The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1892-04-26
THE ISLE OF SKULLS.
A Woman's Lonely Life Surrounded b.
the Bones of Her Tribe.

| A Woman's Lonely Life Surrounded By
the Bones of Her Tribe.
| On the lonely wind swept island of San
! Nicolas, eighty miles off the coast of Ven
| tura county, where, as far back as the
memory OF man runs, hundreds of white
skeletons have dotted the valleys and hill
! sides, local psychologists are busy gather
/ ing the relics of strange extinct race. The
! island is ten miles long and oval in shape,
| being four miles across at the widest part.
! Strange utensils of serpentine, sandstone
! and steatite are found there among the
! human bones and the island and its erst-
/ while inhabitants have history so curl
Gus that it is difficult of comprehension.
In 1885 the padres of Santa Barbara,
learning that there were but sixteen of the
strange Indian race then living there, de
ternined TO rescue them from the island.
They went over in sloop and succeeded,
as they thought, in getting all on board.
At the last moment an Indian woman re-
turned for her child, and one of the fire.
| guent storms OF the channel islands spring
ing up. the siOop was driven away without
her. The sloop went on the rocks of Point
Conception and all on board were lost.
Sixteen years later Captain George Md
ever and two men went from the coast on
a sloop to hunt otter Off San Nicolas. On
landing they were, like Crusoe, astonished
TO discover human footprints in the sand.
They saw no one, however, and storm
compelled them to put to sea-
It was two years thereafter that the ad-
venturous captain, revolving in his mind
the sight of The footprints in the uncanny
island, determined to go and discover and
bring over the lonely woman of whom he
had vaguely heard. Men accompanied
him, and at length they saw on the surf
beaten shore a woman with long tawny
hair dressed in a queer garb of colored
birdskins, and scraping with bone knife
the blubber from a seal.
phey surrounded and approached her
stealthily, and although suddenly con-
fronted she did not appear in the least
afraid, but smiled, and then falling on her
knees prayed to the sun. The wild woman
offered no objection when by signs she was
made to understand that she was to go
with them in the boat.
They reached Santa Barbara across the
rough sea- and the first thing the Indian
woman saw was DR.. S. L. Shaw, now
eighty years Old and yet living there, rid
ing horse She had never seen nor heard
of any object like it, and thought the man
and horse were one, and she knelt on the
shore and offered her devotions to it. Two
weeks afterward the last inhabitant of rock
ribbed, tempest tossed San Nicolas died
from eating food to which she was unac-
customed furnished by her rescuers, and
the curtain fell on her race forever
Wild dogs had eaten her child. Her
dress of red and blue feathers, wonderful
creation of barbaric hands, was sent to the
pope of Rome. Relic hunters have gath
cred mortars, pestles, ollas, toy steatite
canoes and other curious things there for
some years past, and shipped them to vari-
Gus eastern and European universities.
Skeletons and parts of skeletons have also
been collected in large numbers, but today
the bones of thousands of Indians are scat
tered about there. Some lie face down,
indicating that they have fallen in battle
There are so many human relics there
that San Nicolas is known as the Isle OF
Skulls"
''The lonely island, whose highest part
is but O40 feet above the sea- said resi-
dent of Ventura, us noted for the high
artistic class of many of its relics. Had
the woman rescued, then ffty-two years
old, not died a story passing strange would
no doubt have been told Of the race so long
hemmed in by the waste of waters about.
AS it is, much of the story is shrouded in
mystery forever.-San Francisco Exam
liner