Latest / Common Mystics / 154: The Story of Juana Maria, the Lone Woman of San Nicolas Island, CA

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154: The Story of Juana Maria, the Lone Woman of San Nicolas Island, CA · Common Mystics

• 0:10
  Speaker A: On this episode of Common Mystics, we journey to California's southern coast to uncover the remarkable story of Juana Maria, the lone woman whose 18 years of isolation inspired a beloved novel, sparked a legend, and concealed far more complex and heartbreaking of a truth. I'm Jennifer James.
• 0:39
  Speaker B: I'm Jill Stanley.
• 0:40
  Speaker A: We're psychics, we're sisters. We are common mystics. We find extraordinary stories in ordinary places. And today's story takes you to San Nicolas island off the coast of California.
• 0:55
  Speaker B: That's right, Jennifer. So where were we in the car when we found this story?
• 1:00
  Speaker A: We were staying in la, but we headed to Simi Valley to pick up a friend of ours.
• 1:09
  Speaker B: And that is northwest of la. Oh, wow. Look at that. I'm so excited. Look at you.
• 1:15
  Speaker A: And there it is.
• 1:16
  Speaker B: I am looking at a map of the area of Southern California where Los Angeles is circled. And an arrow. The way the birds fly. Right to Semi Valley.
• 1:27
  Speaker A: Simi Valley. Yeah. And so we picked up our good friend Giselle. I have to say, I really enjoy getting to know our listeners as friends and sometimes just showing up at their house, being like, we're kidnapping you and taking you on an adventure.
• 1:47
  Speaker B: And they never struggle.
• 1:49
  Speaker A: They never struggle. And no one's ever turned us down.
• 1:52
  Speaker B: No. It's very exciting. Do you have a picture of Giselle for the peep? I don't. It's okay. It's okay.
• 1:57
  Speaker A: She's cute.
• 1:57
  Speaker B: I'm sorry.
• 1:57
  Speaker A: I'm sorry. Yeah, she's adorable. Anyway, I love her.
• 2:00
  Speaker B: You guys would love her. She's one of our tier four patrons and she's amazing.
• 2:04
  Speaker A: Super psychic, and she. Well, we had an intention, of course.
• 2:08
  Speaker B: Well, we always have an intention. Do you want to remind people of what our intention was in the car that day, as it always is?
• 2:15
  Speaker A: It was that day, as it always is, to. To find a verifiable story previously unknown to us, that would allow us to give voice to the voiceless.
• 2:26
  Speaker B: That's right. Let's get into our hits in the car.
• 2:28
  Speaker A: Oh, my gosh. Giselle was on fire.
• 2:31
  Speaker B: That girl was on fire.
• 2:34
  Speaker A: That girl is on fire. Seriously. She was picking up on indigenous people, but also, do you remember her saying that she was hearing a language? She was literally hearing an indigenous language in her mind.
• 2:49
  Speaker B: It's very cool.
• 2:51
  Speaker A: This is so crazy. This is going to be really important to our story. Also, she was seeing pirates along the coast. Pirates.
• 3:01
  Speaker B: That's cool.
• 3:03
  Speaker A: And the last thing, well, not the last thing, but another really important thing that she was picking up on psychically was the sense of a Mother's side sorrow. Yeah. What about you? What were you picking up on?
• 3:17
  Speaker B: I was picking up lost history of an indigenous village
• 3:23
  Speaker A: that's going to be pivotal to our story as well. And then you and Giselle both were picking up on an old route. Do you remember?
• 3:33
  Speaker B: Yes, yes. The old trails.
• 3:35
  Speaker A: Uhhuh. But not only the old trails, but a place that was like a stopping place. Do you remember?
• 3:43
  Speaker B: I do. I remember completely. Like a place for reprieve when you're. When you're on a journey.
• 3:49
  Speaker A: Right. Like a pit stop.
• 3:50
  Speaker B: Yep, that's right.
• 3:51
  Speaker A: A truck stop.
• 3:52
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 3:53
  Speaker A: A rest stop.
• 3:54
  Speaker B: Yes. I just want to say, you guys, that Jennifer is in control today of all our visual visuals. All our visuals on our un. Edited version of the podcast on YouTube. So if you want a. A wonderful shit show, please join us on YouTube so you can hear the unedited version and see our slides and pictures.
• 4:19
  Speaker A: Okay. So then we decided that we wanted to go to a local museum.
• 4:24
  Speaker B: True.
• 4:25
  Speaker A: And so we. We looked up the Simi Valley Historical Society and Museum at Stone Strathern Park.
• 4:33
  Speaker B: Correct.
• 4:34
  Speaker A: And along the way, as we're driving there, we saw a pretty crazy sight that all of us were like, what is that? Do you remember what that was?
• 4:41
  Speaker B: Yes. It was a huge white cross on a hillside.
• 4:46
  Speaker A: And we actually have a visual of the exact cross.
• 4:51
  Speaker B: Thank you for that. It is the exact cross, which was like, why was it there?
• 4:56
  Speaker A: And that's what we were talking about in the car. We're like, why is this here?
• 5:00
  Speaker B: It's kind of crazy.
• 5:00
  Speaker A: Do you remember? Yeah, of course. We're like, that's really weird. Huge cross. Why is it there?
• 5:06
  Speaker B: You know, driving around the south of this country, we will randomly see large crosses, but they're modern. They. They're of. They're portraying Christianity along the south of the United States. This felt different. It didn't feel like an homage to, like, evangelical Christians. It just. It looked old. It felt different than that.
• 5:30
  Speaker A: Right? Yeah. So I wrote it down in the notes. We all took note of it and thought, this is really important, but we don't know why. Right. And then we get to the museum, which. Which is more than just a museum. The Strathern Museum Park Museum has. Do you want to describe it and what we experienced? No, you don't.
• 5:50
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 5:50
  Speaker A: It has several historical structures on the premises which are very, very cool. It also has exhibits in the actual museum section. Right. They were so nice to us.
• 6:03
  Speaker B: They were very generous with their time and information. Yeah.
• 6:07
  Speaker A: So welcoming.
• 6:08
  Speaker B: And they usually don't open up the historical buildings for people, just randomly. And they did for us because we were out of towners, right.
• 6:16
  Speaker A: And we were going to be leaving the next day or so, so we couldn't wait around. But these were so nice. We didn't get like, you know, the full. The full tour, but they were so sweet. And so I kind of feel like
• 6:27
  Speaker B: we did actually anyway.
