Zia

“But because of what I had been told I had grown up with my mind set upon finding Karana. It was a silent promise I had made to myself. This was why I went to the Mission Santa Barbara with Father Vicente and why I stayed there when I was homesick for the mountains. It was the only way I could ever hope to find Karana, who was the last of my kin, except for Mando.”

O’Dell emphasizes Zia’s fixation on finding Karana—a goal that defines her early childhood and provides the impetus for her relocation to the Mission—as emblematic of The Struggle for Cultural Preservation and Survival. Because Karana is Zia’s last surviving relative, she symbolizes Zia’s only bond with her ancestral past. Vowing to accomplish this “silent promise,” Zia demonstrates her determination to remain connected to her Indigenous roots.

“If you were a sailor. If you had experience on the sea, even on the water near our islands, I would say nothing. But you are going into a treacherous world of winds and seas that can be very rough in a very small boat.”

Captain Nidever’s warning to Zia and Mando about traveling alone to the Island of the Blue Dolphins foreshadows their abduction by the white whale hunters and their subjugation on the ship. O’Dell positions the journey itself as a metaphor—just as they navigate the treacherous ocean, the children also navigate a colonial world where their lives as Indigenous children are in constant danger.

“Off to the southwest I could see the outline of the Island of the Blue Dolphins. It looked near to us and clear, but I noticed that the water was not so calm between Santa Cruz and the Island of the Blue Dolphins as it was along the shore we had traveled during the night. On the horizon there were humps that looked like hills, but were really big waves.”

O’Dell uses the island as a symbol of Zia’s ancestral heritage, which remains distant and evasive for her. The metaphor of the waves as “hills” foreshadows adversity for Zia on a quest filled with obstacles difficult to overcome.

“‘We will find a way to reach Karana and bring her home to the Mission,’ I said. ‘She belongs to our tribe. She belongs to us especially. I left my home to find her.’”

This passage emphasizes the significance of familial bonds in Indigenous culture. Because Zia grows up displaced and with no extended family, she lacks a sense of belonging. For Zia, reuniting with Karana signifies the restoration of her Indigenous community. At the beginning of Zia’s arc, she’s still learning the complex impact of colonialism, and reconnecting with her culture proves harder than she hopes.

“Mando was torn between the shore and the ship. He kept looking back over his shoulder until the topmost masts disappeared. From time to time, even then he would look back and sigh.”

Here, O’Dell uses the subtleties of Mando’s posture to indicate his inner conflict. While Zia felt subjugated by the white men on the ship, Mando experienced it as an opportunity to free himself from the Mission and claim his freedom as an individual. Mando’s familial connection to Zia ultimately wins out over his personal desires.

“I could tell that he had never thought of taking me. But still I was happy that someone was going at last. Whether I could go or not mattered only to me.”

The physical obstacles preventing Zia from reaching the island alone act as a metaphor for the agency and resources denied her as an Indigenous woman in an oppressive colonial system. Forced to abandon her attempts to get to the island on her own, Zia enlists the help of Captain Nidever, realizing the injustice of a world that privileges white men.

“That night the thought came to me, as it had before: What if the men found Karana on the island and brought her back with them to the Mission and she did not like the Mission, nor her new life, nor us? She would be used to her own ways on the island, doing what she wanted and living as she wanted to live. When she came to the Mission, she would no longer be able to do those things.”

This passage highlights Zia’s growing political consciousness and self-awareness. Admitting her selfishness in bringing Karana to the Mission, Zia realizes the harm her aunt’s displacement will cause her. Zia recognizes that Karana longs for her traditional way of life, which the Mission system forbids and disrupts, foreshadowing Karana’s tragic end that ultimately guides Zia’s self-realization and growth.

“Usually only the men went to plant melons, but we had sickness at the Mission that year. (Since the Yankees began to come there was much sickness that the Mission did not have before.) But this time, because of a sickness, which they called measles, the girls had to help in the fields.”

While O’Dell at times sanitizes the Mission system, emphasizing the priests’ kindness and goodwill, this passage illustrates the oppressive environment Zia and other Indigenous workers navigate as the Mission depends exclusively on their unpaid labor. The text emphasizes the devastating impact of diseases on the Indigenous community, even within the Mission, underscoring Colonial Injustices Against Indigenous Peoples.

