OK. Who was Olive Oatman?

Olive Oatman is considered the first tattooed American white woman.
In 1851 Tonto Apaches killed her family in southern Arizona and captured her, at the age of 13, together with her sister, Mary Ann, who was seven years old at the time. After a year of slavery Mojaves bought them. Her sister died during a famine. Olive got from Mojaves a tribal tattoo on her chin during her puberty ritual.

In 1856 she was released.
The Oatman affair rose huge curiosity and was covered by newspapers.
In 1857 The Reverend Royal B. Stratton wrote her best-seller biography.
In 1982 Elmore Leonard wrote about her a story titled “The Tonto Woman.”
In 1997 Elizabeth Grayson wrote about her a novel titled “So Wide the Sky”
In 2003, Wendy Lawton wrote about her a novel titled “Ransom Mark”.
A small town in Arizona (on Route 66 ) changed its name in 1909 to Oatman, in honor of Olive Oatman.

http://tattooblogger.blogspot.com/2008/08/first-tattooed-white-woman.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olive_Oatman


http://www.truewestmagazine.com/stories/10_myths_about_olive_oatman/1235/


Newly published, The Blue Tattoo: The Life of Olive Oatman is the first scholarly biography of Olive Oatman. It debunks a number of myths that have circulated about her over the past century and a half.

Ten such myths follow. (REST ARE AT THE LINK ABOVE)

1 - Her captors were Apaches.

Though Olive later identified them as Apaches—commonly assumed, in her era, to encompass a variety of dangerous Southwest tribes—her captors were probably much less notorious. Their proximity to the murder site, regular contact with the Mohave Indians, hunter-gatherer lifestyle and small scale farming practices suggest they were one of four fluid groups of Yavapais. Most likely they were Tolkepayas, a name that distinguishes them more geographically than culturally from other free-ranging yet interconnected Yavapais.

2 - The rest of the Oatman family was killed in the massacre.

Not everyone. Olive’s brother Lorenzo, nearly 15, was left for dead near Gila Bend. He managed to return to the remainder of the party the Oatmans had left behind at Maricopa Wells. He and Olive reconnected at Fort Yuma soon after her ransom.

3 - She was a slave to the Mohave.

Though she and her younger sister Mary Ann did serve as slaves to the Yavapais during the year they spent with them, they were not slaves to the Mohave. They were adopted into the family that had arranged for their retrieval from the Yavapais, given their clan name Oach and treated as family. The term the Mohave used to describe them, “ahwe,” meant “stranger” or “enemy,” not “slave” or “captive.”

4 - She wore a tattoo that marked her as a captive.

In her public lectures, Olive said the Mohave tattooed their captives to ensure they would be recognized if they escaped. “You perceive I have the mark indelibly placed upon my chin,” she said, neglecting to mention that most Mohave women wore chin tattoos. Stratton’s book, too, claimed that the girls received designs specific to “their own captives.” But the very pattern Olive wore appears on a ceramic figurine of the late 19th-early 20th century that displays traditional Mohave face painting, tattoo, beads and clothing.