Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History Class from hot
Speaker 1: works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Speaker 1: Holly Froy. I don't like Tracy V. Wilson, and today's
Speaker 1: topic is one that I have kind of been dancing
Speaker 1: around for a while. Uh. She was a media sensation
Speaker 1: long before the concept of reality TV came around, and
Speaker 1: long before TV. Even her story sounds adventurous and incredible
Speaker 1: because it was she was a frontier girl when in
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty one she was captured by Native Americans who
Speaker 1: attacked her family's wagon. And her story is full of
Speaker 1: twists and turns. So I'm not going to do the
Speaker 1: usual um. You know, usually we do a little bit
Speaker 1: more intro, but I don't want to in this one
Speaker 1: because I want to just let it unfold because it
Speaker 1: really is quite an amazing story. We were talking today
Speaker 1: about Olive Oatman, so I love was the daughter of
Speaker 1: Royce and Mary Anne Sperry Oatman, and she was one
Speaker 1: of seven kids. She was born in Eleanor in eighteen
Speaker 1: thirty seven, although there are some records that indicate that
Speaker 1: it might have actually been eighteen thirty nine. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: makes me wonder if that wasn't one of those cases
Speaker 1: of poor penmanship where a nine and a seven looked
Speaker 1: kind of similar, because you'll see it written both ways.
Speaker 1: And in May of eighteen fifty, uh, the Oatman family
Speaker 1: joined a wagon train with several other members from their
Speaker 1: Mormon church to strike out for the West. And the
Speaker 1: Oatman's first traveled from Illinois and then they met up
Speaker 1: with the larger group in Independence, Missouri, and that's where
Speaker 1: they all set out with nine wagons in a plan
Speaker 1: to travel to California. But not long after the journey began,
Speaker 1: the Oatman's, along with a couple of other wagons, separated
Speaker 1: from that group, and by the time they and the
Speaker 1: remaining families got to Arizona, a famine there made the
Speaker 1: prospect of staying kind of a daunting idea. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: had always intended to keep going west, but you know,
Speaker 1: they weren't sure where they were going to stay at
Speaker 1: various points. Um. But they really did not want to
Speaker 1: linger in Arizona. Uh. But there was also this fear
Speaker 1: that if they continued west that they were going to
Speaker 1: be attacked on the road by native tribes. This was
Speaker 1: apparently the problem that was going on. It was pretty
Speaker 1: common with settlers. Uh And after they had had a
Speaker 1: little bit of a reassurance from a fellow traveler that
Speaker 1: he had not seen any immediate threats on the road,
Speaker 1: the Oatman's decided that they were going to take sort
Speaker 1: of the more daring path, and they left behind those
Speaker 1: remaining traveling companions to continue towards California. And during this
Speaker 1: they followed the Heila River, which at the time was
Speaker 1: the border between the US and Mexico, and they were
Speaker 1: traveling along what's called Cook's Wagon Road. So they had
Speaker 1: really hoped that this path was going to be clear
Speaker 1: of any attacks. But on February eighteen fifty one, the
Speaker 1: Oapmans were met on the road by a group of
Speaker 1: nineteen Native Americans, and this was near HeLa Bend, Arizona.
Speaker 1: According to an account that was written later based on
Speaker 1: olives recollection, the last thing Roy said to his family
Speaker 1: was do not be alarmed. The Indians won't harm you. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He's generally characterized as a man who actually believed that
Speaker 1: most Native American violence was born of poor treatment from
Speaker 1: white settlers, and that if you treated people kindly, they
Speaker 1: would treat you kindly in return. But unfortunately this did
Speaker 1: not play out in this particular interaction. After that, the
Speaker 1: natives that they had come in contact with first asked
Speaker 1: for tobacco and other supplies, which the Oatman's handed over.
Speaker 1: The interloper started rummaging through the Oatman's wagon, and when
Speaker 1: Royce Oatman finally told them he just could not give
Speaker 1: them any more food without damning his family to starvation,
Speaker 1: things turned violent. The group of men attacked the Oatman's
Speaker 1: They killed both Royce and Marianne and four of the children.
