Inset via LAT
Inset via LAT
I remember having to watch that movie several times in elementary school. It was heartbreaking. Decades later, even realizing that the movie was probably highly fictionalized, I am still haunted by the memory.
It’s amazing that the woman survived for so many years alone, and sad that she died so soon after being rescued. This cave, if it is indeed where she survived, should yield some very interesting details on her life.
Here’s a story I haven’t thought about since gradeschool.
Make some more history: Put a boom box in that cave and play the Bee Gees, “Stayin’ Alive,” full blast.
Island of the Blue Dolphins' woman's cave believed found
"...What's known is that a solitary woman lived in the sand and fog of San Nicolas for the next 18 years. On the mainland, her legend grew. A time or two, fishermen reported seeing a fleeting figure on the deserted island. In 1850, a padre at the Santa Barbara Mission commissioned a sea captain to find her.
"The captain sailed to the island but found nothing to indicate the woman was still alive. However, his account of the plentiful seals and sea otters piqued the interest of George Nidever, a Santa Barbara rancher and fur trader. In 1852, Nidever found footprints on the beach. The next year, he found the Lone Woman.
"The old woman was of medium height but rather thick," he later reported. "She must have been about 50 years old but she was still strong and active. Her face was pleasing, as she was continuously smiling. Her teeth were entire but worn to the gums."
"The woman, who was skinning a seal when she was found, shared some roasted roots with Nidever and his men. She was staying above rolling dunes, in a hut she'd built from whale bones and brush.
"According to Schwartz, her people probably lived in more substantial houses, but tribal taboos would have kept females from learning to build them. The hut was no more than a windbreak, he said, and Nidever's accounts said she lived in a cave nearby.
"Just where was an open question until UC Berkeley archaeologist Scott Byram showed Schwartz the field notes written by a U.S. Coast Survey mapmaker who was sent to San Nicolas. One of his survey stations, he noted, was "100 yards eastward of the large cave formerly inhabited by a wild Indian woman who lived there alone for 18 years." The surveyor helpfully provides compass bearings that led Schwartz to a spot he had previously rejected, a shallow depression beneath a rock overhang.
"So began a long, frustrating dig. Beneath a thick layer of sandstone, Schwartz and his crew found a vast deposit of sand. Scooping out the sand, they found what began to look like the opening of a cave. Digging further, they came across a tapered glass bottle — the kind that held pepper sauce that spiced the bland fare of seamen between 1840 and 1865.
"That's when we got really excited," he said.
"It was evident they'd started to dig out a cave that had been filled in with sand by the fierce San Nicolas winds...
