Customer Reviews

The Blue Tattoo: The Life of Olive Oatman (Women in the West)

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

After tribe members murdered her parents and most of her siblings, the Yavapai Indians kidnapped Olive Oatman and her younger sister Mary Ann. Brutally treated as slaves by their captors, Olive and her sister were later traded to the Mohave Indians who eventually adopted them into the tribe where they were treated as family. Mary Ann died of starvation during a bleak winter, but Olive survived and was later traded by her Mohave family to whites. A brother who the Yavapai left for dead survived and later reconnected with Olive.

Interviews during her first days back into white society show that Olive grieved her Mohave family and spoke of them as being kind and caring. Later, under the influence of a minister who hated Indians, Olive lectured throughout the East about her terrible treatment from both tribes. Olive received an excellent education and was a spell-binding speaker. She later married and her husband made every effort to erase her captive past.

The book is well-written and thoroughly researched, but I had difficulty with the author laying the entire blame for Olive's shifting position toward her Indian life entirely on the preacher. Olive was clearly an intelligent and independent woman who could have taken a more even-handed approach in her lectures about her treatment. Certainly some white women who were former captives and then integrated back into white society were able to speak more fairly about their captivity. I was left with many questions about why Olive was both able to seek out, in her later life, a meeting with one of the members of the Mohave tribe in Washington, D. C., as a seemingly fond gesture and yet also took part through her lectures in promoting the annihilation of the Indians.

Using family letters, documents and contemporary accounts, Margot Mifflin uncovers previously unknown aspects of one of the best known Indian Captivity stories -that of Olive Oatman, the woman whose chin bore the "blue tattoo." On her return to white culture as a "redeemed captive," Olive's tattoo served as a question mark to the shocked and sympathetic audiences who heard her lecture on her experiences - asking the question no respectable person of the time dare voice, what did the savages really do to her?
The horrific massacre of her Morman pioneer family by Yavapai Indians in 1851 began thirteen year old Olive's six-year adventure (or ordeal, as the legend would later have it). She and her sister, at first slaves of the cruel Yavapai, were purchased a year later by the much gentler, now little-known, Mohave people. In a secret valley of the Colorado River, the "American Nile" (the yearly fertile flooding ended with the construction of Hoover Dam), the girls entered an ancient Utopian culture, perhaps unique among American Indians.
The Mohaves lived a near-vegetarian, near-nudist, sexually promiscuous life, and the girls participated in every aspect of the culture -- so much so that the hardboiled cavalry officer sent to "rescue" Olive, and who spoke enough Mohave to understand her nickname (which indicated an exaggerated interest in sex.) changed her name in the Army's paperwork. Olive's tattoo, which was to identify her as Mohave in the afterlife, shows that she became a full member of the tribe, in spite of later revisions to her story.
Olive's adventures didn't end with her return to white culture. She became a successful author and lecturer under the influence of a preacher-with-an-agenda who practiced a sort of ventriloquism, revising Olive's experience as a "captive" while using her to deliver his own message of racial hate and misogyny.
Margot Mifflin, who has a special interest in women and tattooing, is also the author of Bodies of Subversion: A Secret History of Women and Tattoo. Here she examines the effect of Olive's tattoos -- as well as five-plus years of nudity and sexual freedom-- on Olive's body-image and sense of self, and how shaping and retelling her story allowed her to move into polite society. Mifflin's portrayal of Mohave culture and Olive's life within the tribe was the highlight of the story for this reader, but the entire book was a can't-put-it-down kind of read.

Michael Houghton
Ben Franklin Bookshop

Most books about women captured by the Indians are filled with how awful life was. This book shows that not all Indians were brutes and often times the women that were captured were not mistreated. Great read, remarkable courage .

Maybe 15 years ago I found a used reprint copy of the 'Captivity of the Oatman Girls' while on a trip through the Mother Lode country with my wife and kids. The prose was turgid and the story heated up; the author's provocative sexual elisions made for a rollicking if only partially believable tale. I couldn't stop wondering what Olive's life was like after she returned to "civilization". Since then, I always shiver a bit when I drive under the freeway sign on the Arizona border that says "Oatman exit". Wow. Here is the real place where her family was massacred and her brother left for dead by the local indians.

