Title: The Blue Tattoo
Author: Margot Mifflin
Publisher: Bison Books (non-fiction
biography)
As Royce Oatman sat in his kitchen one sunny morning in the summer of 1850,
he made the decision to give up farming in Illinois
to join a wagon train of Brewsterites, a break-away sect of Mormons (Church of Latter Day Saints).
On August 9, 1850, Oatman and his family, with other settlers left Independence, Missouri to
follow James C. Brewster, who was bound for California
where he believed Mormons would find their true gathering place, rather than Utah.
Eventually disagreements caused the group to split, and Oatman took his
family to forge on alone. Royce and his wife had seven children at the time,
ranging in age from 17 to one year. On their fourth day out, they were
approached by a group of Indians, asking for tobacco, food and rifles. At some
point during the encounter, the Oatman family was attacked by the group, and
all were killed except Lorenzo, age 15, Olive, age 14, and Mary Ann, age 7.
Lorenzo had suffered a severe head wound, and eventually awakened to find his
family massacred with no sign of his two sisters.
Western Yavapais had taken the Oatman girls to a village about a hundred
miles away from the scene of the attack, where the girls were used as slaves,
frequently beaten and mistreated. After a year, a group of Mohave Indians
visited the village and traded two horses, vegetables and blankets for the
captive girls. They walked for days to a Mohave village at the confluence of
the Gila and Colorado rivers (present-day
Needles, California).
The sisters were immediately adopted by the family of a tribal leader—Kohot.
The Mohave tribe was more prosperous than the Yavapais, and both Kohot’s wife
Aespaneo, and daughter Topeka,
formed a bond with Oatman girls. Olive expressed her deep affection for these
two women numerous times over the years well after her captivity had ended.
In keeping with the tribal custom, both Oatman girls were tattooed on their
chins and arms, a sign for those who were tribal members. Mohave tradition held
such marks were given only to their own people to ensure that they would have a
good afterlife.
After her return to white society at the age of nineteen, Olive was
encouraged to give lectures around the country displaying her tattoos and
sharing her experiences as a white captive among the Mohaves. Author Margot
Mifflin does a good job discussing the
times Olive was torn between two cultures and hid from the public when she
suffered severe bouts of depression over her internal struggles.
There are numerous other stories
of white captives taken by Indians during the 18th and 19th
centuries; most notably the story of Mary Jemison, the “White Woman of the Genesee”. If traded or sent back to live in white
society, many of these captives had a difficult time re-adjusting, especially
if they’d been assimilated into Indian culture as children or young teens.
In The Blue Tattoo, author Margot Mifflin has written a
well-researched book, considering the many conflicting tales told about Oatman
and the Mohave culture. Well-illustrated with photographs from the period, you
can purchase it from several on-line book-sellers or found in your local
libraries. My rating for this non-fiction biography: 4 ½ stars.