• 6:30
  Speaker A: But we wanted to ask about the damn cross, right? Because we're like, if anyone's going to know about the cross, it's. It's these people. And so we're like, okay. So we were driving over here and there's this big ass cross on the hill. You know the one? And she's like, oh, do I. That's Mount McCoy Cross. And she was like, it marks the halfway point between two missions, the Mission San Fernando and the Mission San Buenaventura. And according to local tradition, Spanish missionaries would place a cross halfway between two missions so that if you are traveling, you would know, hey, you're halfway there. Like, don't give up yet. Because traveling was such a pain in the ass.
• 7:16
  Speaker B: Ain't that the truth?
• 7:17
  Speaker A: And so also, that particular cross represented a place to stop. So there was a pit stop right there in Simi. So the cross told travel is you're halfway there to the next one, to the next mission, and there's a place to stop right here. So. So come on here and stop and water your horses and have a bite and stay the night, you know, that sort of thing. So we got the answer to our question. And then we knew, and then we knew that the missions had something to do with this story that we were picking up on, but we had no idea why.
• 7:55
  Speaker B: Right. We were very drawn to churches. Not only churches on the road, Saint Rosalima that we passed, but also the church, the historic church that was inside the historical park.
• 8:06
  Speaker A: Correct. So I had these tiny pieces of information going into the research.
• 8:15
  Speaker B: You did, you took the lead?
• 8:16
  Speaker A: I did. And the hits led me to a story that begins on the island of San Nicolas in the Channel Islands.
• 8:26
  Speaker B: Tell me everything about it, everything you know right now.
• 8:30
  Speaker A: Okay. So off the coast of California is an archipelago of islands.
• 8:38
  Speaker B: That sounds pretty.
• 8:39
  Speaker A: I think I've got a visual here. Oh, here you are. Here are the Channel Islands. And you can see Los Angeles right there on the map that we're looking at. And there's this, this group of islands. Now, the Channel Islands are often thought of as California's Galapagos. Oh, have you heard of the Galapagos?
• 9:03
  Speaker B: Yes, from the Kardashians.
• 9:04
  Speaker A: From. Shut up. Tell me about they.
• 9:08
  Speaker B: They.
• 9:08
  Speaker A: Do they live on the.
• 9:10
  Speaker B: No. They vacationed there.
• 9:12
  Speaker A: They did. Oh, my gosh.
• 9:14
  Speaker B: That's all I know about it.
• 9:16
  Speaker A: The only. You know what? I. I had this biology teacher in high school. Nothing excited him more than talking about the Galapagos. Like, if you like, that's interesting. I. I know he had been there. He was so psyched about the Galapagos. If you wanted to, like, get him off track, if you didn't want him to, like, get to homework, you'd be like, hey, so about the Galapagos. And he would just, like, go. Go into the Galapagos. And how special that. How special it was. His name was Dr. Young Peter. He was really nice. Anyway, but what's special about the Galapagos is it's a really old island. Like, it's separated a long, long, long, long time ago. So the life forms on the Galapagos are unlike anywhere else in the world.
• 10:03
  Speaker B: Right.
• 10:04
  Speaker A: And so these Channel Islands are often thought to be similar because they've been isolated from the mainland of what is now the United States for so many thousands of years. Like, what you find on there or what they found was these civilizations and these plant forms and these animal forms that were really, really, really different than what you find on the mainland. So. And in fact, the archaeologists think that people have been living there for 13,000 years.
• 10:35
  Speaker B: That's insane.
• 10:36
  Speaker A: Now, there are the northern ones. You can kind of see up in the north, and then there are the southern ones. And the northern ones were occupied by a tribe called the Chumash. Chumash tribe.
• 10:49
  Speaker B: I know them from Buffy.
• 10:51
  Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. And the Chumash, they were like the flashy sister of the islands. Okay. They lived in the north. They were super, super successful. They were just really good, like, traders and they were. They had this, like, thriving civilization.
• 11:12
  Speaker B: Cool.
• 11:13
  Speaker A: But in the north are our northern place that we're looking at this San Nicholas Island. It was one of the southern ones. And it was a lot less flashy. And the people who lived there were not, like, they were not flashy. They were called the Nicolo people, and there was, like, a small community, and they had their own language that was different from the Chumash. They had their own culture.
• 11:39
  Speaker B: And.
• 11:40
  Speaker A: And again, living there for thousands of years.
• 11:44
  Speaker B: Whereas the Chumash were, like, talented sailors and they were getting out and about.
• 11:49
  Speaker A: And people knew about the Chumash because they were cool.
• 11:52
  Speaker B: And they were all like, I'm a Chumash, but not these guys. They weren't sailors.
• 11:56
  Speaker A: The Way, they were the Nicolano. Right. They kept to themselves. It's kind of like Beyonce.
• 12:00
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 12:01
  Speaker A: If Beyonce was the sibling in the north, she's like the Chumash people. She was like, out there. Everybody knew about her. Right. Everybody knows about her life and her culture. And Solange, not so much. Well, I mean, she's successful, clearly.
• 12:16
  Speaker B: She beat the out of Jay Z in an elevator. I know that much.
• 12:19
  Speaker A: But you see my point. Like, not a lot of people know, like, about her. Her life. Not like her sister. Right, right, right. So it's kind of like that. Thank you for that. Yeah, you're absolutely welcome. I knew that you would appreciate that. So here's what happened. Okay? So you've got the Nicolano. They're living on San Nicolas. They. They're keeping to themselves. They're not flashy. They're not getting out there.
• 12:42
  Speaker B: They don't want nothing. They don't need nothing.
• 12:44
  Speaker A: Right, exactly. But you know what happened in all parts of the continent is you have the European coming in, right?
• 12:53
  Speaker B: The year. What?
• 12:55
  Speaker A: The Europeans. Europeans, Jill.
• 12:59
  Speaker B: Okay, I said something else.
• 13:00
  Speaker A: No, and the first Europeans sounded like
• 13:02
  Speaker B: you said Europe penis is what sound like he said. And I was gonna take offense to that, but I just.
• 13:08
  Speaker A: Yeah, you were gonna take offense.
• 13:09
  Speaker B: I was gonna take offense to your penis.
• 13:13
  Speaker A: Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo was.
• 13:17
  Speaker B: So what I'm looking at here is a drawing of a. Someone who looks hostile. Like, if I saw.
• 13:23
  Speaker A: You think he looks hostile? He looks.
• 13:25
  Speaker B: He looks like he's a Karen. Like he's ready to ask for the manager for sure.
• 13:29
  Speaker A: First of all, great hair.
• 13:31
  Speaker B: Love the hair.
• 13:32
  Speaker A: Great hair. The gentle waves.
• 13:35
  Speaker B: Beach waves, right?
• 13:38
  Speaker A: Yes, yes. I'm loving everything here.
• 13:43
  Speaker B: The collar's a little high for me. The collar, I need a more relaxed collar.
• 13:48
  Speaker A: The pointed beard and mustache. I mean, he's good looking. This is Juan Rodrigo cabrillo. And in 1542, he was commissioned by the country of Spain to explore the Pacific coast north of Mexico. Now, what was he looking for? He wasn't on vacation. He was put to work. He was looking for new trade routes. He was looking for valuable resources. Great. He was looking for a passage that would connect the Pacific Ocean with the Atlantic Ocean.
• 14:24
  Speaker B: Everyone keeps looking for that.
• 14:26
  Speaker A: Right? Now, he stopped off at the Channel Islands, and he describes in his journal these thriving island communities. Right. And this. Oh, incidentally, I have some bad news about Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo.
• 14:47
  Speaker B: What?
• 14:47
  Speaker A: He never made it home.
• 14:49
  Speaker B: Yeah. No one knows where he is.
• 14:51
  Speaker A: Well, no one does know where he is because his grave remains a mystery. He was somewhere in the islands when he sustained a broken leg and enough
• 15:01
  Speaker B: to kill you back in the day, bro.
• 15:02
  Speaker A: Yeah. And he. He actually was trying to save a crewman who had fallen. I think fallen off the boat or whatever. I don't know what the. I wasn't there, all right? I wasn't there. I don't know what the facts of. Of the situation were, but dude ended up with a broken leg, it got infected, and he ended up dying January of 1543. And nobody knows where he is to this day, where he was buried, if he was buried at sea or if he's on one of the islands. So anyway.
• 15:30
  Speaker B: But his crew made it back with his diaries.
• 15:33
  Speaker A: Yes. And his diaries told us a lot about what he found as the first known European. European. Not Europeanist, European, to witness the way these people lived. Now, the problem was now, you know, anytime. Anytime the Europeans, anytime they start to interact with islanders, they get everyone sick.
• 16:03
  Speaker B: They're a bunch of like, putrid little nasty. Always getting people sick. Like children. You know what I mean? Like, if you work in a school or you work with children, you're getting sick.
• 16:14
  Speaker A: Yes, true, True story. Yeah, I mean that. So that wasn't good for the indigenous people. He left his mark. He wrote about it. So we knew how these people were living, right? But there's more because the Spanish, you know, they were really interested. They're like, oh, look what Juan found. And then they, like, go over there, right? Because Juan was also on the California coast. And he's like, I'm sure. I'm sure. He was like, it's beautiful here. Because it would have been.
• 16:38
  Speaker B: Yeah, right?
• 16:39
  Speaker A: Like, the weather is freaking perfect.
• 16:40
  Speaker B: Oh, my God. That's how I was when I was in Southern California. I was like, I can't believe how much I love it here. I get it.
• 16:45
  Speaker A: So I'm sure he wrote that down in his notes that were then delivered to the Spanish monarch. And they were like, they, we want this. This perfect weather all the time, right?
• 16:54
  Speaker B: Who doesn't, right?
• 16:56
  Speaker A: But you know, the Spanish were extra when it came to religion. I don't know if you know this.
• 17:02
  Speaker B: Oh, my God. I do trust. Like, we were Spanish Inquisition, girl.
• 17:08
  Speaker A: Like, I've known serious Polish Catholics. I was raised by some serious Polish Catholics.
• 17:15
  Speaker B: That's true.
• 17:16
  Speaker A: They don't hold a candle to span, like to old school Spanish Catholics.
• 17:21
  Speaker B: Were they, like, flogging?
• 17:23
  Speaker A: They. I mean, they were into torture if you believed something different than the Catholic faith. Okay. So their entire worldview was around the church and around God. So when the Spanish want to start settling, okay, what do they. What do they do? They create a bunch of missions. So instead of, like, colonies, here you have a. A map of the coast of California. Look at all those freaking missions.
• 17:49
  Speaker B: A lot of freaking missions.
• 17:50
  Speaker A: Mission after mission after mission after mission.
• 17:53
  Speaker B: Do they need so many missions? I think not.
• 17:56
  Speaker A: Well, I don't know if it seems overkill to me, too, to be honest. Like that. That's a lot. These are the missions founded by the Franciscan missionaries between 1769 and 1823. Now, what did they want to do there?
• 18:12
  Speaker B: They wanted to preach.
• 18:13
  Speaker A: They wanted to preach to the indigenous people. Bingo. They wanted to preach to the indigenous people, but not just preach. They wanted to convert them.
• 18:23
  Speaker B: Oh, God, it's so lovely.
• 18:25
  Speaker A: Of course, disease displacement. Missionization didn't go well for the indigenous people who have lived there for thousands of years.
• 18:34
  Speaker B: Can you imagine how annoying it'd be? Like the Jehovah's Witnesses that just come to your mind.
• 18:38
  Speaker A: They're moving in.
• 18:39
  Speaker B: Yes. And then they build shit and they're like, hello, the king of Kingdom of Heaven is here.
• 18:46
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 18:46
  Speaker B: So annoying.
• 18:48
  Speaker A: So this was actually a thing called missionization of the people. Oh, my gosh. Under this system, it's going to make you angry. The indigenous people were encouraged and. Or coerced. Like, if encouragement didn't do it, then they were strong arming in these people and then manipulating the environment so that these people had no choice but to join the missions to survive.
• 19:21
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 19:22
  Speaker A: Of course, their point was to baptize these people and make them Christians. Right. Convert them to Catholicism, teach them to speak Spanish, teach them the Spanish customs, while, of course, making sure they abandoned their traditional cultures, abandoned their religion and their cultural practices, and of course, left their ancestral lands and stayed at the mission.
• 19:50
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 19:51
  Speaker A: Yeah. So it was
• 19:56
  Speaker B: essentially a cult. Feels like a cult. Leave your land. Come to me. We would baptize you. Yes, you come.
• 20:03
  Speaker A: A cult. When you say that, it makes it sound like the people are there because they believe it and they've been brainwashed. But that wasn't the case. These indigenous people weren't brainwashed.
• 20:15
  Speaker B: They were entrapped.
• 20:16
  Speaker A: Yeah, it's more like a work camp because they were made. Once you lived on the mission, then you had to support the mission. So now these indigenous people were basically, I don't know, enslaved. Like, they were prisoners of the mission. And once the Spanish took control of the land, then it changed everything. You know, there's the game. The land is trans. Transformed now. So it was a big problem And I want to talk to you more about this in our detours.