This book is exactly the kind of scholarship that needed to be done on the topic. Although the girls were kidnapped and their family destroyed, Olive Oatman ended up living for four years with the Mohave indians in a land-locked paradise of cool water and abundant food. She was not a captive but an adopted daughter and her return to 19th century 'civilization' was anything but a rescue. The book is a sweeping review of the widely dispersed resources available to a trained researcher: archives, secondary literature, ethnographic studies, newspaper articles and eyewitness accounts. The author has assembled an extremely readable account of Olive's life and the historical period of Western expansionism. This is not a biography. It is a very interesting story; fascinating and immanently readable. I particularly liked the fact that the author dealt with Olive's twofold cultural assimilation at an impressionable age, first to a Native American culture at age 14 and then back to the Anglo world five years later. Rather than declaim on the effect it had on her personality, the author allows friends and relatives to share their impressions from letters and first hand accounts. Naturally, it would have been incredibly hard to remain true to BOTH cultures at the time; I understand why Olive had a air of constant melancholy about her. Her life with the Mohave had been free and casual; her life back in 'society' was stilted and austere.

The book is amply researched but immanently readable. Altogether an insightful picture of a young woman whose life was profoundly uprooted two times over. If you are looking for a lurid and exploitative adventure, read "The Captivity of the Oatman Girls". If you are interested in real history and the human condition where the stone age meets the Age of Expansion, read "the Blue Tattoo."

Mifflin's book is fascinating. The story it tells is such a wonderful slice of American history--revolving around the capture of Olive and Mary Ann Oatman, their sale from one tribe to another, the sale of Olive BACK to the whites, then the exploitation of her story, her lecture series, and finally, her attempt to lead a life as a married Anglo woman. I could just envision this story being made into a movie--of course, I fear the story would get distorted by Hollywood--but if I were Prof. Mifflin's agent, I'd be on the horn to Hollywood. This solid piece of scholarship tells a fascinating story -- lots of insight into western expansion -- all by focusing on the story of this one woman. 5 stars.

Olive Oatman's story is an interesting saga in its own right. What makes this such an interesting book is the context Margot Mifflin brings to the tale; her knack for combining extensive research with the engaging style of a good storyteller has produced a simply terrific read. Couldn't put it down.

A fascinating read. Margot Mifflin thoroughly researches her subject and gives a fresh perspective on a woman's journey through life that has been muddied in the past by biased or folklore-based renditions. A true page-turner.

We've recently seen a couple books on Olive Oatman or the Oatman massacre with both books being very informative. This book, however, is an exceptional book by any reasonable and objective reader's standard.

While enjoying both books (The Oatman Massacre and The Blue Tattoo) I found this book to have a better overall layout and was more smoothly written. In fact I read the book in mostly one sitting.

Past history has shown me, having hundreds of books on the shelves from U. of Oklahoma and U. of Nebraska, that Nebraska Press books are reliable as well as solidly written. This book from the Women in the West department is no less so. This is probably the closest we will ever get to the actual story of Olive Oatman and the horrific massacre of her family those many years ago.

Recommended for all objective, reasonable readers of western non-fiction.

Semper Fi.

I loved the "Blue Tattoo." It was written well enough to have my attention from start to finish. I know the Oatman story but Margo Mifflin's research did add even more information and was very accurate. I highly recommend the book to anyone interested in the lives of pioneers.

Olive Oatman's gripping tale comes to life in THE BLUE TATTOO as Margot Mifflin takes us on her family's doomed westward journey. Oatman's subsequent years with the Mohave followed by her return to white society--where she was treated as a curiosity--are fascinating. Mifflin demonstrates that from the time of Oatman's abduction to the present, the question has been, who has taken ownership of her story and for what purposes has it been used? Oatman led a conflicted life, and Mifflin honors her for having maneuvered its complexities.