Watertown republican. [volume] (Watertown, Wis.) 1860-1906, 1891-05-13
THE ROBINSON CRUSOE OF CALIFORNIA
BY JOAQUIN MILLER.

A great deal has been written about
the extraordinary little woman who
lived all alone on one of our islands for
nearly a quarter of a century, but some
of the facts seem to have scaped no.
tice. | shall write them down here as
briefly as possible for the use of the
coming De Foe.
In the first place this woman, al
though an Indian. was almost white and
OF extraordinary intelligence and sensi-
biiity.
The late DR.. Brinkerhof, Of Santa
Barbara, who attended her in her last
illness, told me that he thought per-
haps she was not Of Indian extraction
at all. But to get on with the facts.
When the Jesuit priests founded their
settlement at Santa Barbara they began
TO gather in all the dOcile or friendly
Indians and utilize as we'll as civiliZe
them.
After some years they found out that
one of the small islands lying off about
twenty miles from their harbor of Santa
Barbara was inhabited. The priests
visited the island and found one of the
most intelligent and gentle people there
that had yet been discovered on the
continent They were loyal, affection
ate, and loved their narrow and lonely
little home in the sea above all things
They had never visited the mainland.
They had no wood to build boats with,
and so the long black and barren
mountain of land away to the south
was as inaccessible to them as is the
moon to us.
They had queer little houses of stone
on the low cliff, and they were very
skillful in spearing fish and capturing all
sorts of sea birds. They made mocas
sins for their feet out of sealskins, for
seals were and are to this day so album
dant there that you can scarcely walk
about without treading on some of the
little baby seals. And all along to right
and left, as you pass by, you see the
1nild-eyed mother seal nursing her baby
at her breast, as she half rests and re-
clines against a rock, and lifts her kind,
human eyes to yours, as if to ask you to
please not hurt her little hairy baby.
| found the eggs of water fowl SO
plentiful, when | visited this little island
almost twenty years ago to gather ma
terial for an English magazine, that it
was absolutely impossible to walk about
without crushing great numbers under
foot. And these simple natives dressed
their bodies not In furS, but in feathers.
They skinned the seq lions, and out OF
the skins they made remarkably beauti-
full garments of all hues and fashions.
And this wonderful skill in all their
simple walks of life, together with their
perfect docilitv-for it seems they knew
nothing al all about war; or even anger
tempted the monks to undertake the
TRANSFORMATION of the whole tribe, num-
bering less than 200, to their settlement
at Santa Barbara.
And so they sent their ship, and, con-
irving to get the simple and confiding
islanders all on board, they hoisted sail
for the mainland.
After a time the poor prisoners be-
cane alarmed, and, fearing they were to
'Bensken from their beloved island for
ever, attempted to escape over the side
of the ship into the sea. But he cum
ming Spanish soldiers and sailors had
taken precautions against this. and only
one managed to leap into the sea and
swim back to the island.
Now the monks told various stories
about this woman reason for escaping
back to the lonely island One was to
the effect that she had hidden away her
babe IN the rocks on conserving to go on
board the snip, so as to make sure that
it~at least should not be torn from its
happy little home in the sea and made
TO serve the strangers, and then finding
that she was being carried away TO re-
turn no more, she in her desperation
dashed through her guards and got
away A Rindlier story is to the effect
that her mother hid the babe, but that
she did not know it and thought it had
been forgotten. Still another version
of the story runs to the effect
that the child was about to be
.devoured by numbers of dogs that
were left behind, and that she
leaped into the sea to save it. But this
is the most unkindly and the hardest of
story. For to believe this is to believe
that the little child was indeed de-
stroyed by the dogs; since the mother
when found there and taken to the
mainland nearly quarter of century
later was found entirely alone.
NV own notion of the matter is that
the Jesuit Fathers entrusted the capture
and transportation of the simple natives
entirely to some cruel leader of their
few seamen and soldiers, that with the
usual high nan led audacity of the early
Spaniards he detoyed them all on board,
and that only this one could get away.
[ see no reason for believing there was
any baby in the case at all.
And now wears and years rolled by
A beautiful little city biossomed out at
Santa Barbara, only twenty mines away
from the lonely woman on her silent
little island. A huge stone cathedral,
still standing there with its frieze of
human skulls set in stonellke cement,
was reared by the hands of the con-
verts and captives; but she saw nothing,
knew nothing of this. For her there
was no change day after day, year after
year. The same rise and fall of the sea,
the same solemn march of the seasons,
the same silent marching and counter
marching of the stars above her and
about her on the edge of the sea, the
same endless. awful monotony Of the
rising and going down of the sun and
the moon and the stars. And that was
all. 1t seems incredible to think that
any set of human beings could have
been so entirely brutal as to leave this
woman there all these years so utterly
and so desolately alone. She did not
even have the goats of Robinson Crusoe,
to say nothing of his man Friday and
like creatures. She had only the dogs.