• 20:44
  Speaker B: Okay? But I will allow that.
• 20:48
  Speaker A: But moving on. So if that wasn't enough, then you have this tragedy that happens on the island of San Nicolas. Let me show you where that is again. Okay, so on San Nicolas, right here, okay, there is a problem because apparently the Russians and the Alaskans were getting together to control some of the marine life commerce surrounding marine life. And back in the day, seals and sea otters were really sought after.
• 21:27
  Speaker B: Really cute, right?
• 21:29
  Speaker A: Well, they didn't want them because they were cute. They wanted to kill them and use their pelts. Okay. And apparently that could bring in a lot of money.
• 21:38
  Speaker B: That's super sad.
• 21:39
  Speaker A: So the Alaskans and the Russians here we have some visuals of the seal hunters. The very.
• 21:48
  Speaker B: Imagine hunting that way. I am looking at a drawing of men in canoes with, like spears. And that's what they're using to hunt the seals and the sea otters.
• 22:00
  Speaker A: Correct. And here you see a bunch of seals. Is this on a landman?
• 22:07
  Speaker B: Is this drawn to scale? Because then some big old scale. They. Huge. Those seals are huge.
• 22:13
  Speaker A: They are big. They need a lot of fat to survive in that environment.
• 22:18
  Speaker B: They're cuddly.
• 22:21
  Speaker A: So there's this situation where the Russians and the Alaskans, they know that the islands, the Channel Islands, have a lot of this marine life. San Nicolas in particular had a lot of sea otters and seals. And so they come down and they basically massacre the Nicolano people, the Solange people.
• 22:43
  Speaker B: Oh, my God.
• 22:44
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, they massacre these quiet indigenous people and it devastates them, the population of the island. And then the community is crippled and moving around and move and just like, just. Yeah, way sad. And oh, my God. Okay. But the Franciscan missionaries, they know this, okay? And so they see an opportunity, right? They see an opportunity to be like, oh, you are. Come to us, work on our missions, right? Help, you know, get baptized, etc. So they send a boat over to the island, San Nicolas, where the Nicolano people, the ones who are left, are there. And the schooner. The boat. The boat. The schooner that they send was called peoras nada. Better than nothing. Better than nothing. Literally. The boat they sent is called better than nothing. And they evacuate. So they gather up all the San Nicol. The Nicolino people, gather them all up on the beach and they're like, okay, get on.
• 23:57
  Speaker B: Except they're not even pretending.
• 24:00
  Speaker A: No, no, they're not even pretending. Except there was one woman, she did not report to the beach to be picked up.
• 24:09
  Speaker B: Good for her.
• 24:11
  Speaker A: And they stayed looking for her, but they weren't. They weren't able to find her. They couldn't locate her. And finally, like, the Spanish are looking at their watch, and the schooner is
• 24:20
  Speaker B: like, can you imagine the little. That was like, wait, Maria is in here? You know what I mean? Like, I would be like,
• 24:29
  Speaker A: right, right. So they left her behind on San Nicolas island, and she would survive there for 18 years.
• 24:44
  Speaker B: That's amazing.
• 24:46
  Speaker A: When she was finally discovered in 1853, her story would captivate the world and transform her into a figure of myth and wonder.
• 24:58
  Speaker B: So you have to tell me about this woman. Like, what was she doing on this island for 18 years? Just live in the lap of luxury, just like I'm on the island.
• 25:08
  Speaker A: Okay. So the story of her discovery and the story of how she was left behind have been told in a lot of different ways because it reached mythical proportions. Okay, okay. But it's pretty clear that the mission was trying to locate her for years because they knew that they left her behind, and so they kept trying to go back or paying people to go back. One account claims that Father Rubio. Here he is right here.
• 25:40
  Speaker B: Oh, that hair. I dated someone that had a haircut just like that.
• 25:45
  Speaker A: He actually looks like your ex boyfriend. I know exactly who you're talking about.
• 25:49
  Speaker B: Right? It's the hair and the nose. So we are looking at a drawing of Pete Pedro Jose.
• 25:58
  Speaker A: He's a Franciscan priest.
• 26:00
  Speaker B: And he looks a lot like my ex boyfriend, but. But bigger. My ex boyfriend was scrawnier than that.
• 26:09
  Speaker A: It looks like someone put a bowl on his head crooked and cut right around it.
• 26:15
  Speaker B: And no, shaved. Not cut.
• 26:18
  Speaker A: Shaved to the sides.
• 26:20
  Speaker B: And I'm telling you, and I am not lying to you, that is my ex boyfriend's haircut.
• 26:26
  Speaker A: That is Father Rubio. Now, Father Rubio of the Mission Santa Barbara, apparently, in one story, offered this man, Carl Ditman, $100 to go back and find this woman that was left behind.
• 26:38
  Speaker B: This poor woman. Just leave her be.
• 26:41
  Speaker A: Ditman couldn't find her, okay? Went back to the island, looked all around, couldn't find her. Okay? But another story says that Father Rubio paid a guy named Thomas Jeffries $200. So apparently, Carl Ditman couldn't do it for 100. So he's like, fine. So Rubio finds this. This other guy, Thomas Jeffries, and he's like, thomas Jeffries, I'll give you $200, go back and find. Find this woman. Jeffries tried and tried. $200 was a lot of money back
• 27:12
  Speaker B: in the day, trying Money to me right now. Could not.
• 27:17
  Speaker A: Could not find her. But Jeffries came back and he started like, he. He had a big mouth, Jeffries. And he starts telling everybody, hey, went to this island. You know, there's a woman living there. And he starts telling people about what he found. He didn't find her, but he found evidence of her. Okay, like scat. Gross. No, not like scat. I mean, maybe. I don't know that. Just evidence of her. Gross. Jill, why do you always have to bring it down to the gutter?
• 27:51
  Speaker B: That was the gutter. That's how people hunted. Do you remember the bear movie you made me watch?
• 27:55
  Speaker A: And he was like, oh, Jill, do
• 27:59
  Speaker B: you know what movie I'm talking about? The bear movie you made me watch. And he was, yes, you made. Oh, you guys. Jennifer made me watch a movie that I thought was going to be an uplifting movie about a lovely bear and a bear in his family. It's like called Grizzly man or something. And it turns out it's about this weirdo that was seriously obsessed. Obsessed with bears. He was like following them around and like. Like looking for their poop to be like, this is a healthy one. Look how the poop is. And it would be like, you need a friend.
