Scott O'Dell: Using History To Tell His Story

Abstract

Scott O'Dell:Using History To Tell His Story Peter Roop (bio) Scott O'Dell's novels Island of the Blue Dolphins and The King's Fifth are not exactly non-fiction; but their use of actual history reveals much about the relationship between facts and art. These novels exemplify the quality that writer Jill Paton Walsh has identified as the key element in historical fiction: "However good the description and incidentals which make up the setting, however deeply they enrich the novel, the heart of the matter is always the story—complex interactions of character and event." (219). O'Dell was motivated to write Island of the Blue Dolphins out of a need to express his anger at the senseless and brutal slaughter of animals near his home in California. Being a native Californian and devotedly interested in the history of that part of the country, he was aware of the story of the Lost Woman of San Nicholas Island and modeled his story after hers. Island of the Blue Dolphins is therefore a unique blending of O'Dell's need to express himself, to tell his story, and the historical person and event which he selected as the vehicle to relate that story. San Nicholas Island, the outer-most island of the eight Santa Barbara Islands, is a desolate, wind-scoured locale. Yet for centuries this lonely island was inhabited by tribes of coastal Indians who lived there hunting seal and otter, fishing the shoals, and exploiting the extensive abalone beds which still surround the home they called Gha-las-hat. There is not much known specifically about the prehistory of Gha-las-hat. What is known is that there was a bloody slaughter of the native inhabitants by a group of otter-hunting Kodiak Indians, or as O'Dell calls them in his book, Aleuts. It is also recorded by Heizer and Whipple that in 1830, just before the time of Island of the Blue Dolphins, there were "less than two score men, women, and children remaining of the once dense population" (274). Seventy miles away from the wave-washed shores of Gha-las-hat, on the mainland coast of California, there was at this time a growing force which was to precipitate the stranding of one woman and a child on the island. This force was the semienslavement of coastal Indians by the Franciscan missionary zealots, who pressed these peoples into service building their missions, tilling their fields, and herding their sheep. The need for more labor, as well as the fervent desire to convert these isolated pagans to Christianity, kindled the idea to remove the remaining few natives of Gha-las-hat to the mainland. There were few sailing vessels along the lower California coast in the early 1800's. The persuasive Fathers, however, convinced a Captain Williams to take his ship to San Nicholas and bring the islanders to the mainland. As Williams approached Gha-las-hat a sudden storm raged, necessitating that the evacuation of the natives be hurried. In the rush to board the ship a mother was "apparently" separated from her child. After failing to persuade the Captain to return for the child, the distressed woman leapt into the seething sea and disappeared. Captain Williams, unable to bring his vessel about in the fierce wind and come to the woman's rescue, then sailed to the coast, where he told the story of the woman's heroic and seemingly doomed effort. People were fascinated by the tale of this woman's devotion. Captain Williams became determined to return to San Nicholas and learn whether or not this brave woman and/or her child survived. But William's vessel encountered misfortune herself and sank, leaving no other ship available to make arduous voyage to the island for a number of years. In 1853 another vessel finally touched at San Nicholas. There the crew found a solitary woman and brought her to mainland, ending her eighteen years of lonely confinement on Gha-las-hat. By selecting this history to tell his story of a girl's learning to revere life, O'Dell needed to conform to the outlines established by history, that the...