“I was not born then either but I have heard. This was when the first Mission was built away from here in San Diego. The Indians did the building, the hard work; they got tired, tired as we are now, and one night they burned down what they had built and fled into the mountains. They went back to their homes.”

Stone Hands serves as the novel’s primary example of Indigenous Resistance to Colonial Oppression. In this quotation, he illuminates the history of the California Missions, which were built by the forced labor of Indigenous people. He emphasizes the explicit connection between the Spanish Mission system and colonial oppression. Stone Hands galvanizes the people to rebel and leave the Mission en masse, pointing to the historical resistance of Indigenous people.

“In the beginning of the world, according to our tribe, there were two gods, Mukat and Tumaiyowit. The two gods quarreled about many things. Tumaiyowit wished people to die so the earth would not be crowded. Mukat did not. Tumaiyowit went down to another world. He took all his belongings with him, so people die because he died.”

O’Dell incorporates elements of Indigenous storytelling into his novel through Zia’s narration of the creation story of several Indigenous California nations, possibly including the Nicoleño. This passage indicates that Zia’s memory of her culture and tradition remains strong, contributing to her sense of identity despite her adaptation to Mission life.

“The room where they put me was three paces one way and four paces the other way. The floor was made of mud mixed with ox blood. It was very hard and cold. In the wall that faced the sea there was a slit and a heavy door. The slit was too small for even a child to crawl through and it had three square iron bars but no glass.”

Zia’s imprisonment in the garrison provides an example of the pervasive military violence against Indigenous people within colonial systems of power. O’Dell presents Military presence as inherent in the Mission system. The vivid imagery O’Dell uses in the description of Zia’s cell emphasizes the military’s indiscriminate attempts to intimidate and control Indigenous adults and children, like Zia. Despite her traumatizing experience, Zia remains courageous.

“He was seated at a desk and behind him against the wall was a stack of muskets, lances, and swords, and something that looked like an iron glove. He seemed to be in a bad humor.”

Captain Cordova’s iron glove acts as a symbol of military violence as a tool of manipulation and control over Indigenous people. Captain Cordova exhibits the iron glove, a torture tool, to intimidate Zia into informing on Stone Hands’s rebellion, demonstrating racist behavior even without physically abusing Zia. The text underscores a long history of military oppression against Indigenous people.

“‘I would not run away,’ I said. ‘I would leave if that was the way I felt.’”

Throughout the novel, Zia affirms her independence and free will, emphasizing that she came to the Mission willingly. Zia rejects the term  “runaway” as a term for Indigenous people who leave the Mission, asserting their right to freedom. Zia resists colonial oppression, framing her life at the Mission as adapting to a new reality rather than submission to Western culture and society.

“Karana stood looking at me through the iron bars. She must have known me at once because I looked like her sister. She touched my hand and held it for a moment. It was hard and rough and her nails were broken. I pressed my face against the bars and she did the same and our lips met there between them.”

Zia’s first meeting with Karana emphasizes their familial connection and bond. Zia’s cell’s iron bars symbolize the cultural distance between them, a result of colonization and displacement. Karana speaks the island dialect, while Zia has lost her native tongue. Despite these barriers, the two instantly feel their familial bond and form an emotional and spiritual connection that lasts beyond Karana’s death.

“Karana said nothing while this was going on, but when they took Rontu-Aru she picked up her blanket and followed them. That night she slept in the courtyard and all the nights for a long time, her dog at her side.”

Karana struggles to adapt to Mission life, challenging Zia’s expectations. Karana feels displaced and resists assimilation to the Mission’s strict control. Attempting to recreate her life in her homeland, Karana sleeps outside with her dog as a friend and companion. Her behavior reinforces the separation between her and Zia, establishing the fragmented nature of their relationship.

“All of the five fathers at the Mission were skilled at Indian dialects. There were people from many tribes at the Mission. And yet none of them could understand the language she spoke. I no more than any, although I was a member of the same tribe that Karana belonged to. As a child when my mother died, I knew a few words of our dialect, but when I lived at Pala with the Cupeños and at the Mission with the Spanish fathers I forgot the few words I had known.”

