertained herself and one was recorded, like written down,
21:45
Speaker 1: and even today linguists aren't sure what language she spoke exactly.
21:50
Speaker 1: This has led some researchers to claim that she was
21:54
Speaker 1: not Nicolo at all, that she was from a different community.
21:59
Speaker 1: If want to learn more about that than check out
22:02
Speaker 1: the journal The Loan Woman of Son Nicholas Island, a
22:05
Speaker 1: new hypothesis on her origin by Marla Daily that was
22:09
Speaker 1: published in California History. So people are trying to figure
22:14
Speaker 1: out what her language is. She is obviously not a threat,
22:18
Speaker 1: She's obviously very nice person who loves new things and
22:21
Speaker 1: loves meeting people. But they want to figure out more
22:25
Speaker 1: about her. They want to know her mysterious providence and
22:29
Speaker 1: her origin story. Right now, only four words that she
22:33
Speaker 1: uttered have been written down, along with two songs that
22:38
Speaker 1: she allegedly sang. And the words that they know is
22:43
Speaker 1: that she called a hide like a pelt to skin.
22:46
Speaker 1: She called it toka. She called a male figure nache.
22:50
Speaker 1: The sky was Toigua, and the body was I may
22:54
Speaker 1: mispronounced this year. The body was pool Ja. Those are
22:58
Speaker 1: the four words they know, but they're badly spelled, and
23:01
Speaker 1: this is fun um. They believe, or it is believed,
23:05
Speaker 1: that her songs were mostly made up of kind of
23:07
Speaker 1: nonsense syllables uh as the new word for me today
23:10
Speaker 1: vocal vocables or vocables reminds me of the band, the
23:14
Speaker 1: Icelandic band Seeger Ross, who sort of invented their own language.
23:19
Speaker 1: It's called Hope Land. I I believe it's what they're
23:21
Speaker 1: for to it is, so it's scot music or I
23:25
Speaker 1: like your vocables, like lunchables, you know. I like that
23:29
Speaker 1: hack of Max. I saw I saw you raising your
23:31
Speaker 1: hands there. Oh no, I'm just uh you guys can't
23:35
Speaker 1: hear it now, But I'm just thinking about all the
23:37
Speaker 1: cigar Ross esque music that's playing right now in the background,
23:40
Speaker 1: and it's transitioning between songs and background. That's gonna be
23:43
Speaker 1: let made it go? Max? Can you put some scat
23:46
Speaker 1: in at the end? Weed ape? I was listening to
23:57
Speaker 1: Scott Man last night. Actually, you know, he's big in Japan.
24:00
Speaker 1: That's where he met the bulk of his commercial success.
24:03
Speaker 1: Actually that makes sense. So what about who's the guy
24:06
Speaker 1: that caught and eyed Joe? That's not it. He was
24:08
Speaker 1: big in Japan too. We don't have to talked about
24:10
Speaker 1: that which certainly don't think about that song. Do not
24:12
Speaker 1: think about that song. It will get stuck in your
24:14
Speaker 1: head for the rest of your life. I caution you,
24:16
Speaker 1: but I it was a slapping episode of he was
24:19
Speaker 1: in butd head when they talked about this gat man
24:21
Speaker 1: any who. Um, so we've got several names for this, uh,
24:24
Speaker 1: this very mysterious individual. At this point, we've got the
24:26
Speaker 1: lone Woman of San Nicholas. We also referred to her
24:30
Speaker 1: as Kanana. That's the character I believe in the book,
24:34
Speaker 1: the the kind of dramatization of this by O'Dell better
24:38
Speaker 1: than nothing, Guana Maria, uh and the lone woman of course. Yeah,
24:43
Speaker 1: and Arose by any other name, right, Arose is a rose,
24:47
Speaker 1: is a rose and so odd. So everybody pretty much
24:51
Speaker 1: across the board loved her. They were fascinated with her.
24:54
Speaker 1: She would leave the mission and go, you know, downtown,
24:58
Speaker 1: and she almost always there's even a gift from someone
25:01
Speaker 1: who just wanted to interact with her. And children loved her. Eventually,
25:06
Speaker 1: authorities did learn a little bit about her story despite
25:09
Speaker 1: the language barrier, through the use of sign language, and
25:13
Speaker 1: they said, okay, this is verified. This really was the
25:17
Speaker 1: woman who was left behind during that evacuation in eighteen
25:20
Speaker 1: thirty five, and she never did find a child she
25:25
Speaker 1: was looking for. That's what they concluded. But again history
25:28
Speaker 1: historical accounts differ. After just seven awesome weeks on the mainland.
25:35
Speaker 1: Well less than two months, she caught dysentery, she became ill,
25:41
Speaker 1: and she passed away. She was buried in the cemetery
25:44
Speaker 1: at Mission Santa Barbara, and all of her personal possessions
25:48
Speaker 1: were given to the California Academy of Sciences and they
25:54
Speaker 1: were destroyed in the San Francisco earthquake and fire of
25:58
Speaker 1: nineteen o six. She is because this was a Catholic mission.
26:02
Speaker 1: She was baptized on her deathbed, and that's where she
26:05
Speaker 1: got the name Guanta Maria. You know, it's strange because
26:10
Speaker 1: the mystery continues today. The mystery almost got solved in
26:16
Speaker 1: but the U. S. Navy halted a long running archaeological
26:20
Speaker 1: project that was trying to excavate this cave where she
26:23
Speaker 1: was believed to have spent part of her time. This
26:26
Speaker 1: was due to objections by members of the modern day
26:29
Speaker 1: native community. That's right. And it just seems to be
26:32
Speaker 1: sort of like a an unfurling of mysteries, sort of
26:36
Speaker 1: like a Gordita of mysteries or a cheesy Gordita crunch
26:40
Speaker 1: of mysteries. You know, I'm nestled inside of a choloopa intrigue. Yeah,
26:45
Speaker 1: and you know obviously that tastes delicious for a researcher.
26:50
Speaker 1: So with this we kind of I think we wrapped
26:54
Speaker 1: on the question of of the archaeological project, you know,
26:59
Speaker 1: the state meant from the representative of the modern day tribes,
27:03
Speaker 1: one Mark Makaro. He said, we're only trying to do
27:06
Speaker 1: what's right by our ancestors. We must ensure all applicable
27:10
Speaker 1: federal laws are followed in reference to this excavation. And honestly,
27:16
Speaker 1: I know it's a bummer for the people who spent
27:18
Speaker 1: their careers looking for it, but I can see where
27:20
Speaker 1: they're coming from, you know, the idea like there was
27:23
Speaker 1: already so much damage done to the native culture by
27:26
Speaker 1: the arrival of the Europeans. I think it's completely reasonable
27:30
Speaker 1: to say, let's try to save and preserve what we
27:33
Speaker 1: have still. But what a mystery That same push for
27:37
Speaker 1: preservation means there will probably be no way to ever
27:41
Speaker 1: know the full true story of the Lone Woman of
27:45
Speaker 1: Saint Nicholas Island. I think we ran into this a
27:47
Speaker 1: lot on stuff that I want you to know. For example,
27:49
Speaker 1: sometimes the mystery is better, you know, leave a those
27:54
Speaker 1: under the imagination. We don't have to know everything. We
27:56
Speaker 1: can explore and learn. But we don't always were weren't
27:59
Speaker 1: We aren't always an answer? M hmmm. Yeah. And this,
28:03
Speaker 1: you know, I know that a lot of people before
28:06
Speaker 1: the pandemic entertain the idea of being stuck alone on
28:10
Speaker 1: a deserted island. It's such a capital are romantic notion
28:15
Speaker 1: until you know, the pandemic hit and they were maybe
28:17
Speaker 1: stuck alone in a house or in apartment and they said,
28:19
Speaker 1: this is what I was thinking about, Wilson. Uh. But
28:24
Speaker 1: I do want to give a shout out right, yes,
28:27
Speaker 1: I do want to give a shout out to one More.
28:30
Speaker 1: One more book. One of my absolute favorite books in
28:32
Speaker 1: the world, and this story kind of reminds me of
28:34
Speaker 1: It is called Atlas of Remote Islands. It's by Judas
28:39
Speaker 1: Lanski and God's so good. I gotta stop talking about air.
28:43
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go reread it. I send it to so
28:45
Speaker 1: many people. But that's our episode for today. We would
28:49
Speaker 1: love to hear your stories about mysterious islands, mysterious people
28:54
Speaker 1: on isolated islands. There are a lot out there, especially
28:57
Speaker 1: in the age of seafaring exploration, and I recommend a
29:02
Speaker 1: podcast and also radio show. But I believe it always
29:05
Speaker 1: exist in podcast for him, he goes back quite a
29:07
Speaker 1: long time by the BBC called Desert Island Discs, where
29:11
Speaker 1: interesting artists and creative weirdos come on and talk about
29:14
Speaker 1: what their top five songs would be they would have
29:18
Speaker 1: to have with them on a desert island situation. So, uh,
29:21
Speaker 1: really good insight into some creative people's minds and also
29:25
Speaker 1: a good way to get turned onto some cool new music.
29:27
Speaker 1: And if you want to see a movie that's hilariously
29:30
Speaker 1: bad and very very dated and very horny with a
29:34
Speaker 1: very young Brook Shields, check out The Blue Lagoon, which
29:37
Speaker 1: is sort of like the adult version of this type
29:40
Speaker 1: of story. And thanks as always to our super producer,
29:44
Speaker 1: Mr Max Williams thinks the Casey Pegram thanks to one
29:48
Speaker 1: of the people that I love dearly but would not
29:50
Speaker 1: like to be stuck on a desert island with Jonathan
29:53
Speaker 1: Strickland's a k a. The Quister. I wouldn't be able
29:56
Speaker 1: to get him to stop talking. He would just continue
29:58
Speaker 1: to quiz us pedantically until we had to fight him
30:01
Speaker 1: to the death. And nobody wants that. Let's keep this, uh,
30:05
Speaker 1: let's keep this nemesis relationship copasetic, shall we? I've been
30:09
Speaker 1: thinking about First Blood a lot. I accidentally watched the
30:12
Speaker 1: this weird way to say, I actually watched I Guess
30:15
Speaker 1: the Newest Rambo, which was Last Blood, and I just
30:18
Speaker 1: kept going back to the First Rambo where he's like
30:21
Speaker 1: the First Blood. Yeah. Yeah. There's a really good YouTube
30:27
Speaker 1: video where it's like the moments from lots of different
30:31
Speaker 1: big movies where they say the name of the movie
30:33
Speaker 1: and then they just had they choose that moment to
30:35
Speaker 1: have the fake credits role so to be like this
30:37
Speaker 1: is Jurassic Park and then it just speak credits but
30:40
Speaker 1: with like a Limp Biscuit song. So I would check
30:43
Speaker 1: that out if you can to. Sorry, too many recks
30:45
Speaker 1: here at the end. It's a Friday. We don't watch
30:48
Speaker 1: the Last Rambo. Don't watch. It's not a recommendation. I
30:51
Speaker 1: just need to get it out of my system. I'm
30:53
Speaker 1: also not don't watch. Yeah, I'm saving, but definitely don't
30:59
Speaker 1: watch the Blue. Good is okay and this is our
31:03
Speaker 1: show and we'll see your next dog folks. For more
31:12
Speaker 1: podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app,
31:15
Speaker 1: Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.