Nicoleño
Encyclopedia
The Nicoleño were a Native American
tribe living on San Nicolas Island
in California
. Juana Maria
, the "Lone Woman of San Nicolas," was the last surviving Nicoleño when she died in 1853.
, 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 Island
s; 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 is unknown.
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 tribe was decimated, and by the 1830s only around twenty remained; some sources put the number at seven, six women and a man named Black Hawk. 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.
Many of the surviving Nicoleño chose to live at the Mission San Gabriel Arcángel
. However, they had no immunity to the diseases they encountered there. Black Hawk became blind shortly after arriving, and died when he fell off a steep bank into the water and drowned. The others had also apparently died by the time Juana Maria was rescued. After several other attempts at locating her failed, she was found by Captain George Nidever
, who took her to the mainland. None of the local Indians could decipher her language, and she was taken in by Nidever and his wife. However, she contracted dysentery and died only seven weeks after her return to civilization.
ribs, was also found. Around some of the structures Juana Maria hung seal meat from a series of 4 to 8 foot poles, or from ropes stretched between them. Like other California natives, the Nicoleño were apparently skilled basket weavers, and Juana Maria is described as making four different shapes in the literature about her. When found she was wearing a dress made of green cormorant
skins, decorated with feathers, and had a number of possessions made of sinew and bone.
The first archaeological visit to San Nicolas was by Paul Schumacher for the Smithsonian Institution
in 1875. His team uncovered numerous artifacts from surface sites, assumed to be from a later period of Nicoleño culture, as the island's climate is not well suited for preservation. Artifacts collected by these early visitors include grass matting and clothing fragments, bone knives and fishhooks, and soapstone
fish and bird effigies. Nicoleño culture was entirely dependent on the ocean for sustenance, as the island was home to only four types of land animals, none of which were valuable for food. The island is home to a large abundance of fish and sea mammals, as well as birds, which the Nicoleño were skilled at catching.
spoken on nearby Santa Catalina Island and in what is now Los Angeles County. However, a study by University of California, Los Angeles
linguist Pamela Munro
focusing on four words and two songs spoken and sung by Juana Maria suggests Nicoleño was most similar to the related languages
spoke by the Luiseños of Northern San Diego County
and of the Juaneño
s near San Juan Capistrano
. Others have questioned whether Juana Maria was actually a Nicoleño, suggesting she came to the island later, perhaps with the Aleuts after the massacre.
Native Americans in the United States
Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples in North America within the boundaries of the present-day continental United States, parts of Alaska, and the island state of Hawaii. They are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as...
tribe living on San Nicolas Island
San Nicolas Island
San Nicolas Island is the most remote of California's Channel Islands. It is part of Ventura County. The 14,562 acre island is currently controlled by the United States Navy and is used as a weapons testing and training facility, served by Naval Outlying Field San Nicolas Island...
in California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
. Juana Maria
Juana Maria
Juana Maria , better known to history as the Lone Woman of San Nicolas Island , was a Native American woman who was the last surviving member of her tribe, the Nicoleño. She lived alone on San Nicolas Island from 1835 until her discovery in 1853...
, the "Lone Woman of San Nicolas," was the last surviving Nicoleño when she died in 1853.
History
Archeological evidence suggests San Nicolas, like the other Channel IslandsChannel Islands of California
The Channel Islands of California are a chain of eight islands located in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Southern California along the Santa Barbara Channel in the United States of America...
, 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
Santa Catalina Island, California
Santa Catalina Island, often called Catalina Island, or just Catalina, is a rocky island off the coast of the U.S. state of California. The island is long and across at its greatest width. The island is located about south-southwest of Los Angeles, California. The highest point on the island is...
and San Clemente Island
San Clemente Island
San Clemente Island is the southernmost of the Channel Islands of California. It is owned and operated by the United States Navy, and is a part of Los Angeles County. Defined by the United States Census Bureau as Block Group 2 of Census Tract 5991 of Los Angeles County, California, it is long and...
s; these were members of the Takic branch of the Uto-Aztecan
Uto-Aztecan languages
Uto-Aztecan or Uto-Aztekan is a Native American language family consisting of over 30 languages. Uto-Aztecan languages are found from the Great Basin of the Western United States , through western, central and southern Mexico Uto-Aztecan or Uto-Aztekan is a Native American language family...
peoples and were related to the Tongva of modern-day Los Angeles County
Los Angeles County, California
Los Angeles County is a county in the U.S. state of California. As of 2010 U.S. Census, the county had a population of 9,818,605, making it the most populous county in the United States. Los Angeles County alone is more populous than 42 individual U.S. states...
