Research Catalog

Title

The blue tattoo : the life of Olive Oatman / Margot Mifflin.

Author

Mifflin, Margot, 1960-

Publication

Lincoln : University of Nebraska Press, [2009], ©2009.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

xi, 261 pages : illustrations, maps; 23 cm.

Summary

"In 1851 Olive Oatman was a thirteen-year-old pioneer traveling west toward Zion with her Mormon family. Within a decade, she was a white Indian with a chin tattoo, caught between cultures. The Blue Tattoo tells the harrowing story of this forgotten heroine of frontier America. Orphaned after her family was brutally killed by Yavapai Indians, Oatman lived as a slave to her captors for a year before being traded to the Mohaves, who tattooed her face and raised her as their own. She was fully assimilated and perfectly happy when, at nineteen, she was ransomed back to white society. She became an instant celebrity, but the price of fame was high and the pain of her ruptured childhood lasted a lifetime." "Based on historical records, including the letters and diaries of Oatman's friends and relatives, The Blue Tattoo is the first book to examine her life from her childhood in Illinois including the massacre, her captivity, and her return to white society - to her later years as a wealthy banker's wife in Texas."--BOOK JACKET.

Series Statement

Women in the West

Uniform Title

Women in the West.

Subjects

• Apache Indians
• Mohave Indians
• Indian captivities > Southwest, New
• Oatman, Olive Ann > Captivity
• Yavapai Indians

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. 231-245) and index.

Contents

Prologue: Emigrant Song -- 1. Quicksand -- 2. Indian Country -- 3. "How Little We Thought What Was Before Us" -- 4. A Year with the Yavapais -- 5. Lorenzo's Tale -- 6. Becoming Mohave -- 7. Deeper -- 8. "There Is a Happy Land, Far, Far Away" -- 9. Journey to Yuma -- 10. Hell's Outpost -- 11. Rewriting History in Gassburg, Oregon -- 12. Captive Audiences -- 13. "We Met as Friends, Giving the Left Hand in Friendship" -- 14. Olive Fairchild, Texan -- Epilogue: Oatman's Literary Half-Life.

ISBN

• 9780803211483 (cloth : alk. paper)
• 0803211481 (cloth : alk. paper)

LCCN

• 2008038358
• 40016462783

OCLC

• ocn244701531
• 244701531
• SCSB-5460631

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries