Olive Oatman

"Based on historical records, including the letters and diaries of Oatman's friends and relatives, The Blue Tattoo is the first book to examine her life from her childhood in Illinois including the massacre, her captivity, and her return to white society - to her later years as a wealthy banker's wife in Texas."--BOOK JACKET.

The Oatman massacre is among the most famous and dramatic captivity stories in the history of the Southwest. In this riveting account, Brian McGinty explores the background, development, and aftermath of the tragedy. Roys Oatman, a dissident Mormon, led his family of nine and a few other families from their homes in Illinois on a journey west, believing a prophecy that they would find the fertile “Land of Bashan” at the confluence of the Gila and Colorado Rivers. On February 18, 1851, a band of southwestern Indians attacked the family on a cliff overlooking the Gila River in present-day Arizona. All but three members of the family were killed. The attackers took thirteen-year-old Olive and eight-year-old Mary Ann captive and left their wounded fourteen-year-old brother Lorenzo for dead. Although Mary Ann did not survive, Olive lived to be rescued and reunited with her brother at Fort Yuma. On Olive’s return to white society in 1857, Royal B. Stratton published a book that sensationalized the story, and Olive herself went on lecture tours, telling of her experiences and thrilling audiences with her Mohave chin tattoos. Ridding the legendary tale of its anti-Indian bias and questioning the historic notion that the Oatmans’ attackers were Apaches, McGinty explores the extent to which Mary Ann and Olive may have adapted to life among the Mohaves and charts Olive’s eight years of touring and talking about her ordeal.

When 13-year-old Olive Oatman's wagon train is raided by outlaw Yavapai Indians, she and her sister are captured. After enduring harsh treatment, they are ransomed by a band of Mohaves. Olive struggles to adjust to her new life, but finds comfort in her faith and in an unexpected friendship. When the time comes for her to return to the white world, she is afraid she will never fit in. But she learns to see the Mohave design tattooed on her chin as a sign of God's love and deliverence, a mark of ransom.

Olive Oatman was fourteen years old when her Mormon family was attacked by a Native American tribe in present-day Arizona. Her parents and four siblings were killed, while Olive and a younger sister were captured and later sold to a Mohave tribe. Her sister would later die of hunger, but Olive survived and spent several years among the Mohave people. She was returned to mainstream American society, however, at the age of nineteen when rumors of a white girl living among the Mohave began to circulate. Her re-introduction caused something of a sensation, partly because of the prominent blue face tattoos she received during her time among the Mohave. She would later speak of her time with the Mohave very fondly, and her transition to a very different culture and then back again were no doubt quite complicated. This story was originally published in 1857 under the title "Captivity of the Oatman Girls Being an Interesting Narrative of Life Among the Apache and Mohave Indians" by Royal B. Stratton. It is re-published here in its entirety.

"In this provocative work full of intriguing female characters from tattoo history, Margot Mifflin makes a persuasive case for the tattooed woman as an emblem of female self-expression." —Susan Faludi Bodies of Subversion is the first history of women’s tattoo art, providing a fascinating excursion to a subculture that dates back into the nineteenth-century and includes many never-before-seen photos of tattooed women from the last century. Author Margot Mifflin notes that women’s interest in tattoos surged in the suffragist 20s and the feminist 70s. She chronicles: * Breast cancer survivors of the 90s who tattoo their mastectomy scars as an alternative to reconstructive surgery or prosthetics. * The parallel rise of tattooing and cosmetic surgery during the 80s when women tattooists became soul doctors to a nation afflicted with body anxieties. * Maud Wagner, the first known woman tattooist, who in 1904 traded a date with her tattooist husband-to-be for an apprenticeship. * Victorian society women who wore tattoos as custom couture, including Winston Churchill’s mother, who wore a serpent on her wrist. * Nineteeth-century sideshow attractions who created fantastic abduction tales in which they claimed to have been forcibly tattooed. “In Bodies of Subversion, Margot Mifflin insightfully chronicles the saga of skin as signage. Through compelling anecdotes and cleverly astute analysis, she shows and tells us new histories about women, tattoos, public pictures, and private parts. It’s an indelible account of an indelible piece of cultural history.” —Barbara Kruger, artist

This book is a biography of Olive Oatman, who was held captive by the Apaches and Mohaves and who learned that her captors had deeply spiritual beliefs that forever altered the way she thought of the earth and its proper uses.

