A young pioneer girl, held captive on the wildest frontiers of the American West. Olive Oatman eventually returned to the people she'd been taken from, but her distinctive facial tattoos marked her as a curiosity. Her story? It's anything but straightforward.
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00:00A young pioneer girl held captive on the wildest frontiers of the American West.
00:04Olive Oatman eventually returned to the people she'd been taken from, but her distinctive facial
00:09tattoos marked her as a curiosity. Her story? It's anything but straightforward.
00:14In many ways, the Oatmans were like any other pioneer family, driven to seek a new start via
00:18social and religious movements. According to Intimate Frontiers, they were part of a group
00:23known as the Brewsterites, who left Independence, Missouri in August 1850. The family had started
00:28from Illinois, consisting of Father Royce, Mother Mary Ann, and their seven children,
00:33as told by a text with the ominous — and slightly spoilery — name of the Oatman Massacre.
00:38According to Brigham Young University Library, the Brewsterites were followers of Latter-day
00:42Saints church member James C. Brewster. After the death of LDS founder and prophet Joseph Smith,
00:48Brewster claimed that he was also receiving messages from on high.
00:51The communications supposedly told Brewster that he was supposed to lead the faithful to
00:55the Promised Land, and found a city called Bashan in the Rio Grande Valley. Yet arguments arose,
01:00and many of Brewster's followers left him and continued on to California.
01:04The Oatmans likewise split from Brewster along the way, but they would never make it to the West
01:08Coast.
01:09They ain't gonna do this all day. This'll tell the tale.
01:15According to The Blue Tattoo, the first real problems for the Oatman family began after they
01:19entered the New Mexico Territory. The Brewsterites disagreed about who should be the leader of the
01:24enterprise, and while Royce Oatman was ultimately appointed captain by Brewster, the two men butted
01:29heads and eventually decided to part ways. Royce led a little more than half the group farther
01:34west into the territory. But the way proved to be tough, with difficult terrain, horse thieves,
01:39harsh weather, dwindling supplies, and hostile Native people.
01:43At Maricopa Wells in what's now Arizona, the group was warned to avoid the trail ahead,
01:47given reports of attacks by the Quinson and the Forbidding Landscape.
01:51Most of the members of the group stayed put, but Royce, unable or unwilling to wait for better
01:56conditions, forged ahead with only his family. In her account of the incident, shared in Captivity
02:01of the Oatman Girls, Olive said that her father was worried about their lack of food and vulnerability
02:05to attack, even if they stayed at Maricopa Wells. So on they went.
02:11As they traveled along the trail, the Oatmans became increasingly isolated and vulnerable.
02:15In an account she later gave to the Sacramento Daily Union in 1856, Olive Oatman gives scant
02:21details about the attack itself. Captivity of the Oatman Girls, published in 1857, gives more
02:26detail, but it's worth mentioning that the journal, Prospects, says it may have been overly influenced
02:32by a preacher named Royal B. Stratton. At any rate, the 1857 narrative states that a group of
02:37Native men approached the family one evening while they camped near the Gila River. The men smoked
02:42with Royce, then asked for food. Noting his family's dwindling supplies, Royce declined to
02:46give them more than a small amount of bread. This seemed to cause the attack, and the men began
02:51violently clubbing the Oatmans. Olive later said that she was struck blind and senseless,
02:55though not so thoroughly that she didn't see the destruction of her parents and five of her six
03:00siblings. Only younger sister Mary Ann was seemingly spared. Olive later identified the
03:05attackers as Tonto Apache, but as The Oatman Massacre argues, the assailants were more
03:10likely members of the Tokopaya tribe of the Western Yavapai. Eleven-year-old Olive Oatman
03:15and her seven-year-old sister Mary Ann were taken captive, and as reported in Captivity of the
03:20Oatman Girls, were forced to march to a remote camp. Harsh as their treatment may have been,
03:24the practice of taking captives was nothing new. Tokopayas, along with other tribes,
03:28were known for occasionally taking women and children as captives, reports The Oatman Massacre.
