Mormon olive oatman biography

John Brant Fairchild. Early life [ edit ]. The Oatman Massacre [ edit ]. Captivity and conversion [ edit ]. Release [ edit ]. Gallery [ edit ]. Olive Oatman, ambrotype, c. Olive Oatman, tintype, [ 20 ]. Olive Oatman, carte de visite , Rochester, NY c. Mojave Indians, Mollhausen, H. Later life [ edit ]. Legacy [ edit ]. In popular culture [ edit ].

Television and film [ edit ]. Fiction inspired by Olive Oatman [ edit ]. See also [ edit ]. References [ edit ]. Texas State Historical Association. Retrieved August 5, Surviving Conquest. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN OCLC Retrieved July 31, — via Google Books. Retrieved November 5, Archived from the original PDF on March 6, Retrieved June 19, Harvard University Press.

Mormon olive oatman biography

Los Angeles Times. Early Maricopa County: — Arcadia Publishing. The Tucson Citizen. Tucson, Arizona. September 27, Retrieved August 1, — via Newspapers. The American West. August 18, Archived from the original on August 18, California Historical Society Quarterly. JSTOR Mojave National Preserve. National Park Service. Retrieved February 3, Vanishing Tattoo.

This group of people, aged between 85 and 93, were convinced by the prominent Mormon James Brewster that Mormons ought to settle in California and not in Utah as it was decreed by the founder, Brigham Young. They were set upon by a group of Native Americans, probably Tolkepayas though Olive would later claim they were Apaches. The only members of the family who survived were Olive, her brother Lorenzo and the youngest sister, Mary Ann.

Instead, they were forced to work: gathering wood, collecting water, finding food and other tasks. One year later, they were traded to a group of Mohave for two horses, some vegetables, blankets and other trinkets. The tribal leader Espianole or Espaesay took the girls into his family. They formed bonds with their adopted mother, Aespaneo, and her daughter, Topeka.

Neither tried to escape and when white railroad surveyors spent a week with the Mohaves in February , they did not reveal themselves as kidnapped and did not ask for help. They, of course, would not have known that they had a surviving brother. During a severe drought in the Southwest a few years later, Mary Ann starved to death along with members of the Mohave tribe.

Aespaneo cared for Olive secretly by feeding her a gruel, and she was able to survive. In , the Mohave were told that the U. The tribe first kept her sequestered and then denied that she was white. But under pressure they began to worry about the threats from the U. Olive herself was involved in the negotiations as was the Yuma Indian messenger who had told the tribe about the rumor.

She told the truth about her being American and the Mohaves threatened her life. She was given back to the U. After a day journey, she arrived in Fort Yuma on February 22, It had been five years since her capture. There was no shortage of ways to die. Disease was rampant, and in some cases, a person who was perfectly healthy in the morning would be dead by dusk.

There was cholera and scurvy, malaria, and of course, there was always the possibility of snakebites, falls, broken bones, infections, and accidental gunshot wounds — something that happened more often than you might expect. Just imagine the hardships: surviving on nothing more than the dried food you could carry and what you could hunt.

Dust and dirt that infected every nook and cranny. And — if you were among the later settlers that set off — you were following in the footsteps of thousands of other people and animals… and trekking through all the waste they left in their wake. Things only got worse for the Brewsterites as they left the plains and headed into the mountains of New Mexico, traveling a route known to the natives as Jornada Del Muerto, or the Journey of Death.

As the caravan of devout families traveled, they passed more and more ominous landmarks: human remains, picked clean by scavengers, dead and discarded pack animals, goods and garbage that oxen were no longer strong enough to carry. Native tribes tested, every night — the caravan would wake to find some of their animals gone, and fear was nearly tangible.

So, you might be able to see why the Oatman family only traveled with the rest of the Brewerites as far as Las Vegas. That, historians say, is when the party split: 26 people, including the Oatmans and three other families, set off in the direction of California, while the others followed their prophet. They worked for a bit cutting and delivering hay, before moving on toward Maricopa Wells.

By this time, they knew they were being followed. Cooler heads prevailed, at first, and the group decided to wait at the Pima villages until they were joined by travellers who were inevitably coming along behind them. After three weeks of waiting, Roys decided that he and his family — including his wife, who was due to give birth any day — were going to push on.

They were going to be doing it alone, too, as no other families would join them. Their destination was Fort Yuma, miles away. A lot can happen in that kind of time, and things did happen. Horrible things. The Oatmans decided to take a shortcut, but they were slowed down even more. Their oxen were ill-suited to the terrain they found themselves crossing, and they were struggling to get up and down the rocky hills and plateaus.

On February 18, , they spotted a large group approaching. There were between 17 and 20 — members of a Native American tribe that have variously been called Apache, Yavapai, and Maricopa. The conflict escalated, and by the time it was over, all but three were dead. In her later memoirs, Olive Oatman described seeing the broken and bloody bodies of her family members, scattered across the ground.

Then, she fell into unconsciousness. Almost immediately, they were stripped of their shoes — making it almost impossible to walk on their bloody and bruised feet, much less try to run away. Olive wrote of those first few days when the grief was fresh and they were still coming to terms with the fact that everything had changed in a heartbeat.

She wrote of stopping to make camp, of watching a cooking fire built, saying :.