She Lived Alone on an Island for 18 Years — Then Nobody Could Understand Her

In 1835, a ship took the last of her people off San Nicolas Island. She wasn't on it. For eighteen years she was the only human being on a hundred square kilometers of windswept Pacific rock — hunting seal, sewing a dress from cormorant feathers, building shelter out of whale bones, sharing the island with the feral dogs that had already killed her son. When she was finally found in 1853, she was smiling. Then they brought her to the mainland, and nobody could understand a word she said. Not the sailors. Not the priests. Not the Native people brought in from three different tribes to translate. She was the last speaker of her language, and four words of it were ever written down. Seven weeks later she was dead. This is the true story behind Island of the Blue Dolphins — including what archaeologists found buried in that sand in 2010 and 2012, and why the version you were taught in school is probably wrong. #History #Survival #Documentary