Olive Oatman

Olive Ann Oatman (September 7, 1837 – March 21, 1903) was a white American woman who was enslaved and later released by Indians in the Mojave Desert region when she was a teenager. She later lectured about her experiences.

On March 18, 1851, while emigrating from Illinois to the confluence of the Colorado River and the Gila River (in modern-day Yuma, Arizona), her family was attacked by a small group from an Indian tribe. Much of what actually occurred during her time with the Indians remains unknown.

Early life Olive was born the third of seven children to Royce Boise Oatman (1809–1851) and Mary Ann Sperry Oatman (1813–1851) in La Harpe, Hancock County, Illinois. The seven Oatman children ranged in age from one to 17 years old, the eldest being Lucy Oatman. Mary Ann was 8 months pregnant with their eighth child. On the Oatmans' fourth day out from Maricopa Wells, they were approached by a group of nineteen Native Americans who were asking for tobacco and food. Due to the lack of supplies, Royce Oatman was hesitant to share too much with the small party of Yavapais. They became irate at his stinginess. During the encounter, the Yavapais attacked the Oatman family. The Yavapais clubbed the family to death. All were killed except for three of the children: 15-year-old Lorenzo, who was left for dead, while 14-year-old Olive and 7-year-old Mary Ann were taken to be slaves for the Yavapais. The men had no way of digging proper graves in the volcanic rocky soil, so they gathered the bodies together and formed a cairn over them. It has been said the remains were reburied several times and finally moved to the river for re-interment by early Arizona pioneer Charles Poston. Lorenzo Oatman became determined to never give up the search for his only surviving siblings. they were probably of the Tolkepaya tribe (Western Yavapais) living in a village southwest of Aguila, Arizona, in the Harquahala Mountains. After arriving at the village, the girls were initially treated in a way that appeared threatening, and Oatman later said she thought they would be killed. However, the girls were used as slaves to forage for food, to lug water and firewood, and for other menial tasks.

During the girls' captivity with the Yavapais, another group of Native Americans came to trade with the tribe. This group was made up of Mohave Native Americans. The daughter of the Mohave Chief Espaniole saw the girls and their poor treatment during a trading expedition. She tried to make a trade for the girls. The Yavapais refused, but the chief's daughter, Topeka, was persistent and returned once more offering a trade for the girls. Eventually the Yavapais gave in and traded the girls for two horses, some vegetables, blankets, and beads. After being taken into Mohave custody, the girls walked for days to a Mohave village along the Colorado River (in the center of what today is Needles, California). They were immediately taken in by the family of a tribal leader (kohot) whose non-Mohave name was Espaniole. The Mohave tribe was more prosperous than the group that had held the girls captive, and both Espaniole's wife, Aespaneo, and daughter, Topeka, took an interest in the Oatman girls' welfare. Oatman expressed her deep affection for these two women numerous times over the years after her captivity.

Another thing that suggests Olive and Mary Ann were not held in forced captivity by the Mohave is that both girls were tattooed on their chins and arms, in keeping with the tribal custom. Oatman later claimed (in Stratton's book and in her lectures) that she was tattooed to mark her as a slave, but this is not consistent with the Mohave tradition, where such marks were given only to their own people to ensure that they would enter the land of the dead and be recognized there by their ancestors as members of the Mohave tribe. Mary Ann died of starvation while the girls were living with the Mohave. This happened in about 1855–56, when Mary Ann was ten or eleven. It has been claimed that there was a drought in the region, She was given a clan name, Oach, and a nickname, Spantsa, a Mohave word having to do with unquenchable lust or thirst. Oatman, however, denied rumors during her lifetime that she either had been married to a Mohave or had been sexually mistreated by the Yavapai or Mohave. In Stratton's book, she declared that "to the honor of these savages, let it be said, they never offered the least unchaste abuse to me." However, her nickname, Spantsa, may have meant "rotten womb" and implied that she was sexually active, although historians have argued that the name could have different meanings.

Within a few days of her arrival at the fort, Oatman discovered that her brother Lorenzo was alive and had been looking for her and Mary Ann. Their meeting made headline news across the West.

Later life In 1857, a pastor named Royal Byron Stratton sought out Olive and Lorenzo Oatman. He co-wrote a book about the Oatman Massacre and the girls' captivity titled Life among the Indians: or, The Captivity of the Oatman Girls Among the Apache & Mohave Indians. It was a bestseller for that era, at 30,000 copies. Olive was a curiosity. Her boldly tattooed chin was on display and people came to hear her story and witness the blue tattoo for themselves. She was the first known tattooed White American woman as well as one of the first female public speakers. Olive entered the lecture circuit as feminism was developing. Though she herself never claimed to be part of the movement, her story entered the American consciousness shortly after the Seneca Falls Convention.

Oatman married John Brant Fairchild (1830–1907) on November 9, 1865, in Rochester, New York. They met at a lecture she was giving alongside Stratton in Michigan. Fairchild was a wealthy rancher who had lost his brother to an attack by Native Americans during a cattle drive in Arizona in 1854, the same time Oatman was living among the Mohave. Stratton did not receive an invitation to the wedding, and Olive never reached out to him again. Stratton became institutionalized after the development of hereditary insanity and died in 1875.

Olive and John Fairchild moved to Sherman, Texas, a boom town ripe for a businessman like Fairchild to start a new and prosperous life. Fairchild founded the City Bank of Sherman and together they lived quietly in a large Victorian mansion. Olive began wearing a veil to cover her famous tattoo and became involved in charity work. She was particularly interested in helping a local orphanage. She and Fairchild never had their own children, but they did adopt a little girl and named her Mary Elizabeth after their mothers, nicknaming her Mamie. Her husband went on to track down copies of Stratton's book and burn them. She is buried at the West Hill Cemetery in Sherman, Texas.

Legacy The town of Oatman, Arizona, located near her release site, was named in her honor in 1915. It was part of the Oatman Gold District. The once thriving gold rush town is now a tourist stop.

Named in her honor, the historic town of Olive City, Arizona, near the present town of Ehrenberg, was a steamboat stop on the Colorado River during the gold rush days. Other namesakes in Arizona are Oatman Mountain and the adjacent Oatman Flat. In an episode of the series The Ghost Inside My Child: The Wild West and Tribal Quest, a southern American Baptist family claims that their daughter Olivia says she is the reincarnation of Olive Oatman. A 1965 episode of the TV series Death Valley Days titled "The Lawless Have Laws" recounts the story of Olive Oatman and features her brother Lorenzo's search for her. In this episode he finds her with the Mojave, with whom she wishes to stay.

Fiction inspired by Olive Oatman

De Burton, Maria Ruiz. Who Would Have Thought It? J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1872. Grayson, Elizabeth. So Wide the Sky. Avon, 1997. Leonard, Elmore. The Tonto Woman and Other Western Stories. Delacorte Press, 1998. Lawton, Wendy. Ransom's Mark: A Story Based on the Life of the Young Pioneer Olive Oatman. Moody Publishers, 2003.