A tragic reminder of brutality or the vestiges of the aftermath? Olive Oatmanisn't a household name, but a distinct feature on her face has made her infamous for the worst reasons. She is the girl with the blue tattoo. The story behind the distinctive tattoo is the stuff of legends. Some believed it was placed on her face during her captivity, following the brutal murders of her family members and the kidnapping of her and her sister. Others believe it was placed on her after her return. Rumors swelled. Her tattoo became a symbol of Native barbarianism and the triumph of American goodness, but like many stories of that era, the truth is far more complicated. This short book details the murders, her captivity, the aftermath, and her baffling return to her captors. Unravel the mystery of the woman who would become famous for all the wrong reasons and discover what her life story says about cultural identity, the power of resiliency, and what happens when fact and fiction bend and twist to muddy the waters. Read on to find out the truth!

Winner of the Popular Culture Association’s Emily Toth Best Book in Women’s Studies Award From an author praised for writing “delicious social history” (Dwight Garner, The New York Times) comes a lively account of memorable Miss America contestants, protests, and scandals—and how the pageant, now in its one hundredth year, serves as an unintended indicator of feminist progress Looking for Miss America is a fast–paced narrative history of a curious and contradictory institution. From its start in 1921 as an Atlantic City tourist draw to its current incarnation as a scholarship competition, the pageant has indexed women’s status during periods of social change—the post–suffrage 1920s, the Eisenhower 1950s, the #MeToo era. This ever–changing institution has been shaped by war, evangelism, the rise of television and reality TV, and, significantly, by contestants who confounded expectations. Spotlighting individuals, from Yolande Betbeze, whose refusal to pose in swimsuits led an angry sponsor to launch the rival Miss USA contest, to the first black winner, Vanessa Williams, who received death threats and was protected by sharpshooters in her hometown parade, Margot Mifflin shows how women made hard bargains even as they used the pageant for economic advancement. The pageant’s history includes, crucially, those it excluded; the notorious Rule Seven, which required contestants to be “of the white race,” was retired in the 1950s, but no women of color were crowned until the 1980s. In rigorously researched, vibrant chapters that unpack each decade of the pageant, Looking for Miss America examines the heady blend of capitalism, patriotism, class anxiety, and cultural mythology that has fueled this American ritual.

Native American HistoryUntil surprisingly recently, most history books noted that America was discovered in 1492 by Christopher Columbus. The truth was that by the time that Columbus arrived in America, people had been living there for more than 12,000 years. During this time, the indigenous people of North America lived without contact with other continents. Different groups developed separate and distinct ways of life, cultures, and societies but all shared one common characteristic: they relied on the land to provide them with food, and they developed a series of religions that, while separate, shared a respect for nature and imbued many animals and natural features with spiritual characteristics. These beliefs, combined with the fact that most of these societies were relatively primitive compared to those emerging in other parts of the world, meant that the Native Americans were able to live in harmony with the natural world. These people had sophisticated and complex belief systems, but they built no cities, no wheeled vehicles, and developed nothing beyond the most basic written language. Although many millions of people lived in North America, their impact on the landscape and the natural systems was minimal. Then, abruptly, white settlers arrived, bringing with them new technologies and weapons, new religions, and an indifference towards nature. They also brought with them diseases to which the Native Americans had never before been exposed. Within two hundred years, the Native American population dwindled to a fraction of what it had been; the survivors were herded onto reservations on which they could not follow their traditional ways of life and where they were denied the most basic human rights. Inside you will read about...✓ The Emergence of Native American Peoples and Cultures ✓ Life before the White Men ✓ European Settlers Arrive ✓ Early Wars in America ✓ American Expansion ✓ Ghost Dancing and the Wounded Knee Massacre And much more! Only in the twentieth century did the population of Native American people begin to recover, and only then did the general population of America begin to regard these cultured and sophisticated people as anything but savages. This is the story of the gradual rise, sudden destruction, and slow recovery of the native people of North America.

Anthropologist and archaeologist Lillian M. Fisher gives an account of the capture of two young pioneer girls by Apaches following the massacre of the girls' parents, and the girls' experiences in captivity; only Olive ultimately survived and returned.