• 28:33
  Speaker A: I love it when they're like, oh, it's hot.
• 28:36
  Speaker B: Literally.
• 28:36
  Speaker A: That's what he was doing. That's a really good documentary, Grizzly Man. But Jill, people don't just. And leave it there. People bury their. If they know what's good for them.
• 28:46
  Speaker B: Well, I. Well, she obviously did because they couldn't find her.
• 28:52
  Speaker A: Anyway. He like a cave, like str. You know, strips of meat, hanging, stuff like that.
• 28:58
  Speaker B: Her poo.
• 29:00
  Speaker A: Anyway, so I said scat, not poo, but gutter talk. He comes back and he's telling. He like, he. You know, you can just picture him. He's at the pub, right? He's having a drink and he's like, you never believe it. This woman is out there. I couldn't find her, whatever. And this guy named George Nitiver. George Nittever hears it. He's like, well, I'm up for the task. Because that's how men are, right?
• 29:22
  Speaker B: So lame.
• 29:23
  Speaker A: So in the fall of 1853, George Nidever, he puts together another expedition to go back to the island and look for her. I think he had like two different times where he was not successful. And then on the third time, he got lucky. And his party spotted human footprints. And then he found seal blubber hanging to dry. And they followed these clues and they didn't give up. And they discovered. Discovered a healthy, resourceful woman dressed. Dressed in garments. Dressed in garments made from bird skin. Oh, that's so cool.
• 30:10
  Speaker B: I love this woman.
• 30:11
  Speaker A: And she was living in a shelter that she had made with whale bones and brush.
• 30:17
  Speaker B: That's cool.
• 30:19
  Speaker A: So what did George Nit do?
• 30:22
  Speaker B: He was probably like, hi.
• 30:25
  Speaker A: He put her on his boat and took her over to the Santa Barbara mission.
• 30:29
  Speaker B: That's so messed up.
• 30:32
  Speaker A: Now when she arrived in Santa Barbara in 1853, she caused a sensation unlike anything California had seen before. Newspapers, sailors, missionaries, ranchers, townspeople, all flocked to come and see the wild woman of San Nicolas Island.
• 30:58
  Speaker B: Wow.
• 30:59
  Speaker A: It reminds me of the days when they used to parade around the bearded woman. Right. And the really fat woman. Yeah. The sideshow and the really skinny man. Like that's what it sounds like to me.
• 31:11
  Speaker B: Yeah. That's really disrespectful. And all this woman was doing is living on the island by herself. And some dick finds her and then brings her, brings her back. A sideshow attraction. Nice.
• 31:21
  Speaker A: Right. Here's the other thing. Because she was the Nicolano, nobody could speak her language, so they could not really communicate with her. Even her name was completely unknown because nobody at the Santa Barbara mission could fully understand her language. They didn't know her, her birth name. They didn't know when she was born. Born.
• 31:46
  Speaker B: And the Nicolanians that they had already taken off the island were like already acclimated to European cultures. So they kind of lost it.
• 31:55
  Speaker A: Well, it wasn't that. It was that. Remember, this was, this was 18 years later. And many of them died because of the diseases.
• 32:04
  Speaker B: Yeah, right. So. And the hard back breaking work that they were doing at the mission.
• 32:11
  Speaker A: Right. So again, the press, the stories, stories grew with each retelling about what happened to this woman. Right. And some claimed that she survived by herself on the island by taming wild dogs. And others said that she lived in a cave that was hidden that only she could find. But the most enduring version of her story explained how she got left behind in the first place. And it was a very dramatic story. And it said that she was a sister and that she had a brother. And she was on the ship going to the mainland when she realized that her younger brother had been left behind. And so she dove into the water and swam back to shore. And she essentially became this mythological romantic heroine of the California frontier. I've got some visuals and frankly, I don't remember what they are. So let's just show them here. Here is the Mission at Santa Barbara.
• 33:28
  Speaker B: I like it.
• 33:28
  Speaker A: It's really beautiful.
• 33:30
  Speaker B: It is really beautiful. Spanish style.
• 33:32
  Speaker A: Of course you can.
• 33:33
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 33:36
  Speaker A: I think those outside walkways that are covered, are they called porticos? Do you know what I'm talking about? Like, it's an outside corridor and it's covered and it's got the arches.
• 33:46
  Speaker B: I know exactly what you're talking about.
• 33:48
  Speaker A: I'm probably wrong, but there's an old historical picture of the Santa Barbara mission where she ended up. Here's George Nitiver as an old man.
• 33:57
  Speaker B: Absolutely would not follow that guy anywhere. I don't care how much candy he had. I would be like, no, I'm good. I.
• 34:04
  Speaker A: You look scary. I couldn't find any young pictures of him. I'm sure he looked much nicer when he was a young man. This is when he was an old man telling stories about how he found her.
• 34:15
  Speaker B: Absolutely not. Absolutely not.
• 34:18
  Speaker A: Here is a drawing that depicts the discovery of the lone woman. You can see how she's in a hut that looks like it's made with straw and bone.
• 34:29
  Speaker B: Oh, I like it. It's very Flintstoney to me. Right?
• 34:37
  Speaker A: Yeah, it does look very flintstone. And here's another drawing of the lone woman who. You know, I like this one because she looks like, get away from me. Right?
• 34:50
  Speaker B: Exactly. Yeah, right.
• 34:51
  Speaker A: Like, I'm busy right now. And you've got these two guys in uniform pointing at her like, there she is. And she's like, what? You know, it looks like she's scraping some skin.
• 35:03
  Speaker B: Yeah, I'm with her on that. I'd be like, why are you on my island?
• 35:06
  Speaker A: Exactly.
• 35:07
  Speaker B: Wouldn't you, like, start barking at them or something? I would do anything I can to keep those people away from me.
• 35:15
  Speaker A: So by the late 19th century, her story had become mythical and she was portrayed as the last of her people, a tragic survivor standing alone against the forces of nature and history.
• 35:29
  Speaker B: That's so condescending, because in reality, she was striving by herself on that island.
• 35:35
  Speaker A: Thriving. Yeah, she was thriving. She was doing well.
• 35:39
  Speaker B: She was thriving.
• 35:40
  Speaker A: Yeah, she was well fed. She didn't want anything.
• 35:43
  Speaker B: She didn't need anything.
• 35:44
  Speaker A: She didn't need anything. In fact, have you heard of the novel the island of the Blue Dolphins?
