Nicoleño
| Nicoleño | |
|---|---|
| Native to | San Nicolas Island |
| Extinct | 1853 with the death of Juana Maria |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 |
None (mis) |
| Glottolog | isla1277 |
The Nicoleño were a Uto-Aztecan Native American tribe who lived on San Nicolas Island, California. Its population was "left devastated by a massacre in 1814 by sea otter hunters". Its last surviving member was given the name Juana Maria, who was born before 1811 and died in 1853.
Archaeological evidence suggests San Nicolas, like the other Channel Islands, has been populated for at least 10,000 years, though perhaps not continuously. It is thought the Nicoleño were closely related to the peoples of Santa Catalina and San Clemente Islands; these were members of the Takic branch of the Uto-Aztecan peoples and were related to the Tongva of modern-day Los Angeles County. The name Nicoleño has been conventional since its use by Alfred L. Kroeber in Handbook of Indians of California; the Chumash called them the Niminocotch and called San Nicolas Ghalas-at. Their name for themselves was woes.
The expedition of Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo spotted San Nicolas Island in 1543, but they did not land or make any notes about the inhabitants. In 1602 the Spanish explorer Sebastián Vizcaíno visited San Nicolas and gave it its current name. Little is known of the Nicoleño through the historical record between that date and the early 19th century. By that time the population seems to have declined significantly, likely due in part to Spanish missionary recruitment efforts, known to have relocated people from the other Channel Islands to the mainland.
In 1811 a party of Aleuts from Russian Alaska landed on San Nicolas in search of sea otter and seal. They fought with the Nicoleño men, probably over hunting rights and women, and many died as a result. The Nicoleño were decimated, and by the 1830s only around twenty remained; some sources put the number at seven, six women and an old man named Black Hawk. Black Hawk suffered a head injury during the massacre. Hearing of this, the Santa Barbara Mission on the mainland sponsored a rescue mission, and in late 1835 Captain Charles Hubbard sailed out to the Channel Islands aboard the schooner Peor es Nada. Most of the tribe boarded the ship, but one, the woman later known as Juana Maria, did not arrive before a storm rose and the ship had to return to port. Hubbard was unable to return for Juana Maria at the time as he had received orders to take a shipment of lumber to Monterey, California, and before he could return to Santa Barbara the Peor es Nada hit a heavy board in the mouth of the San Francisco Bay and sank. A lack of other available ships is usually cited as preventing further rescue attempts.
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