Olive Oatman, The Woman With The Blue Tattoo Who Was Captured Twice

Olive Oatman is known as the mysterious woman with the blue tattoo on her chin. Kidnapped as a child by the Yavapai Indians, later taken by the Mohave Indians, she was finally rescued by her brother. She dedicated part of her life to talking about survival and human strength.

Maybe you’ve come across this story. The main character’s calm face draws us in. But then her eyes, and most of all, her wild tribal tattoo contradict the overall look. She is obviously more than a nice, well-educated lady from the 19th century.

Olive Oatman went through two tragedies that marked her for life. First, she lost her family in an attack by the Yavapai tribe. Then she was taken from her other family, the Mohave Indians.

Olive Oatman was not just an average woman of her time. She was a woman who went through great traumas in her life. One who tried to survive and adapt to every setback fate had in store for her. And she survived, that’s for sure. Her admirable life is collected in the books Captivity of the Oatman Girls (1856) and The Blue Tattoo: The Life of Olive Oatman by Margot Miffin.

However, there is something about Olive’s life that we often do not talk about. Oliven Oatman never felt as free as when she lived with Mohavene. In fact, almost 100 years later, a small town was named after her. It was where this young girl lived with Indians and where she, interestingly enough, was happier than ever.

Olive Oatman, years of captivity, years of freedom

We are in the year 1850, in the arid but majestic landscape of Colorado. In the distance, on a lonely, rocky road, we see a caravan of settlers traveling with their animals, carriages and high hopes of settling in the “new world”. However, the new world was already inhabited by legitimate owners who would not just give their land to these conquering foreigners with their greatness.

Among these “conquering foreigners” was the Oatman family. They were Mormons led by the fanaticism of the spiritual leader Pastor James C. Brewster. It was his shameless “forward march” attitude that would inevitably lead them to disaster.

After all, they knew nothing about these countries, and they also refused to listen to the warnings. Their purpose was so firm and their faith so blind that they did not realize that the land already had owners. The owners were a wild and quite violent tribe: Yavapai.

The Indians killed almost all the pioneers in the expedition. Afterwards, they decided to enslave two pioneer girls: Olive Oatman, 14, and her sister Mary Ann, 8.

After the trauma they went through, the two little girls did not see much improvement. They went through almost a year of abuse, hunger and continuous humiliation of the natives who despised the white man so much. However, girls’ luck changed thanks to a neighboring tribe.

Life with the Mohave tribe

This tribe was Mohave. They were the ones who decided to save the girls by making a change. They exchanged several horses for the two prisoners. When the agreement was sealed, Olive and her younger sister started a new life. A completely different life than the discomfort they had been exposed to.

They were adopted by the Espanesay and Aespaneo families. Welcomed by a country full of beauty, wheat meadows and poplar forests. A place where they could sleep every night in the company of a friendly people.

To demonstrate their union with society, they received a traditional tattoo. With this tattoo, their union with the others was guaranteed in the afterlife, a religious symbol of communion with the Mohaves.

Quite a few years passed, where Olive mourned the loss of her parents and came close to her new family. However, those were also difficult times. Years of drought where people went hungry and many children died, including Olive’s sister, Mary Anne. Olive was allowed to bury her according to his own religion. She was given a piece of land where Olive planted a garden with wild flowers.

The invisible tattoo of Olive Oatman

Olive Oatman was almost 20 when a messenger from Fort Yuma came to the city of Mohave. They had learned about the presence of a white woman and demanded her back.

However, it must be said that the young girl was never held captive by the Mohave tribe. They always told her she was free to leave them whenever she wanted. But Olive never had much interest in returning to what the white man called civilization. Her life was good. She was happy.

Still, she changed when she found out that the person who asked for her return was Laurence. Laurence was her little brother, who she thought was killed in Yavapai’s brutal attack. She decided to leave Mohave to return with her brother. It was a difficult decision, and one she would regret years later.

The woman with the blue tattoo

And then she became “the woman with the blue tattoo”. The Victorian dress they immediately tried to cover her with could not hide the tattoo on her chin. But what not everyone knew was that her arms and legs also had striking tattoos. But they never saw the light of Colorado’s sun again.

After she returned to civilization, everything happened very quickly for Olive Oatman. A book was written about her story. She was offered a share of the profits, which she took advantage of. The money helped her study at a university and pay for her brother’s education. Later, she began lecturing throughout the United States, talking about her experience with Yavapai and Mohave.

What the book contained and what people expected to hear in her lectures were anecdotes about the Indians’ savagery, their ignorance and inhumanity. Under pressure , Olive had to lie to survive in the city that had welcomed her into her new life.

In 1865 she married a rich rancher. He asked only one thing: to forget her past. To put the lectures behind him and wear a veil to cover the tattoo. She did, letting time go by like this, little by little. Year after year.

She gave in to what was perhaps her worst captivity. She ended up with a new tattoo: the pain and the memory of those years with Mohave. When she was free and happy…

Olive Oatman spent much of her life suffering from severe headaches and depression, and she even spent time in Canadian clinics. They tried to cure her of her longing for her second family, Mohave. She died when she was 65 years old.