• 35:53
  Speaker B: No, I have not. Okay.
• 35:55
  Speaker A: So in 1960, author Scott O' Dell transformed the legend into a novel, island of the Blue Dolphins, that I know is considered a classic today. Here are some of the covers. Island of the Blue Dolphins. Some of the older and newer covers.
• 36:12
  Speaker B: So I'm looking at these covers First, I want to say the one all the way to the left looks like Joe from the Facts of Life. Okay?
• 36:22
  Speaker A: She does.
• 36:23
  Speaker B: She does. She absolutely does.
• 36:26
  Speaker A: The one she's not, though, she's not Nancy McKeon.
• 36:29
  Speaker B: Are you sure she's not Nancy McKeon?
• 36:30
  Speaker A: I'm pretty sure. And this was, I think, from the original book from 1960, and I'm pretty sure Nancy McKeon wasn't even born yet, but continue. That is not Jo from the Facts of Life.
• 36:40
  Speaker B: The middle one looks very authentic.
• 36:44
  Speaker A: More.
• 36:44
  Speaker B: More so what I would assume this lone woman would look like, but she looks like. She doesn't look as annoyed as she should. You know what I mean? She should be. She should really look more annoyed. Like, I'm just living my life and you guys just keep coming over here and keep trying and you won't go away. She should look more annoyed. And then the one all the way to the right looks like a romantic novel. Yes. Yes.
• 37:10
  Speaker A: That is the most modern of the covers that I found. And it does look romantic, doesn't it?
• 37:15
  Speaker B: It really does.
• 37:16
  Speaker A: Yeah, for sure. And this was required reading, you know, as a class. I didn't read it either, but I knew of it. And generations of school children came to know the story through the fictionalized account of the character Karana, depicted as a brave young woman who is in her twenties, who survives alone on an island after leaping from a rescue ship to save her brother. And for many Americans, this fictionalized version became more familiar than the historical woman herself.
• 37:49
  Speaker B: That's kind of messed up.
• 37:50
  Speaker A: But over the last decade, Jill, just the previous last decade, like since 2016.
• 37:56
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 37:57
  Speaker A: Historians and archaeologists, they have been working on this because they're like, wait a minute. And they've been uncovering evidence that suggests that what really happened is arguably even more remarkable than the stories tell me. So researchers examining this situation, they are looking at mission records, like from Santa Barbara mission and other missions. They are looking at indigenous oral histories, which are important archives from Russia because, of course, the Russians were involved in the massacre on the island, and other notes connected from native Californian elders. Okay. And they're finding. When they're taking a look, and I love this. Not at just the official white man retelling of the story, but all of these different sources that Maria Juana wasn't in her 20s when they picked her up. She was about 50 years old. Okay. Which means that she was about 32 years old when she was left behind.
• 39:08
  Speaker B: Okay. So she. She was a mature. She was a full grown woman.
• 39:12
  Speaker A: Full Grown woman. And evidence, recent evidence suggests that she may not have been the final surviving Nicolano at all, and that there were members of her community that survived on the mainland for years after the. The evacuation. And so this romantic notion of her being the last one, that's probably not right.
• 39:37
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 39:38
  Speaker A: But even more surprising, she probably was not alone for most of those 18 years. Oh, she was not alone. According to native accounts recorded in the early 20th century, she remained on St Nicholas, San Nicolas island, voluntarily because her son refused to leave on the evacuation ship. I love that her son refused to leave. And she was not going to leave her son.
• 40:10
  Speaker B: Nope.
• 40:11
  Speaker A: Now, she was 32. She could have a son who was in his teens. Do you know what I mean?
• 40:16
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 40:17
  Speaker A: And mother and son purportedly lived together on that island happily for years. And unfortunately, he died sometime into those 18 years. It's. It's thought that he died while fishing, either attacked by a shark or a killer whale. And then she did become isolated, that poor woman. There's no evidence at all, by the way, that she was on the boat and she jumped off. That was complete fiction that people just ate up and. And ran with.
• 40:50
  Speaker B: Mm.
• 40:52
  Speaker A: Now, the other thing that's super interesting is that there's recent evidence that challenges the notion that nobody could understand her or what she was saying.
• 41:00
  Speaker B: Tell me now.
• 41:02
  Speaker A: Communication was difficult. Okay. That is true. However, researchers are like, no, there were native California people who could understand a lot of what she was saying.
• 41:12
  Speaker B: That's what I was. I was.
• 41:14
  Speaker A: Yeah. Because the languages were different, but there was some. Some overlap. Plus, she could use gestures and things. Right, Right. So historical accounts note that a woman from the Santa Barbara mission community, possibly Chumash or of a different background, was able to communicate with her enough to learn some words and basic information about her life while she was on San Nicholas.
• 41:39
  Speaker B: Yeah. And she was happily on San Nicholas. Mm.
• 41:44
  Speaker A: And ethnographers such as John Peabody Harrington later recorded fragments of vocabulary attributed to her. So he was able to, like, write down what she was saying. So there was a partial linguistic exchange happening. Okay. Now, scholars now believe that her language was likely related to the languages spoken by the mainland groups, but it wasn't fully understandable. Right. But in contrast between the myth and the emerging historical record, that's one of the most compelling parts of her story, because the legend is all about isolation, and it exemplifies 19th century America's fascination with the wilderness, with the tragedy, and with the rescue. With the rescue.
• 42:31
  Speaker B: The rescue.
• 42:32
  Speaker A: Rescue. The rescue.
• 42:33
  Speaker B: She was stolen from her home.
• 42:36
  Speaker A: Exactly. And this newer evidence, this paints her in as a survivalist who had choice. She did not want to be picked up and delivered to a mission where she would have to live as a slave.
• 42:50
  Speaker B: Absolutely not.
• 42:51
  Speaker A: She wanted to stay with her family, which was her son, right in her homeland, right on her ancestral homeland. So who is the void? Oh, and let me just show you. This is. This is really sad to me. I'm going to show it to you anyway.
• 43:07
  Speaker B: Oh.
• 43:08
  Speaker A: So if you look up the lone woman of San Nicolas island, like on Wikipedia, or just like you Google search it, this drawing comes up. I don't know if this is a drawing or a photograph. It kind of looks like both. Kind of like a photograph made into, like, a. A drawing. Yeah. This is the closest that we get. We don't have a real picture of her. And like, the sub. The. The caption underneath said, this could have been her.
• 43:36
  Speaker B: That is the most racist I have ever heard in my life.
• 43:41
  Speaker A: Right.
• 43:43
  Speaker B: This could have been her.
