Olive Oatman

Who was Olive Oatman?

Olive Oatman was a woman from Illinois whose family was killed in 1851 when she was fourteen in today's Arizona by a Native American tribe, possibly the Tolkepayas, who captured and enslaved her and her sister and later sold them to the Mohave people. After several years with the Mohave, during which her sister died of hunger, she returned to the white world, five years after being carried off.

In subsequent years, the tale of Oatman came to be retold with dramatic license in the press, in her own "memoir" and speeches, novels, plays, movies and poetry. The story resonated in the media of the time and long afterward, partly owing to the prominent blue tattooing of Oatman's face by the Mohave. Much of what exactly occurred to her during her time with the Indians remains unknown.