Juana Maria

Juana Maria
A Native American woman believed to be Juana Maria
Born	Before 1811 San Nicolas Island, California
Died	October 19, 1853 Garey, California
Known for	Inspiring the book and short movie Island of the Blue Dolphins

Juana Maria (died October 19, 1853), better known to history as the Lone Woman of San Nicolas Island (her Native American name is unknown), was a Native American woman who was the last surviving member of her tribe, the Nicoleño. She lived alone on San Nicolas Island off the coast of California from 1835 until her discovery in 1853. Scott O'Dell's award-winning children's novel Island of the Blue Dolphins (1960) was inspired by her story.

The Channel Islands have long been inhabited by humans, with Native American colonization occurring 10,000 years ago or earlier. At the time of European contact, two distinct ethnic groups occupied the archipelago: the Chumash lived on the Northern Channel Islands and the Tongva on the Southern Islands (Juana Maria's tribe, the Nicoleño, were Tongva). In the early 1540s Portuguese conquistador Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo explored the California coast, claiming it on behalf of Spain.

In 1814, a party of Native Alaskan otter hunters working for the Russian-American Company (RAC), massacred most of the islanders after a Nicoleño man was accused of killing a Native Alaskan hunter.

Although there was speculation that the Franciscan padres of the California missions requested that the remaining Nicoleños be removed from the island, there is no documentary evidence to back that claim. The missions were undergoing secularization in the 1830s and there was no Franciscan priest at Mission San Gabriel from mid-1835 through spring of 1836 to receive any Nicoleños brought to the mainland. In late November 1835, the schooner Peor es Nada, commanded by Charles Hubbard, left southern California to remove the remaining people living on San Nicolas. Upon arriving at the island, Hubbard's party, which included Isaac Sparks, 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 younger brother had been left behind, although archaeologist Steven J. 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.