Speaker 1: Olive fainted and when she regained consciousness, she heard her
Speaker 1: mother groaning and tried to go to help her, but
Speaker 1: she was held back by their attackers. She and her sister, Marianne,
Speaker 1: who were both was terrified, watched while the men looted
Speaker 1: the wagon and the bodies. One of the other children,
Speaker 1: Lorenzo Oatman, was fifteen at the time, and he had
Speaker 1: been clubbed and left for dead, and in fact he
Speaker 1: had been tossed over this kind of raveneage. But he
Speaker 1: did eventually regain consciousness sometime after the event had happened,
Speaker 1: and when he did, he quickly realized that most of
Speaker 1: his family had been murdered, but his sister's Olive and
Speaker 1: Maryanne were simply gone. Lorenzo tried to make his way
Speaker 1: back to the wagon train that the family had originally
Speaker 1: split off from. They were at Maricopa Wells, Arizona, which
Speaker 1: was a little less than fifty miles or eighty kilometers away.
Speaker 1: This was a really long and slow journey, and he
Speaker 1: was extremely injured. Fortunately, he was found by two men
Speaker 1: from a nearby village who recognized him and got him
Speaker 1: to America a Wells. Lorenzo received treatment for his wounds
Speaker 1: there before going back to bury his family. And in
Speaker 1: sort of a cruel twist to this story, I mean,
Speaker 1: the whole thing is extremely cruel, but Royce Oatman had
Speaker 1: actually sent word ahead to fort Yuma that the family
Speaker 1: supplies were running low, that he had seven children with him,
Speaker 1: and that they really needed assistance. And an entomologist that
Speaker 1: they had met on the road named John Lacante had
Speaker 1: been carrying that request to fort Yuma, and on his
Speaker 1: way there, he and his guide encountered a band of
Speaker 1: Native Americans on the trail uh and that group stole
Speaker 1: the horses that Lacante and his guide had been riding,
Speaker 1: And so those two men decided that they were going
Speaker 1: to continue towards fort Yuma on foot, but they also
Speaker 1: knew that they may not get that note delivered in
Speaker 1: a particularly timely manner since they no longer had horses,
Speaker 1: and so Lacante had actually posted a warning card on
Speaker 1: the tree for the Oatman's that there were hostile Native
Speaker 1: Americans in the area. We don't know if Royce ever
Speaker 1: saw that warning or not. Uh there has been some
Speaker 1: speculation that the same men that stole Lacante and his
Speaker 1: guide's horses were part of this party that eventually attacked
Speaker 1: the Oatman's. Meanwhile, the two surviving Oatmen girls were basically
Speaker 1: starting a new life as captives of the people who
Speaker 1: had left them orphaned. Olive was fourteen at the time
Speaker 1: and Marianne was seven. After the attack, the two girls
Speaker 1: were forced to walk barefoot for four days over approximately
Speaker 1: sixty miles or kilometers worth of terrain. Olive would later
Speaker 1: tell people that their captors had been apaches, but that
Speaker 1: has largely been dismissed. The more likely group to have
Speaker 1: captured these girls and attacked the family would have been Yavapaie.
Speaker 1: They had a village much closer to the side of
Speaker 1: the attack. It just made more logical sense, and it's
Speaker 1: highly likely that they were Tolka Paias, which is a
Speaker 1: specific small branch of the Yavapaie. They kind of identified
Speaker 1: by geographic location, so we don't think it was Apache's. Initially,
Speaker 1: Olive was afraid that her kidnappers are going to burn
Speaker 1: them alive. She also feared that as they arch, they
Speaker 1: would try to leave Maryanne behind because she was struggling
Speaker 1: to keep up. Maryanne, who was suffering from shock, was
Speaker 1: beaten when she refused to go any further because she
Speaker 1: was basically exhausted. However, the two girls were both kept alive,
Speaker 1: and while the Yavapie had dabbled in ceremonial cannibalism on occasion,
Speaker 1: that was apparently a fairly rare occurrence, and that is
Speaker 1: not the fate of the Oatman girls. For a year,
Speaker 1: these two girls were basically kept as slaves. They were
Speaker 1: doing the bidding of the Yavapaie women and children. Before
Speaker 1: we get to the next event, which really shifts the
Speaker 1: fortune of the Oatman sisters, let's pause for a word
Speaker 1: from some sponsors. So back to the story of Olive
Speaker 1: and Maryanne. In the fall of eighteen fifty one, So
Speaker 1: at this point. The girls were with the Yavapaie for
Speaker 1: a number of months. Uh the Yavapaie and the Mojabbs