. The name "Nicoleño" has been conventional since its use by Alfred L. Kroeber
Alfred L. Kroeber
Alfred Louis Kroeber was an American anthropologist. He was the first professor appointed to the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, and played an integral role in the early days of its Museum of Anthropology, where he served as director from 1909 through...
in Handbook of Indians of California; the Chumash called them the "Niminocotch," and called San Nicolas "Ghalas-at." Their name for themselves is unknown.
The expedition of Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo
Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo
Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo was a Portuguese explorer noted for his exploration of the west coast of North America on behalf of Spain. Cabrillo was the first European explorer to navigate the coast of present day California in the United States...
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
Sebastián Vizcaíno
Sebastián Vizcaíno was a Spanish soldier, entrepreneur, explorer, and diplomat whose varied roles took him to New Spain, the Philippines, the Baja California peninsula, the California coast and Japan.-Early career:...
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
Russian Alaska
Russian America was the name of Russian colonial possessions in the Americas from 1733 to 1867 that today is the U.S. state of Alaska and settlements farther south in California and Hawaii...
landed on San Nicolas in search of sea otter
Sea Otter
The sea otter is a marine mammal native to the coasts of the northern and eastern North Pacific Ocean. Adult sea otters typically weigh between 14 and 45 kg , making them the heaviest members of the weasel family, but among the smallest marine mammals...
and seal
Pinniped
Pinnipeds or fin-footed mammals are a widely distributed and diverse group of semiaquatic marine mammals comprising the families Odobenidae , Otariidae , and Phocidae .-Overview: Pinnipeds are typically sleek-bodied and barrel-shaped...
. They fought with the Nicoleño men, probably over hunting rights and women, and many died as a result. The tribe was decimated, and by the 1830s only around twenty remained; some sources put the number at seven, six women and a man named Black Hawk. Hearing of this, the Santa Barbara Mission
Mission Santa Barbara
In 1840, Alta California and Baja California were removed from the Diocese of Sonora to form the Diocese of Both Californias. Bishop Francisco Garcia Diego y Moreno, OFM, established his cathedra at Mission Santa Barbara, making the chapel the pro-cathedral of the diocese until 1849...
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
Monterey, California
The City of Monterey in Monterey County is located on Monterey Bay along the Pacific coast in Central California. Monterey lies at an elevation of 26 feet above sea level. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 27,810. Monterey is of historical importance because it was the capital of...
, and before he could return to Santa Barbara the Peor es Nada hit a heavy board in the mouth of the San Francisco Bay
San Francisco Bay
San Francisco Bay is a shallow, productive estuary through which water draining from approximately forty percent of California, flowing in the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers from the Sierra Nevada mountains, enters the Pacific Ocean...
and sank. A lack of other available ships is usually cited as preventing further rescue attempts.
Many of the surviving Nicoleño chose to live at the Mission San Gabriel Arcángel
Mission San Gabriel Arcángel
The Mission San Gabriel Arcángel is a fully functioning Roman Catholic mission and a historic landmark in San Gabriel, California. The settlement was founded by Spaniards of the Franciscan order on "The Feast of the Birth of Mary," September 8, 1771, as the fourth of what would become 21 Spanish...
. However, they had no immunity to the diseases they encountered there. Black Hawk became blind shortly after arriving, and died when he fell off a steep bank into the water and drowned. The others had also apparently died by the time Juana Maria was rescued. After several other attempts at locating her failed, she was found by Captain George Nidever
George Nidever
George Nidever was an American mountain man, explorer, fur trapper, memoirist and sailor. In the 1830s he became one of the first wave of American settlers to move to Mexican California, where he made his living in fur trapping...
, who took her to the mainland. None of the local Indians could decipher her language, and she was taken in by Nidever and his wife. However, she contracted dysentery and died only seven weeks after her return to civilization.
