Juana Maria - Lost Woman of San Nicolas Island

Lost Woman of San Nicolas Island

In 1811, approximately 30 Aleutian hunters from Russian Alaska began scouring the California coast for otters, whose pelts were referred to as "soft gold." Under contract to the Russian-American Company, the Aleuts were hired to hunt for several weeks on San Nicolas. This outing grew into a year. The otter population was decimated, and a bloody conflict between the Aleutians and islanders (who opposed the hunting) drastically reduced the population of the local men. By 1835, the island's Native American population, which had once numbered 300, had shrunk to around 20. Some sources give the number as seven, all female except for one man named Black Hawk.

When news of the massacre reached the mainland, the Santa Barbara Mission decided to sponsor a rescue operation. In late November 1835, the schooner Peor es Nada, commanded by Charles Hubbard, left Monterey, California under contract to remove the remaining people living on San Nicolas Island. Upon arriving at the island, Hubbard's party gathered the Indians on the beach and brought them aboard. Juana Maria, however, was not among them by the time a strong storm arose, and the Peor es Nada's crew, realizing the imminent danger of being wrecked by the surf and rocks, panicked and sailed toward the mainland, leaving her behind. A more romantic version tells of Juana Maria diving overboard after realizing her child had been left behind, although archeologist Steven Schwartz notes "The story of her jumping overboard does not show up until the 1880s… By then the Victorian era is well underway, and literature takes on a flowery, even romantic flavor." This version is recorded by Juana Maria's eventual rescuer, George Nidever, who heard it from a hunter who had been on the Peor es Nada; however, Nidever makes it clear he may be misremembering what he heard.

Hubbard brought the islanders to San Pedro Bay, where many chose to live at the San Gabriel Mission. The missions, despite their best intentions, had a high fatality rate, since the Indians had no immunity to Old World diseases. Black Hawk, the last male islander, reportedly became blind shortly thereafter and drowned after falling from a steep bank. Hubbard was unable to return for Juana Maria at the time, as he had orders to take a shipment of lumber to Monterey, and unfortunately, within a month the Peor es Nada sank at the entrance to San Francisco Bay after hitting a "heavy board" which caused the schooner to roll "over and over and over" until it sank. A lack of available ships in the mid-1830s delayed any further rescue attempts.