Speaker 1: engaged in a trading summit of sorts. This was an
Speaker 1: annual event that they did every year, and it was
Speaker 1: during this trading ritual that the Mojave tribe first offered
Speaker 1: to trade for these two white girls. And initially the
Speaker 1: Yavapie refused, and these girls remained with their captors through
Speaker 1: that winter. But in the spring, the Mojave chief sent
Speaker 1: his daughter and five men to once again try to
Speaker 1: make a deal for the girls. After a lot of debate,
Speaker 1: the Yavapai took the deal, although the Mojave were really
Speaker 1: insistent that they were acting out of kindness and concern
Speaker 1: for these white children. The java Pie, though, told Olive
Speaker 1: that they were going to be sold or killed, so
Speaker 1: as she and Marianne were traded to their new owners,
Speaker 1: they were completely uncertain of whether their situation was improving
Speaker 1: or getting worse. In the end, the Mojave paid two horses,
Speaker 1: three blankets, and an assortment of vegetables and beads for
Speaker 1: the two captives, and initially the Mohave might have seemed
Speaker 1: just as cruel as the Yavapaie had been uh. This
Speaker 1: is a tribe that normally traveled very quickly, and as
Speaker 1: had been the case with their kidnapper, the girls struggled
Speaker 1: to keep pace as they traveled. However, unlike the Yavapaie,
Speaker 1: the Mojave saw that these girls were struggling and they
Speaker 1: made adjustments to try to accommodate the situation. So they
Speaker 1: actually made the girls some foot coverings, kind of ad
Speaker 1: hoc foot coverings, out of some animal skins that they had,
Speaker 1: and they decided that they were going to shorten the
Speaker 1: distance that they traveled each day, like they would just
Speaker 1: let the journey take longer, so that these girls could
Speaker 1: actually make the journey and not be you know, potentially
Speaker 1: physically harmed by the grueling schedule they were trying to keep.
Speaker 1: It ended up taking eleven days of travel for this
Speaker 1: party to reach the Mojave Valley. While they were with
Speaker 1: the Mohave, the Oatman girls were treated as tribe members
Speaker 1: rather than as slave. They were fed, and they were
Speaker 1: cared for, neither of which had seemed routine during their
Speaker 1: time with the Yavapaie. It seems like they were adopted
Speaker 1: by a leader and his wife. And that this family
Speaker 1: is probably also who are who arranged for the two
Speaker 1: of them to be traded for the tribe that had
Speaker 1: kept them as slaves. They wound up being raised as
Speaker 1: part of the family, and during this time, the girls
Speaker 1: were tattooed, and this is often what you see all
Speaker 1: of Oatman kind of referred to as the woman who
Speaker 1: lived with Native Americans and returned with this tattoo on
Speaker 1: her face. So this was a pattern of lines and
Speaker 1: triangles on their chins, and it was blue. And while
Speaker 1: these were pretty common markings in the Mohave culture and
Speaker 1: they served as symbolic sort of passports into the land
Speaker 1: of the dead, it was really quite a spiritual marking.
Speaker 1: All of would later tell people that this inking marked
Speaker 1: them as slaves, and we'll get to why that may
Speaker 1: have played out later, But regardless of how all of
Speaker 1: would have eventually painted it, and even taking into account
Speaker 1: that this is likely something that the Mojave did believing
Speaker 1: it was going to benefit the girls, this marking did
Speaker 1: change them permanently in a way that was going to
Speaker 1: forever set them apart if they were ever to return
Speaker 1: to the life they had once known. So it was
Speaker 1: one of those things that really kind of became a
Speaker 1: significant demarcation of like you can never go back from this.
Speaker 1: There's still a lot of uncertainty about how indoctrinated Olive
Speaker 1: would have become into the tribe's customs, especially as it
Speaker 1: related to sexual practices. So the Mojave are said to
Speaker 1: have been very sexually pretty liberal, especially compared to the
Speaker 1: upbringing that Olive had had. It was common for them
Speaker 1: to encourage young people to be sexually active, but there
Speaker 1: they also had a fear of having sexual activities with
Speaker 1: other races. So Olive categorically denied any sexual activity during
Speaker 1: her time with the Mojave, but the debate among historians
Speaker 1: really continues. Uh, Polly and I were talking before we
Speaker 1: started about how a lot of the biographies of Olive
Speaker 1: opmen Um from earlier in the past are really highly sensationalized.