While O’Dell attempts to illuminate the historical impact of displacement on Indigenous people through Karana’s character arc, he simultaneously portrays her as other. Karana’s depiction incorporates elements of the “noble savage” stereotype, an Indigenous person who is uncorrupted by civilization and lives as one with nature. These elements contribute to Karana’s marginalization in the Mission as nobody can speak with her and even Mando views her as an alien and strange.

“‘We will use words instead of bullets,’ Father Vicente said. ‘If words do nothing then you can use your bullets and your swords.’”

This passage highlights the complicity of both the military and the Mission in an oppressive colonial system. Even as Father Vicente attempts to impede violence and negotiate with Stone Hands to secure the group’s return to the Mission, he still operates with a colonial framework despite his kindness. His primary goal is to make the people return to the Mission rather than support their freedom to leave.

“The tribe was suffering from lack of food and water. They were even eating the bark from trees. I did not blame the boy who tossed the rock into the pool to protest my drinking. Nor Stone Hands who wanted us to think that they had ample to eat and drink. They were starving.”

The hardship and adversity faced by Stone Hands and those who joined his uprising emphasize the barriers to self-determination and freedom faced by Indigenous communities. Because colonization disrupted Indigenous people's ability to sustain themselves, communities often lacked food and resources—conditions that forced Indigenous people to accept removal from their homelands. Similarly, Stone Hands and his followers were driven back to the Mission to ensure their survival.

“The new father was older than Father Merced, or seemed older. He wore glasses and looked at things over them and not through them. He called us all together in the big chapel and told us where he had come from, and that he had heard about the trouble we had had in the past, and what a fine Mission he would make of it. But now we worked harder and had no time to ourselves—only an hour before we went to bed. We were not allowed to keep anything of what we made.”

While Father Vicente establishes rights for Indigenous workers in the Mission, his reforms are soon reversed by the new priest, underscoring the tenuous nature of individual reform in the face of systemic oppression and institutionalized power. Father Malatesta imposes rigid and oppressive rules that demand the submission and dispossession of Indigenous communities.

“She was sitting on a rock that was as flat as a table. The tide came in and out around her. She patted her dog and spoke to him in her island dialect. I was in the cave for a while before I saw that there were others in the cave besides the three of us. When she lived at the Mission, Karana brought home wounded animals and birds with broken wings. I was not surprised, therefore, that she brought them here.”

This passage emphasizes Karana’s connection with the natural world. Following her departure from the Mission, Karana retreats to the beach, finding shelter in the cave. Like the wounded animals she rescues, Karana has been irreversibly impacted by her displacement.

“We sat in silence for an hour or more, all the things we wanted to say to each other locked within us.”

Despite their ultimate separation, Karana and Zia share a lasting spiritual bond, evoking Zia’s broader connection to her family heritage and ancestral past. Their relationship remains disrupted by the repercussions of colonialism and their inability to share their experiences, but Karana’s life and death deeply impact Zia’s coming-of-age arc.

“On a fine spring day Stone Hands gathered up a band of young men and girls who did not like Father Malatesta and his new ways and went off to the north. Mando went with them. He said he would leave Stone Hands soon and go to the town of Monterey on the sea.”

Following Father Malatesta’s strict regime within the Mission, Stone Hands and his supporters organize a new rebellion and abandon the Mission, exemplifying Indigenous resistance to colonial oppression. Mando and Zia represent two different aspects of the Indigenous postcolonial experience. Mando joins the group and leaves the Mission, hoping to find a job in the city where he can lead an independent life. In contrast, Zia gravitates toward communal life close to her Indigenous community.

“She liked these things but still she missed the island where she was born and had lived for most of her life. She missed it deep within herself, in a place she had no words to reach. She missed it like I missed my home in the mountains. The next evening after mass we buried her in a place near the Mission. All the birds were flying home and the candles shivered in the cold sea wind. That night I took my blanket and slept nearby with her gray dog beside me.”

Following Karana’s death, Zia grapples with the broader structures of colonial oppression that have displaced them, stripped them of their rights, and attempted to destroy their cultural history. Losing Karana allows Zia to recognize the importance of her homeland and the need to actively claim her independence from colonial rule. Taking Karana’s dog, she gradually adopts elements of her aunt’s lifestyle, becoming her spiritual heir.