• 43:45
  Speaker A: This could have been here.
• 43:46
  Speaker B: Wow.
• 43:46
  Speaker A: Here we have. This is a very tasteful painting done based on what recent research has uncovered, and it's thought to be a more reasonable depiction of who. What she might have really looked like.
• 44:03
  Speaker B: I love her outfit. I'm not gonna lie.
• 44:05
  Speaker A: It's full of feathers.
• 44:07
  Speaker B: I would rock that.
• 44:09
  Speaker A: You would rock that.
• 44:10
  Speaker B: I really would.
• 44:11
  Speaker A: The belt and everything.
• 44:12
  Speaker B: The belt. Snatch that waist. Get it right.
• 44:18
  Speaker A: So what do you think? Do you think that the lone woman of San Nicolas island needs a voice?
• 44:26
  Speaker B: I do, for several reasons. I think she needs a voice because she was stolen from her homeland. They made up a bunch of shit about her when her actual real life was probably more interesting. Okay, and if she jumped off the boat, why didn't, like, all the other people jump off the boat? Like, I would have jumped off the boat, too if I was like, hey, Maria's jumping off the boat. I would jump off the boat.
• 44:49
  Speaker A: Right, right, right. A hundred percent. 100%. You know what? The other thing that really, really bothers me about this is that they were all like, oh, we don't know what she's saying, therefore, we don't know what her name is, and we don't know anything about her. The truth was, if they really wanted to know her real story, they could have really recorded her real story. Like, no, they didn't have someone who could fully understand all of her words, but they just weren't interested in her real story. They were interested in the sense and the fantasy and the romantic version of what, you know, what wasn't her Story. But they just almost used her life to create this myth anyway.
• 45:39
  Speaker B: That's annoying. That's.
• 45:40
  Speaker A: That, to me, is why she really does need a voice. Because when she had a voice, nobody listened to it, you know? Yeah. So you might ask what happened to her.
• 45:53
  Speaker B: I might. I think I will.
• 45:55
  Speaker A: Please do.
• 45:56
  Speaker B: What happened to her?
• 45:58
  Speaker A: Oh, Jill.
• 45:59
  Speaker B: Did they bring her back to the island to let her live out the rest of her life in peace and harmony without all these people coming around her, acting like she's a sideshow?
• 46:07
  Speaker A: No. This is what happened. She was. Obviously, when they found her, she was healthy.
• 46:13
  Speaker B: Mm.
• 46:13
  Speaker A: But they brought her to the mainland, they brought her to the mission, and she, of course, had no immunity to all of the diseases that were floating around. Apparently, Franciscans and Catholics are like school children. They're just full of germs. They're nasty. And Jill, she lived just seven weeks. Seven weeks since her rescue. She lived for seven weeks.
• 46:37
  Speaker B: I really take issue with the word rescue. And I know you did the bunny ears.
• 46:41
  Speaker A: I did do the bunny ears. Seven weeks. And she likely died from dysentery or another infectious disease. But she died on October 18th of 1853, having survived nearly two decades of isolation in the harsh weather and the dangers of island life. Yeah.
• 47:02
  Speaker B: So.
• 47:02
  Speaker A: And it was on her deathbed that a priest named her Juana Maria. Juana Maria. And after her death, she was buried at the Mission Santa Barbara. But her grave was never memorialized with a lasting marker. Today, visitors can walk the mission grounds, yet no one knows exactly where she rests.
• 47:26
  Speaker B: That's sad. That's beautiful. I am looking at a statue of
• 47:31
  Speaker A: Juana Maria in Santa Barbara, California, and at. This particular statue sits at the intersection of State street and Victoria street in Santa Barbara as a homage, I guess, to Juana Maria, whose real name was not Juana Maria.
• 47:51
  Speaker B: Yeah. And they could have found out her real name.
• 47:53
  Speaker A: They could have.
• 47:54
  Speaker B: They really could have.
• 47:56
  Speaker A: And I think they could have. I just don't think anybody cared.
• 48:00
  Speaker B: The fact that she died in just seven weeks. I know. That is a travesty. That is. Like, they took this poor woman living a long, healthy life.
• 48:12
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 48:13
  Speaker B: And then they ultimately killed her. Yeah.
• 48:17
  Speaker A: Not on purpose. It wasn't murder, but.
• 48:19
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 48:20
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 48:21
  Speaker B: It killed her.
• 48:23
  Speaker A: So sad.
• 48:24
  Speaker B: Why? Like, I just wonder, like, the hang up that they had about this, like, woman that they kept trying to hunt her down. Like, get, like, read a book or something. Like, honestly, like, why couldn't you just leave her alone?
• 48:39
  Speaker A: I know. It's odd, isn't it, that the Franciscans just couldn't let her go.
• 48:43
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 48:44
  Speaker A: Why do you think that was?
• 48:45
  Speaker B: I don't know.
• 48:46
  Speaker A: What was the fascination with getting every single last person off this island?
• 48:52
  Speaker B: I mean, as far as they know, it was a rumor. Like, the fact that they were paying so much money for people to find this woman for so long is really, like, sickening. Like, get over it.
• 49:03
  Speaker A: Maybe they really did think that they were trying to help, but you'd think that people going there and seeing, like, evidence of someone living well. And can't you also see her and her son, like, ditching the boats? Like, the boats are coming again. Let's hide.
• 49:20
  Speaker B: Right.
• 49:20
  Speaker A: Because they didn't want to go back.
• 49:22
  Speaker B: Exactly.
• 49:22
  Speaker A: Because they heard what happens.
• 49:24
  Speaker B: Well, and if you. If the Franciscans really believe that they were doing, like, something good, like we need, they, like, did they not see every other native person that came in contact with them die of some horrible disease? Like, obviously, these people should not be mingling with us. Like, we should not be, like, within six feet to, like, literally, like, wear a mask six feet away. Wash your hands.
• 49:52
  Speaker A: Like, honestly, they should have put putting down those circular stickers like I see in my. My Walmart still. Yes, please keep 6ft distance.
• 50:01
  Speaker B: Yes, exactly.
• 50:02
  Speaker A: But in their misled Spanish Catholic mind of the 1700s, they were probably thinking, it's better for them to die baptized and go to heaven because that's what they believed, than for them to die as, quote, unquote, bunny ears. Savages. Do you know what I mean?
• 50:19
  Speaker B: No, I understand exactly what you're saying. But why. Why do they have to.