Speaker 1: So I have a feeling that that plays a part
Speaker 1: in all of that as well. It does. And what's
Speaker 1: actually interest sting in this particular instance and on this
Speaker 1: particular issue, is that there are believers and detractors in
Speaker 1: terms of like whether or not she was ever uh
Speaker 1: married or sexually active within the tribe on both sides,
Speaker 1: both on the sensationalist angle and the more kind of
Speaker 1: um measured and historically researched angle, because there are some
Speaker 1: experts in this tribal culture that say, look, the odds
Speaker 1: of her getting marked that way and not having been
Speaker 1: part of the tribe's full culture are pretty low. But
Speaker 1: then there are others who point out, no, they had
Speaker 1: this fear of sexual intermingling with other races. And then,
Speaker 1: of course on the sensational side, it was very exciting
Speaker 1: to kind of, you know, think about the horrible things
Speaker 1: that these girls might have had to endure, and some
Speaker 1: of that may have been sexual in nature. And so
Speaker 1: it's an interesting area where there are a lot of
Speaker 1: voices and a lot of dissenting opinions, but they come
Speaker 1: from all different directions. Uh. You may have noticed that
Speaker 1: at this point we're talking about Alis specifically, and that
Speaker 1: is because Marianne actually died while they were living with
Speaker 1: the tribe. This happened when she was around the age
Speaker 1: of twelve. Uh. This was not something that happened to
Speaker 1: her because she was a captive, though she suffered the
Speaker 1: same fate as many of the other members of the
Speaker 1: Majave when a drought in eighteen fifty five caused a
Speaker 1: severe food shortage and it starved many of them to death.
Speaker 1: So this was a time when the American West was
Speaker 1: still being colonized and as contact with Native American people's
Speaker 1: was becoming more common. The presence of a white woman
Speaker 1: already living with a Native tribe didn't go unnoticed. But
Speaker 1: at the same time, people who were new to the
Speaker 1: area tended to just disbelieve this information when it was
Speaker 1: circulated as rumor rather than its fact. Yeah, and there's
Speaker 1: actually an interesting instant incident that happened in eighteen fifty four.
Speaker 1: So at that point, the Whipple Expedition, which was a
Speaker 1: wagon train of soldiers, servants, herders, and scientist us that
Speaker 1: were assembled to survey a route for a transcontinental railroad,
Speaker 1: actually came in contact with the Mohave and they traded
Speaker 1: with Olive's tribe for a week. And the presence of
Speaker 1: Olive and her sister, because she would have still been
Speaker 1: alive at this time at the Native American settlement, would
Speaker 1: have been obvious, and this maybe where many of the
Speaker 1: stories that spread about white women living there began. But
Speaker 1: it seems that Olive didn't really make an effort to
Speaker 1: approach or reach out to any of the members of
Speaker 1: the Whipple survey. She would later tell people that the
Speaker 1: Mojave always told her that she was free to leave,
Speaker 1: but that she never knew which way to go from
Speaker 1: the settlement, so she stayed. This seems like an opportunity
Speaker 1: for an avenue back to a white settlement, but she
Speaker 1: didn't really seem to ever explore it. Yeah, there's even
Speaker 1: some debate over whether she may have hidden from the
Speaker 1: men of the Whipple expedition um so that that remains
Speaker 1: sort of an odd question mark. But eventually, once the
Speaker 1: confirmation of this unusual situation and of a white woman
Speaker 1: living with this tribe was the real deal was actually happening,
Speaker 1: there was action taken and a message was eventually sent
Speaker 1: after a lot of political maneuvering to the Mojave village
Speaker 1: asking for Olive's release and uh. This started a very
Speaker 1: long series of negotiations. At one point the chief told
Speaker 1: the negotiators, I would like to raise this girl. We
Speaker 1: traveled far to buy her. We like her, and we
Speaker 1: want to make friends through her. When those who come
Speaker 1: by us know how we treat her, they will treat
Speaker 1: us well too. If the officers want to see her.
Speaker 1: They had better come here and talk with me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he really wanted he he felt earnestly that if he
Speaker 1: talked to the people in charge they would understand Um
Speaker 1: and more conversations and negotiations continued, because this was sort
Speaker 1: of a big deal. At this point, a ransom was offered,
Speaker 1: and that ransom, we should point out, was not asked
Speaker 1: for by the Majave Uh. It was simply offered by
Speaker 1: these negotiators that were trying to get Alive back uh.