Culture
Most information about the Nicoleño comes through Juana Maria. When Nidever located her, she was living in a round brush enclosure, about 6 feet (1.8 m) in diameter and 5 feet (1.5 m) high, with a narrow opening on one side. She cooked her food over a fire inside her home. Several similar enclosures were still standing at the time, and another type of structure, made of brush walls supported by whaleWhale
Whale is the common name for various marine mammals of the order Cetacea. The term whale sometimes refers to all cetaceans, but more often it excludes dolphins and porpoises, which belong to suborder Odontoceti . This suborder also includes the sperm whale, killer whale, pilot whale, and beluga...
ribs, was also found. Around some of the structures Juana Maria hung seal meat from a series of 4 to 8 foot poles, or from ropes stretched between them. Like other California natives, the Nicoleño were apparently skilled basket weavers, and Juana Maria is described as making four different shapes in the literature about her. When found she was wearing a dress made of green cormorant
Cormorant
The bird family Phalacrocoracidae is represented by some 40 species of cormorants and shags. Several different classifications of the family have been proposed recently, and the number of genera is disputed.- Names :...
skins, decorated with feathers, and had a number of possessions made of sinew and bone.
The first archaeological visit to San Nicolas was by Paul Schumacher for the Smithsonian Institution
Smithsonian Institution
The Smithsonian Institution is an educational and research institute and associated museum complex, administered and funded by the government of the United States and by funds from its endowment, contributions, and profits from its retail operations, concessions, licensing activities, and magazines...
in 1875. His team uncovered numerous artifacts from surface sites, assumed to be from a later period of Nicoleño culture, as the island's climate is not well suited for preservation. Artifacts collected by these early visitors include grass matting and clothing fragments, bone knives and fishhooks, and soapstone
Soapstone
Soapstone is a metamorphic rock, a talc-schist. It is largely composed of the mineral talc and is thus rich in magnesium. It is produced by dynamothermal metamorphism and metasomatism, which occurs in the areas where tectonic plates are subducted, changing rocks by heat and pressure, with influx...
fish and bird effigies. Nicoleño culture was entirely dependent on the ocean for sustenance, as the island was home to only four types of land animals, none of which were valuable for food. The island is home to a large abundance of fish and sea mammals, as well as birds, which the Nicoleño were skilled at catching.
Language
The Nicoleño language is now extinct, and there is very little evidence for it. Kroeber assigned it to the Shoshonean stock, and it is generally accepted it was closely related to the Tongva languageTongva language
-Collected by C. Hart Merriam :Numbers# Po-koo /bo'kʰøː/# Wěh-hā /ʋɛj'χɒː/# Pah-hā /pa'χɒː/# Wah-chah /ʋa'ʃɒχ/# Mah-har /ma'χɒʁ/# Pah-vah-hā /pa'va'χɒː/# Wah-chah-kav-e-ah /ʋa'ʃa'kʰav̥eʲa/...
spoken on nearby Santa Catalina Island and in what is now Los Angeles County. However, a study by University of California, Los Angeles
University of California, Los Angeles
The University of California, Los Angeles is a public research university located in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, USA. It was founded in 1919 as the "Southern Branch" of the University of California and is the second oldest of the ten campuses...
linguist Pamela Munro
Pamela Munro
Pamela Munro is an American linguist who specializes in Native American languages. A graduate of the University of California, San Diego, her graduate adviser was Margaret Langdon. She teaches at the University of California, Los Angeles...
focusing on four words and two songs spoken and sung by Juana Maria suggests Nicoleño was most similar to the related languages
Luiseño language
The Luiseño language is an Uto-Aztecan language of California spoken by the Luiseño, a Native American people who at the time of the first contacts with the Spanish in the 16th century inhabited the coastal area of southern California, ranging 50 miles from the southern part of Los Angeles County,...
spoke by the Luiseños of Northern San Diego County
San Diego County, California
San Diego County is a large county located in the southwestern corner of the US state of California. Hence, San Diego County is also located in the southwestern corner of the 48 contiguous United States. Its county seat and largest city is San Diego. Its population was about 2,813,835 in the 2000...
and of the Juaneño
Juaneño
The Juaneño or Acagchemem are a Native American group from Southern California. The Juaneño lived in what is now part of Orange and San Diego Counties and received their Spanish name from the priests of the California mission chain due to their proximity to Mission San Juan Capistrano...
s near San Juan Capistrano
San Juan Capistrano, California
San Juan Capistrano is a city in southern Orange County, California, located approximately southeast of Downtown Santa Ana. The current OMB metropolitan designation for San Juan Capistrano and the Orange County Area is “Santa Ana-Anaheim-Irvine, CA.” The population was 34,593 at the 2010 census,...
. Others have questioned whether Juana Maria was actually a Nicoleño, suggesting she came to the island later, perhaps with the Aleuts after the massacre.