Ray Wylie Hubbard, on his album Delirium Tremolos, describes a
woman with a tribal tattoo above her hips, a woman who “wears her ink
well.” Whenever I hear that phrase, I think of Olive Oatman.

She was 14 when she and her family found themselves stuck thigh-deep
in a flooded Gila River. It was February 1851. Evening fell. Somehow,
they all struggled onto a tiny island in the middle of the river. It
would be their last night together.

The horse was dead, the cattle exhausted. The food was mostly gone.
Many of the children, ages 2 to 17, had walked much of the 80 miles
from the Pima village at Maricopa Wells. They were still 100 miles from
Fort Yuma.

Margot Mifflin, in The Blue Tattoo: The Life of Olive Oatman,
describes the scene that night. While the children huddled around a
sputtering fire, their father, Royce, broke down and wept over the
disaster. His pregnant wife did what she could. The wind howled, and an
unforgiving moon stared down.

The Oatmans were Mormons, part of a splinter sect called
“Brewsterites.” The group was named after 11-year-old James Colin
Brewster, a boy who claimed to have received divine revelations. Mormon
founder Joseph Smith was not pleased. It didn’t help that Brewster’s
group came out against polygamy.

Brewster claimed that the junction of the Gila and Colorado rivers
was the “promised land,” an Eden of rich soil, big timber and Indians
who were “friendly, or at least not dangerous.”

The period from 1849 to 1853 was a time of mass movement across the
country. A quarter-million people headed west to California and Oregon,
seeking silver, gold or some personal version of heaven. They traveled
the Santa Fe Trail, the original Route 66, toward the setting sun. Many
found only death.

Nearly 100 Brewsterites departed Independence, Mo., in July 1850.
Within the first 20 miles, the group fell to bickering. Upon reaching
New Mexico, Brewster decided that the “promised land” was actually
closer to Socorro, N.M., shaving some 600 miles off the journey.

Five feet tall, bearded and described by one member of the party as
a “key troublemaker, sinfully reckless, and … a most dangerous
companion,” Royce Oatman disagreed with Brewster. Less than half the
original group continued on to Tucson. The group split up again after
they arrived here in early January 1851.

Continuing on, Royce turned north, crossing the desert to Maricopa
Wells with just two other families. They arrived to find a midwinter
drought and 1,000 starving Indians. The other two families decided to
rest for a week. In spite of warnings from the local Pima Indians,
Royce pushed on.

They finally made it across the river. The cattle balked at climbing
up the trail onto a limestone bluff. Unpacking the wagon, the family
hand-carried their belongings up the hill.

Nineteen Indians, probably Yavapais, emerged from the desert.
Demanding food, they turned on the family, and it was quickly over.
They murdered all but Olive, her 7-year-old sister, Mary Ann, and
15-year-old Lorenzo, who they clubbed over the head, tossed over an
embankment and left for dead.

They looted the wagon then started the Oatman girls on a hellish,
barefoot, four-day, 60-mile journey to a place probably somewhere near
present-day Congress, Ariz. They were whipped and treated quite poorly.
After a year of misery, they were traded to the Mohave tribe for two
horses, three blankets, some vegetables and beads.

The Mohave were far kinder to the Oatman girls. Unfortunately, about
a year after arriving in the Mohave camp, Mary Ann died after a poor
harvest. Olive was alone. She would spend a total of four years living
among the Mohave. Becoming part of the tribe, Olive was given a
nickname and then a clan name, and she ultimately received a
traditional chin tattoo. She was freed in February 1856, at 19, tanned,
tattooed and painted. Her journey had just begun.

Much has been written about Olive Oatman. In The Blue Tattoo,
Margot Mifflin slices away the decades of mythology and puts the story
in its proper historical context. What emerges is a riveting,
well-researched portrait of a young woman—a survivor, but someone
marked for life by the experience.

This article appears in Sep 10-16, 2009.