Speaker 1: And Olive was actually present for some of these talks
Speaker 1: about her future, though it doesn't seem like she had
Speaker 1: a lot of input. Eventually she was released for a
Speaker 1: negotiated ransom of two horses, blankets, and beads, so very
Speaker 1: similar to the deal that the Yavapae had made with
Speaker 1: the Mohave for Olive and Marianne. And then Olive was
Speaker 1: taken to fort Yuma. When Olah was turned over to
Speaker 1: the U. S Army, she wept, but these were not
Speaker 1: tears of joy. She grieved the loss of her Mojave family.
Speaker 1: She tried to bury herself in a sand bank by
Speaker 1: the Colorado River, although there's some debate about exactly why
Speaker 1: she did this. Some accounts say that she was trying
Speaker 1: to hide her toplessness, and others claimed that it was
Speaker 1: driven by being reluctant to return to a world of
Speaker 1: white culture and a in a white town. But before
Speaker 1: we get to olive life after her time with the Mohave,
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Speaker 1: first purchase. Olives reintroduction to white society was as you
Speaker 1: would probably imagine, a little bit jarring. First, as we
Speaker 1: kind of hinted at a little while ago, her clothing
Speaker 1: was inappropriate. It left her upper tor so completely uncovered,
Speaker 1: so she had to be changed into proper clothing, which
Speaker 1: is something she had not worn for at this point years. Uh.
Speaker 1: She also needed to be bathed, and one of the
Speaker 1: sort of big transition things is that her hair at
Speaker 1: this point had been darkened with mesquite from its normal
Speaker 1: light brown shade to a deep black, so she kind
Speaker 1: of was like literally watching off her majave culture at
Speaker 1: this point. Uh. Second, Yuma at this time is often
Speaker 1: characterized as a sort of hell on earth. It was hot,
Speaker 1: which was part of it, but it was always hot. However,
Speaker 1: that particular year in there were some extremely violent dust storms,
Speaker 1: and they also had a really serious bug problem at
Speaker 1: the time, and just the conditions there at fort Yuma
Speaker 1: were not fabulous. People cheered for her when she arrived,
Speaker 1: but she didn't really understand why. She gave a formal
Speaker 1: interview with an officer during which she recounted all that
Speaker 1: she had been through to the best of her recollection.
Speaker 1: Some of her answers were incorrect, and some of the
Speaker 1: timelines were a little off, which is not really surprising. UH.
Speaker 1: And when she spoke of the Mojave she said, they
Speaker 1: saved my life. Yeah. This initial UH interview that she
Speaker 1: did is often kind of brought up as as evidence
Speaker 1: against UH many of the later writings about her that, No,
Speaker 1: this doesn't really line up with the first things that
Speaker 1: she told white people when she started talking to them
Speaker 1: about what she had been through. UH. This is also
Speaker 1: was during that interview that the time that she learned
Speaker 1: that her brother had actually survived the attack by the
Speaker 1: Heiler River, so very quickly she and Lorenzo were reunited.
Speaker 1: He had actually been searching for her. In the years
Speaker 1: since their separation. He had been looking for his two
Speaker 1: sisters pretty continuously, and he even went on scouting trips
Speaker 1: of his own. He petitioned authorities to take a more
Speaker 1: active role in searching for answers about just what had
Speaker 1: happened to his missing sisters. She basically became famous overnight
Speaker 1: newspapers Sucker story and really ran with it, and soon
Speaker 1: everybody knew some version of Olives story. Yeah, and there
Speaker 1: was actually a book that came out the year after
Speaker 1: she Uh left the Majave in seven And this book
Speaker 1: was titled Life among the Indians, and it was written
Speaker 1: by Royal B. Stratton. He was a minister and he
Speaker 1: certainly had an agenda in the writing of it. Uh.