03:33Whatever the reason for their captivity, Olive and Mary Ann were eventually put to work in a
03:37Tokopaya settlement, facing beatings if they did not follow commands. Though Olive and Mary Ann
03:42assumed that everyone else in their family had been killed, their teenage brother Lorenzo had
03:47survived. As Lorenzo recalled it, he had been badly injured, then kept reviving and losing
03:52consciousness in the hours after the attack. He was eventually able to gather enough strength to
03:56trek back to a settlement, where, upon hearing his story, a group traveled back to the scene
04:00of the attack. They found the remains of six of the Oatman family, but no sign of Olive or Mary Ann.
04:06Olive and Mary Ann Oatman's time with the Yavapai was difficult, but after about a year with the
04:11tribe, they were to change location yet again. According to Oatman's account, Topeka, the daughter
04:16of a Mojave chief, took pity on the abused girls during a previous encounter with the Yavapai.
04:20She brokered a trade for the two and effectively adopted them into her family.
04:24In the story, as it was filtered through Royal v. Stratton, however, Olive remained suspicious.
04:29From her perspective, it was very possible that she and her sister were to be handed over for
04:33yet more abuse. However, that assumption would be proven thoroughly wrong. Upon their arrival
04:39in the Mojave village, Topeka's family greeted the group warmly and served the girls food,
04:43as recorded in the blue tattoo. Their appearance was even marked by singing and dancing,
04:48and everyone gathered was told to always help the new arrivals and to treat them well.
04:53At this point, Olive Oatman's story becomes increasingly tangled. In Captivity of the
04:57Oatman Girls, the narrative consistently refers to her and her sister as captives,
05:01and emphasizes the harshness of their lives. Yet, though Olive would later claim that the
05:06Mojave kept her against her will, evidence indicates that she and Mary Ann were effectively
05:10considered tribal members and could leave at any time. The California Historical Quarterly
05:15says that's certainly what she first told newspaper reporters. Then there was the matter
05:19of the tattoo. When she returned to white society, Olive came with an impossible-to-miss series of
05:24lines tattooed on her chin. As the blue tattoo notes, she also sported similar marks on her
05:29upper arms. Far from marking her as an inferior captive, these were designs worn by other Mojave
05:34women. She also received both a clan association and a potentially lewd nickname that further
05:40marked her as one of the group. According to the Oatman Massacre, Olive even declined to
05:44approach railroad surveyors who were in close contact with the tribe in February 1854.
05:49At no point during this time did Olive or Mary Ann try to escape.
05:52Neither is there any evidence that the Mojave hid the two girls from the workers.
05:56Certainly, this incident is conveniently left out of any of Olive's statements after her return.
06:02The 1855 harvest was especially poor for the Mojave, according to the blue tattoo.
06:07Everyone in the tribe was reduced to foraging and parceling out increasingly meager reserves
06:11to make it through difficult times. Even so, numerous people in the village died,
06:16including children. Mary Ann eventually died of malnutrition, and Olive believed
06:20that she was the last member of her family alive. Accounts maintain that Mary Ann was
06:24mourned not only by her biological sister, but by other members of the tribe, too,
06:28who made sure that Mary Ann was properly buried. What's more, they are credited with saving Olive's
06:33life, feeding her from a cache of cornmeal intended for future use before she suffered
06:37the same fate as Mary Ann. About five years after she was abducted, Olive Oatman's time
06:43with the native people was nearly over. It began with the arrival of Francisco, a Quinson man.
06:48He carried a message that the people at Fort Yuma had heard rumors of a white woman living nearby.
06:53Fearing reprisal, the Mojave encouraged Olive to leave for the fort.
06:57As the Oatman Massacre reports, that worry was warranted. Francisco reportedly said that natives
07:02were in mortal danger if they didn't produce this white woman. He claimed that white people
07:06were preparing to kill the tribe if Olive remained hidden. A council debated keeping her,
07:11releasing her, or even killing Olive to cover up her existence. However, a gentler version
07:16was related to anthropologist Alfred Kroeber by Mojave tribal member Takwatha. He said that
07:21Francisco went straight to the chief, who expressed serious reluctance to let Olive go.
07:25She was well-liked and effectively a family member. But even so, they worried about further
07:30harm if more people were to come looking for her. Eventually, Olive traveled to Fort Yuma and was
07:35recovered there in 1856. She was reunited with her brother Lorenzo, and as the California Historical
07:41Quarterly notes, was given numerous offers of support from private citizens and the state of
07:45California. However, few followed through with actual help, and her remaining family members
07:50certainly weren't rich. Olive would have to figure out how to support herself long-term.