• 50:23
  Speaker A: I know. Why do they have to hunt her? Like, why do they have to hunt her like she's a seal? Yeah, I get it. I get it. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to upset you so much. I guess I struck a nerve on this one.
• 50:34
  Speaker B: Well, it's annoying. She was living her best life, honestly. And then seven weeks later.
• 50:41
  Speaker A: Seven weeks.
• 50:42
  Speaker B: That's it.
• 50:43
  Speaker A: That's messed up. Messed up. So if we go through our hits, Giselle seriously was on fire when she.
• 50:51
  Speaker B: Amazing.
• 50:52
  Speaker A: She is. When she was talking about indigenous people and hearing an indigenous language.
• 50:58
  Speaker B: That plays a big part in our story. It does.
• 51:01
  Speaker A: Because the lone woman of San Nicholas island, her language was a big part. The fact that Juana Maria, as she was baptized, was not fully understood meant that she literally had less of a voice. Also, pirates along the coast. What do you think that refers to
• 51:19
  Speaker B: the Russians and the Alaskans.
• 51:22
  Speaker A: Yes, exactly. They wiped out the nicolano people in 1811. I do think that that's what she was picking up on. Because that's what pirates do.
• 51:30
  Speaker B: Right.
• 51:31
  Speaker A: They plunder, they murder, and then they get back on their boats and they move. A mother's sorrow,
• 51:38
  Speaker B: the loss of her son.
• 51:40
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. You obviously, when you were picking up on the lost history and the lost indigenous village, it seems to be obvious that the loss of the San Nicolano people.
• 51:53
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 51:53
  Speaker A: And their village, and then the stopping place, the respite among the foothills, the fact that the missions were literally the stopping place along the old California routes and that cross, that being the halfway point. We knew that the missions were part of this story.
• 52:17
  Speaker B: Yes. We knew that the religion itself was part of the story.
• 52:21
  Speaker A: Correct, correct. And I do want to make a final note because we. We never were at Santa Barbara.
• 52:27
  Speaker B: No.
• 52:28
  Speaker A: We didn't drive that far. We said no, sorry, no. Even though we were pulled up the coast. Do you remember being like spirits.
• 52:34
  Speaker B: We can't today, like give us our story, but we drive that far.
• 52:40
  Speaker A: Correct, correct. We were about 80 miles away from the Santa Barbara mission. Okay. And that's pretty far. That was farther than we were willing to go that day. But we were on the historic road to the Mission San Fernando, which was only 30 miles away. And as it turns out, there is an important connection to Maria, to Juana Maria and the Mission San Fernando.
• 53:07
  Speaker B: Tell me.
• 53:08
  Speaker A: Because when Juana Maria arrived in Santa Barbara in 1853, at the Santa Barbara Mission, Franciscan priests sent for indigenous people with different dialects to see. Could anyone actually understand her language? And most people failed to understand her. But historical accounts and modern research by ethno historians show that there were two native women. Two native women originally from Mission San Fernando who were brought to see Juana Maria. And they were the only ones who should. Who could partially comprehend her words.
• 53:48
  Speaker B: I love that.
• 53:49
  Speaker A: So in other words, we were halfway to San Fernando, Mission San Fernando, where these two women were taken to help Juana Maria.
• 54:02
  Speaker B: I wish they would have noted more of her story, Jill.
• 54:06
  Speaker A: And that's just the thing. I think that they did. I think that they did. I think that these women wanted us to know that. They tried.
• 54:17
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 54:17
  Speaker A: You know, they tried. They tried to get more of this story. They tried to tell more of her story, but it wasn't taken as fact.
• 54:25
  Speaker B: Wow.
• 54:26
  Speaker A: I really do. I think they tried to give her a voice. And I think that's part of the reason why that cross. Cuz we were halfway there. We were almost to halfway there, the San Fernando Mission. So I think that's like. That blew my mind when I realized that.
• 54:41
  Speaker B: Yeah, that. That is extraordinary. That really does make me so mad. This story really angers me on so many different levels. It does, because, like, why did they have a hard on to find her? Number one, like literally leave her alone. Number two, they rescued her. No, they killed her. They ultimately killed her with their nasty diseases. And then to add insult to injury, they make up this story about her instead of actually getting to know the real person behind the story.
• 55:17
  Speaker A: Well, it is a. It's a tragic story, but I think it's an important one to tell as we move forward and as we study history. Just remembering who writes the history.
• 55:31
  Speaker B: Right.
• 55:31
  Speaker A: Who writes the history. And sometimes we have to dig a little deeper and look at the indigenous voices, the voices of people of color, you know, in their oral histories to find out what really happens. So I'm really proud to be able to tell the story of the lone woman of San Nicholas Island. So thank you for being a part of this conversation with me. We have
• 55:55
  Speaker B: 231 reviews still on Apple. We would really like more if you can. Will you please leave us a positive review and we will read it on our show. Also, we love our patrons on Patreon because they are literally our bread and butter and they keep these stories coming out. So please, if you can donate any level, we will appreciate it. Thank you guys so much for all you do for us and to listen and thank you for listening.
• 56:28
  Speaker A: Thank you for listening. We love all of our listeners. We're so appreciative. We would love to get to 250. 250 reviews on Apple or 231. Right, right.
• 56:41
  Speaker B: We can do it.
• 56:42
  Speaker A: Drop us an email. Where can people email us?
• 56:45
  Speaker B: Oh, my God. Email us. Because you know what else we're doing? My sister Jennifer is mentoring people.
• 56:50
  Speaker A: Yes, she is. Yes, she is.
• 56:52
  Speaker B: So email us.
• 56:53
  Speaker A: Fun.
• 56:53
  Speaker B: It's so much fun.
• 56:54
  Speaker A: It's so much fun.
• 56:55
  Speaker B: She's helping you unlock your. Your full psychic potential.
• 56:59
  Speaker A: That's what she. Get your psychic gone. Get your psychic.
• 57:02
  Speaker B: I get gone. Also, I am giving readings still. So please email us atcommonmystics gmail.com. check out our website. I've been playing around with it a little bit. Common mystics.net yeah, and check out our YouTube channel.
• 57:15
  Speaker A: If you are not watching this, come see our faces and our slides on our YouTube channel.
• 57:21
  Speaker B: So it's totally unedited. So the show is real. The show is real, people.
• 57:26
  Speaker A: Come join. Come join us. All right, Love you.
• 57:30
  Speaker B: Love you.
• 57:30
  Speaker A: Love you guys. Bye.
• 57:32
  Speaker B: This has been a Common Mystics Media Production Editing done by Yokai Audio, Kalamazoo, Michigan.