Speaker 1: This book flew off the shelves, and on the plus side,
Speaker 1: it made enough money to put both Alive and Lorenzo
Speaker 1: through school at the University of the Pacific. The book
Speaker 1: was a deep sensationalized and a lot of its content
Speaker 1: appears to have been basically invented. It was not an
Speaker 1: accurate account of Olive's time living with Native Americans. Is
Speaker 1: actually probably was its appeal that reinforced a lot of
Speaker 1: false beliefs and fears and prejudices that the white colonists
Speaker 1: already had, and this book also launched all of his
Speaker 1: career as a public speaker, so in the years following,
Speaker 1: she would spend a lot of time touring the country
Speaker 1: and relaying her story, although it did seem at this
Speaker 1: point that the story that she was telling was the
Speaker 1: one that people wanted to hear and that lined up
Speaker 1: with Stratton's book, rather than the one that she actually
Speaker 1: lived and had initially described in her interview with the
Speaker 1: military officer when she first came back. There's also some
Speaker 1: speculation that one of the reasons that her story shifted
Speaker 1: is that she experienced some degree of post traumatic stress
Speaker 1: disorder while trying to return to white society, and that
Speaker 1: to some degree, her memories and her impressions over time
Speaker 1: with them mojave but game kind of muddled with her
Speaker 1: time with her original captors. And it's certainly not unusual
Speaker 1: for someone who's been through a trauma, and frankly someone
Speaker 1: who hasn't been through a trauma to experience some degree
Speaker 1: of memory distortion. Uh. And she kind of talked about
Speaker 1: this in letters to family as she was settling back
Speaker 1: into life among white colonists, where she would be like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm just from now realizing you know, what I've been
Speaker 1: through and what what's going on. And so we don't
Speaker 1: know how much of the reality shifted during this time
Speaker 1: in her mind, and we'll never know for certain whether
Speaker 1: her telling of this story as she did in these
Speaker 1: public lectures was colored by mental anguish or to some
Speaker 1: degree a sense of theatrics. Remember this really was supporting
Speaker 1: her at this point, or if it was some mingling
Speaker 1: of the two. In eighteen sixty five, all Have got
Speaker 1: married to a cattleman named John B. Fairchild. The two
Speaker 1: of them met after one of her lectures, and according
Speaker 1: to some accounts, her new husband was really not interested
Speaker 1: in Olive's past, to the point that he seemed to
Speaker 1: just want to erase it. He stopped her from going
Speaker 1: on lecture tours, he burned all of the copies of
Speaker 1: the Stratton account of her time as a captive that
Speaker 1: he could get his hands on. We don't really know
Speaker 1: if he was trying to protect her or if he
Speaker 1: found her past shameful. Yeah, he apparently really went to
Speaker 1: some great effort to procure every possible copy. He could
Speaker 1: have that book and have it destroyed. Uh. And what's
Speaker 1: interesting is that this marriage to Fairchild, and it seems
Speaker 1: like they had really quite a good match. I want
Speaker 1: to be careful that we don't sort of just paint
Speaker 1: this as a man who was very controlling and wanted
Speaker 1: to eliminate her history. But he we don't know what
Speaker 1: his his motivations were, but we do know that at
Speaker 1: this point she pretty much severed all ties with her
Speaker 1: biographer Stratton, and Stratton had also been the person responsible
Speaker 1: for booking her lectures, and he is really said to
Speaker 1: have strongly encouraged her distorted version of her story. He
Speaker 1: knew it was going to draw crownds and so he
Speaker 1: was really pretty gung ho on this since they renal
Speaker 1: version and he eventually went mad and ended up dying
Speaker 1: in an asylum, but after her marriage to Fairchild, he
Speaker 1: was no longer part of all of his life. Seven
Speaker 1: years after their wedding, John and Olive moved to Charman, Texas,
Speaker 1: and four years after that, in eighteen seventy six, they
Speaker 1: adopted a daughter, Mary Elizabeth, who they called Mamie. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Her name, Mary Elizabeth was the combination of each of
Speaker 1: their mother's names UH and as she aged, even though
Speaker 1: her life in many ways seemed to be kind of
Speaker 1: settled and really pretty stable, Olive experienced a lot of
Speaker 1: bouts of depression, which is probably not a big surprise
Speaker 1: when you consider what she had endured at a very
Speaker 1: early age. She was also frequently troubled with headaches. There
Speaker 1: are rumors that she went into an asylum, although none
Speaker 1: of that is substantiated, but we do know that in
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty one she spent several months at a medical
Speaker 1: spa in Canada, UH and that most of her time
Speaker 1: there was basically spent just on bed rest. In nineteen
Speaker 1: o three, Olive Opmen Fairchild died of a heart attack
Speaker 1: at the age of sixty five. She's buried at West
Speaker 1: Hill Cemetery in Sherman, Texas, and in nineteen sixty nine
Speaker 1: a Texas Historical marker was added to the grave site.