07:55Olive Oatman's experiences might have remained obscure if it weren't for an opportunistic
07:59creature named Royal B. Stratton. According to the journal Prospects,
08:02it's not entirely clear how Stratton became involved with the Oatman siblings, but he
08:06somehow ended up taking dictation from both Olive and Lorenzo to create captivity of the Oatman
08:12girls. The way Oatman's story was presented played into existing prejudices and preconceptions about
08:17supposedly savage indigenous people and their interactions with civilized white settlers,
08:22and also apparently played into Stratton's need to be a literary stylist,
08:26with dramatic flourishes and florid speeches that may or may not ever have happened.
08:31I thought my job was to tell the public the truth. The fact's pretty or not."
08:37With comparisons made between captivity of the Oatman girls and earlier accounts given directly
08:41by Olive herself, it's clear that Stratton took some liberties. That's left the truth a little
08:47elusive. Contemporary reports state that Olive Oatman was clearly upset upon her
08:52return to white society. There is some circumstantial evidence that Olive Oatman
08:56never fully moved on. According to the Blue Tattoos, she later suffered from persistent
09:00headaches and depression, perhaps linked to both her family's deaths, her departure from the Mojave,
09:05and her subsequent status as something of a sideshow attraction.
09:09I thought I'd have myself a nice Mormon husband when I was grown. A family of sister wives."
09:16But what about the oftentimes racist captivity of the Oatman girls?
09:21Olive may have only teamed up with Stratton to earn a living. Margot Mifflin, author of
09:25The Blue Tattoo, notes that Olive had to navigate her post-Mojave life as a single
09:29woman with little education and little chance of marriage, given her tattooing.
09:34Capitalizing on the tattoo and the story that went with it, even to the point of stretching
09:38the truth and playing to readers' assumptions, helped her earn a living.
09:42Instead, I got this marked-up face."
09:44Though many things came together to make Olive Oatman a celebrity in her time,
09:48her tattoos were undoubtedly one of the most striking things about her experience.
09:52For white audiences, the dark blue lines on her chin were utterly shocking.
09:56Eventually, she falsely claimed that they were a mark of enslavement,
09:59and newspaper accounts breathlessly spoke of the horrors of forcing disfigurement upon an
10:03innocent young woman, reports Western American Literature. If nothing else,
10:07it surely helped her to sell tickets to her lectures.
10:10If you were to ask a Mojave person, however, chances are good that they would have scoffed
10:14at such an idea. After all, weren't most people in the tribe tattooed in just such a manner?
10:19And, as The Blue Tattoo notes, Mojave people had to choose to receive tattoos.
10:23They were never forced upon anyone, captive or otherwise. In fact, many tribal members
10:28reportedly believed that the markings were necessary for Mojave people to recognize each
10:32other in the afterlife. Within that context, Olive's tattoos make it clear that she was
10:36part of Mojave society, both in the world of the living and of the dead.
10:41In 1865, nearly 10 years after her return, Olive Oatman married rancher John Fairchild.
10:46According to The Blue Tattoo, she moved with him first to Michigan, then Texas.
10:51Their marriage was, by all accounts, a peaceful, loving relationship,
10:54though it required a somewhat dramatic break from the past before the couple could move forward.
10:58Olive's new husband reportedly burned as many copies of Captivity of the Oatman Girls as he
11:03could before the wedding. He may also have encouraged her abrupt break with Stratton,
11:07which happened around the time of her marriage. The Fairchilds ultimately settled into a quiet
11:11life in Sherman, Texas. The pair never had biological children, though they did adopt a
11:16daughter. Often described as fairly shy, the older Olive Oatman Fairchild rarely spoke of her
11:21experiences with the Mojave people, though she undertook charity work with orphans that echoed
11:25her own parental status. Her obituary mentioned that she sometimes wore a veil to conceal her
11:31tattoo. The effects of her trauma appear to have dogged Olive throughout her life. In private
11:36letters, the older Olive sometimes even wrote of her long-dead family, telling one friend in 1882
11:41that,
11:42"...I long to have my dear mother back."
11:44She died in Sherman, Texas, in 1903.