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. Though she identified them as Apache, they were most likely Tolkepayas (Western Yavapai). They killed her parents and four siblings, left her older brother Lorenzo Dow Oatman (1836–1901) for dead, and enslaved Olive and her younger sister Mary Ann, holding them as slaves for one year before they traded them to the Mohave people. While Lorenzo exhaustively attempted to recruit governmental help in searching for them, Mary Ann died from starvation and Olive spent four years with the Mohave. Five years after the attack, she was returned into American society. The story of the Oatman Massacre began to be retold with dramatic license in the press, as well as in her own memoir and speeches. Novels, plays, movies, and poetry were inspired, which resonated in the media of the time and long afterward. She had become an oddity in 1860s America, partly because of the prominent blue tattooing of her chin by the Mohave, making her the first known white woman with Indian tattoos. Much of what actually occurred during her time with the Indians remains unknown.