Speaker 1: The story of all of Oatman's life has so many
Speaker 1: variations depending on the telling that there are always going
Speaker 1: to be a lot of question marks involved in it,
Speaker 1: and the sensational nature of it, even without the Stratton
Speaker 1: biography and the kind of really amped up crazy stories
Speaker 1: that he included, actually inspired other performers to adopt some
Speaker 1: of all of story as their own. So there were
Speaker 1: actually some circus ladies that would sometimes tell almost identical
Speaker 1: tales of having been adopted by so called quote redskins
Speaker 1: and tattooed to show that they belonged to a tribe.
Speaker 1: And this, of course, you know, further diluted the truth
Speaker 1: of all of original story in the public mind, and
Speaker 1: it led to some you know, sort of legend and
Speaker 1: confusion and some of the more lurid accounts of her life.
Speaker 1: There were even some claims that people made after the
Speaker 1: fact that they had rescued Olive from her captors, but
Speaker 1: we're basically really easy to expose as false because they
Speaker 1: had a number of inaccuracies. Yeah, there was one guy
Speaker 1: that claimed that he had walked into the t P
Speaker 1: where these people were keeping her and he had carried
Speaker 1: her out, and uh, there were some other elements to it,
Speaker 1: and and someone very quickly was like, hey, those Native
Speaker 1: Americans don't use tps. So there were things like that
Speaker 1: that just kept coming up that that pretty quickly made
Speaker 1: those crazy accounts obviously falsified. But another part of the
Speaker 1: mystique of Olive story comes from the vast contrast that
Speaker 1: would have existed at the time, of course, between her
Speaker 1: very ly serious Mormon upbringing up to the time of
Speaker 1: her kidnapping, and then her time in the Mojave culture,
Speaker 1: which was so very different in terms of values. Her
Speaker 1: family had led a very serious life, whereas Oatman's adoptive
Speaker 1: family would likely have been a much more lighthearted group. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's that that the Mojave's really loved a good joke,
Speaker 1: and that they were very comical, They loved laughter. They
Speaker 1: would make some very very off color jokes. Uh. And
Speaker 1: in fact, her nickname when she was with them is
Speaker 1: a very dirty word. Basically, we're not sure exactly why
Speaker 1: she got that nickname, but it did not seem to
Speaker 1: be in any way derisive. Uh. They also were in
Speaker 1: at that point in a society where women would have
Speaker 1: had a great deal more freedom and a higher social
Speaker 1: standing than that they would have been in you know,
Speaker 1: white culture and particularly in this era. Uh So, while
Speaker 1: there's always been speculation about this juxtaposition and what it
Speaker 1: meant in terms of olives demeanor, we really don't know though,
Speaker 1: what level of autonomy she may have had in her
Speaker 1: time with the Mojave versus you know what she had
Speaker 1: experienced prior or after that. But we do know that
Speaker 1: after she returned to white culture she was consistently stoic
Speaker 1: and serious. There's actually only one written account of her
Speaker 1: ever laughing, and that was during that first interview that
Speaker 1: she gave after she had returned. So part of Olive's
Speaker 1: mystique undoubtedly also comes from the vast contrast that existed
Speaker 1: between her Mormon upbringing up to the time of her
Speaker 1: kidnapping and her time with Native Americans and specifically the
Speaker 1: Majave culture. Whereas her family had led a very serious life, uh,
Speaker 1: all of adoptive family with the Mojave would likely have
Speaker 1: been much more comical and lighthearted. Uh. This is a
Speaker 1: culture that at the time certainly was all about jokes.
Speaker 1: They really liked a good joke, including good dirty jokes.
Speaker 1: Laughter was very important. Uh. And at this point women
Speaker 1: in their society would have had a great deal more
Speaker 1: freedom and a higher social standing than would have been
Speaker 1: the case with the white culture that Olive came from.
Speaker 1: While there's always been speculation about this juxtaposition and what
Speaker 1: it meant in terms of all ofs demeanor, we don't
Speaker 1: truly know what level of autonomy she may have had
Speaker 1: in her time uh with the Mahave, but as a
Speaker 1: woman returned to white culture, she was consistently very stoic
Speaker 1: and serious. There's actually only one account on record of
Speaker 1: her laughing, and it was actually during that first interview
Speaker 1: that she did with the military, right after she came
Speaker 1: back from living with the Mahave. As for the Mojave
Speaker 1: version of Olive's time with them, we don't really have
Speaker 1: a lot of documentation because they had no written language.
Speaker 1: The only first person account we have of the Oatman
Speaker 1: children during this time is from an interview that was
Speaker 1: conducted in nineteen o three. Anthropologist A. L. Crowber spoke
Speaker 1: with a member of the tribe who knew Olive, and
Speaker 1: that man's account was really vastly different from the story
Speaker 1: that was put forth in Stratton's book. Yeah, it's um.
Speaker 1: It's definitely much more in line with the initial account
Speaker 1: that Olive gave Uh. It's certainly characterizes her relationship with
Speaker 1: the tribe as much more of a family situation, in
Speaker 1: one where she seemed pretty settled, respected and fairly happy,
Speaker 1: So very different from Stratton's book and alive legacy lives on.
Speaker 1: Actually in a number of ways. There's an area near
Speaker 1: where the Oatman family camped right by the Heila River,
Speaker 1: which is called Oatman Flat. And there's actually a mining
Speaker 1: town in western Arizona that was renamed Oatman in nine.
Speaker 1: In two thousand, six hundred and fifty years to the
Speaker 1: day after Olive left the Majave tribe, there was a
Speaker 1: gathering in Yuma, Arizona, at the site of the Omen massacre.
Speaker 1: One of Olive's family descendants retold Olive's story to the crowd,
Speaker 1: and uh, kind of to to summarize the nature of
Speaker 1: this story in Margot Mifflin's book The Blue Tattoo, which
Speaker 1: came out in and it's kind of the uh scholarly
Speaker 1: biography done of her that really researched all of the
Speaker 1: various accounts and tried to to sort out the sensational
Speaker 1: from what was really going on. The author sums up
Speaker 1: the mythology of all of Oatman kind of perfectly by
Speaker 1: writing quote, in her day, Oatman was freakish enough to
Speaker 1: invite speculation and guarded enough to ensure the speculation never ended. Yes,
Speaker 1: so that is our alive Oatman episode. Like I said,
Speaker 1: I wanted to do this for a long time, and
Speaker 1: I really could have made it go on for days
Speaker 1: because there's so many details of her story in her time,
Speaker 1: both uh as a in white culture and in Native
Speaker 1: American culture that are so fascinating. Highly recommend that book.
Speaker 1: By the way, do you have some listener mail to
Speaker 1: cap this all off? This listener mail is from our listener,
Speaker 1: Jordan's and Uh. She sent us a lovely letter, and
Speaker 1: first of all, I have to say, Jordan, your penmanship
Speaker 1: is spectacular. I am not kidding, she says, Hey, Tracy
Speaker 1: and Holly, I was just going to separately mail these
Speaker 1: postcards to you. She included postcards with the letter, but
Speaker 1: decided I did not have enough room to write anything
Speaker 1: of importance, So this is my letter. I have been
Speaker 1: a listener now for a few years, and I have
Speaker 1: recently hooked my mom, dad, and sister on your podcast.
Speaker 1: We spend family trips engrossed in multiple episodes at a time.
Speaker 1: Family discussions have never been so rich and educational. This
Speaker 1: past weekend, my family and I made a trip to
Speaker 1: Kansas City, Missouri. The first things we planned were visits
Speaker 1: to two local museums. First was the Negro League's Baseball Museum,
Speaker 1: as I am a huge fan of baseball and the
Speaker 1: history of it has tied to our nation's history. Uh.
Speaker 1: The second museum we trecked our way to was the
Speaker 1: National World War One Museum at Liberty Memorial. Both were
Speaker 1: full of facts I have never heard until now. The
Speaker 1: whole time I was at these museums, I thought of YouTube.
Speaker 1: Hopefully you find some sort of joy and interest from
Speaker 1: these postcards and they spark a desire for future episodes
Speaker 1: p s. I would also like to thank you for
Speaker 1: all of the wonderful episodes on History's Finest Women. I
Speaker 1: have been finding the most joy in these episodes, especially
Speaker 1: Alice Roosevelt. I've been writing the names of these inspiring
Speaker 1: women down in a notebook with a short summary of
Speaker 1: the amazing things they did. I looked at this list
Speaker 1: in times when I'm meeting a little extra motivation or sass.
Speaker 1: Thank you again, sincerely, Jordan Jordan, this is a great letter.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for sharing all of that with us,
Speaker 1: and your postcards are awesome. I love them. Uh. You know,
Speaker 1: I like knowing that she's sharing her love of history
Speaker 1: with her family and they're getting some good talks out
Speaker 1: of the whole thing. It's a good thing. If you
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