- Paperback: 280 pages
- Publisher: Bison Books; Reprint edition (25 Aug 2011)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0803235178
- ISBN-13: 978-0803235175
- Product Dimensions: 21.3 x 14 x 2 cm
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,527,043 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Description
Product Description
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 when her family was brutally killed by Yavapais Indians, Oatman lived as a slave to her captors for a year before being traded to the Mohave, 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 letters and diaries of Oatman's friends and relatives, The Blue Tattoo is the first book to examine her life from her childhood in Illinoisoincluding the massacre, her captivity, and her return to white societyoto her later years as a wealthy banker's wife in Texas. Oatman's story has since become legend, inspiring artworks, fiction, film, radio plays, and even an episode of Death Valley Days starring Ronald Reagan. Its themes, from the perils of religious utopianism to the permeable border between civilization and savagery, are deeply rooted in the American psyche. Oatman's blue tattoo was a cultural symbol that evoked both the imprint of her Mohave past and the lingering scars of westward expansion. It also served as a reminder of her deepest secret, fully explored here for the first time: she never wanted to go home.
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Amazon.com:
22 reviews
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful
Well-written, but Left with questions
20 Oct 2009
Format:Hardcover
After tribe members murdered her parents and most of her siblings, the Yavapai Indians kidnapped Olive Oatman and her younger sister Mary Ann. Brutally treated as slaves by their captors, Olive and her sister were later traded to the Mohave Indians who eventually adopted them into the tribe where they were treated as family. Mary Ann died of starvation during a bleak winter, but Olive survived and was later traded by her Mohave family to whites. A brother who the Yavapai left for dead survived and later reconnected with Olive.
Interviews during her first days back into white society show that Olive grieved her Mohave family and spoke of them as being kind and caring. Later, under the influence of a minister who hated Indians, Olive lectured throughout the East about her terrible treatment from both tribes. Olive received an excellent education and was a spell-binding speaker. She later married and her husband made every effort to erase her captive past.
The book is well-written and thoroughly researched, but I had difficulty with the author laying the entire blame for Olive's shifting position toward her Indian life entirely on the preacher. Olive was clearly an intelligent and independent woman who could have taken a more even-handed approach in her lectures about her treatment. Certainly some white women who were former captives and then integrated back into white society were able to speak more fairly about their captivity. I was left with many questions about why Olive was both able to seek out, in her later life, a meeting with one of the members of the Mohave tribe in Washington, D. C., as a seemingly fond gesture and yet also took part through her lectures in promoting the annihilation of the Indians.
Interviews during her first days back into white society show that Olive grieved her Mohave family and spoke of them as being kind and caring. Later, under the influence of a minister who hated Indians, Olive lectured throughout the East about her terrible treatment from both tribes. Olive received an excellent education and was a spell-binding speaker. She later married and her husband made every effort to erase her captive past.
The book is well-written and thoroughly researched, but I had difficulty with the author laying the entire blame for Olive's shifting position toward her Indian life entirely on the preacher. Olive was clearly an intelligent and independent woman who could have taken a more even-handed approach in her lectures about her treatment. Certainly some white women who were former captives and then integrated back into white society were able to speak more fairly about their captivity. I was left with many questions about why Olive was both able to seek out, in her later life, a meeting with one of the members of the Mohave tribe in Washington, D. C., as a seemingly fond gesture and yet also took part through her lectures in promoting the annihilation of the Indians.
22 of 26 people found the following review helpful
A Young Mormon Girl Enters A Strange Sexual Utopia
26 May 2009
Format:Hardcover
Using family letters, documents and contemporary accounts, Margot Mifflin uncovers previously unknown aspects of one of the best known Indian Captivity stories -that of Olive Oatman, the woman whose chin bore the "blue tattoo." On her return to white culture as a "redeemed captive," Olive's tattoo served as a question mark to the shocked and sympathetic audiences who heard her lecture on her experiences - asking the question no respectable person of the time dare voice, what did the savages really do to her?
The horrific massacre of her Morman pioneer family by Yavapai Indians in 1851 began thirteen year old Olive's six-year adventure (or ordeal, as the legend would later have it). She and her sister, at first slaves of the cruel Yavapai, were purchased a year later by the much gentler, now little-known, Mohave people. In a secret valley of the Colorado River, the "American Nile" (the yearly fertile flooding ended with the construction of Hoover Dam), the girls entered an ancient Utopian culture, perhaps unique among American Indians.
The Mohaves lived a near-vegetarian, near-nudist, sexually promiscuous life, and the girls participated in every aspect of the culture -- so much so that the hardboiled cavalry officer sent to "rescue" Olive, and who spoke enough Mohave to understand her nickname (which indicated an exaggerated interest in sex.) changed her name in the Army's paperwork. Olive's tattoo, which was to identify her as Mohave in the afterlife, shows that she became a full member of the tribe, in spite of later revisions to her story.
Olive's adventures didn't end with her return to white culture. She became a successful author and lecturer under the influence of a preacher-with-an-agenda who practiced a sort of ventriloquism, revising Olive's experience as a "captive" while using her to deliver his own message of racial hate and misogyny.
Margot Mifflin, who has a special interest in women and tattooing, is also the author of Bodies of Subversion: A Secret History of Women and Tattoo. Here she examines the effect of Olive's tattoos -- as well as five-plus years of nudity and sexual freedom-- on Olive's body-image and sense of self, and how shaping and retelling her story allowed her to move into polite society. Mifflin's portrayal of Mohave culture and Olive's life within the tribe was the highlight of the story for this reader, but the entire book was a can't-put-it-down kind of read.
Michael Houghton
Ben Franklin Bookshop
The horrific massacre of her Morman pioneer family by Yavapai Indians in 1851 began thirteen year old Olive's six-year adventure (or ordeal, as the legend would later have it). She and her sister, at first slaves of the cruel Yavapai, were purchased a year later by the much gentler, now little-known, Mohave people. In a secret valley of the Colorado River, the "American Nile" (the yearly fertile flooding ended with the construction of Hoover Dam), the girls entered an ancient Utopian culture, perhaps unique among American Indians.
The Mohaves lived a near-vegetarian, near-nudist, sexually promiscuous life, and the girls participated in every aspect of the culture -- so much so that the hardboiled cavalry officer sent to "rescue" Olive, and who spoke enough Mohave to understand her nickname (which indicated an exaggerated interest in sex.) changed her name in the Army's paperwork. Olive's tattoo, which was to identify her as Mohave in the afterlife, shows that she became a full member of the tribe, in spite of later revisions to her story.
Olive's adventures didn't end with her return to white culture. She became a successful author and lecturer under the influence of a preacher-with-an-agenda who practiced a sort of ventriloquism, revising Olive's experience as a "captive" while using her to deliver his own message of racial hate and misogyny.
Margot Mifflin, who has a special interest in women and tattooing, is also the author of Bodies of Subversion: A Secret History of Women and Tattoo. Here she examines the effect of Olive's tattoos -- as well as five-plus years of nudity and sexual freedom-- on Olive's body-image and sense of self, and how shaping and retelling her story allowed her to move into polite society. Mifflin's portrayal of Mohave culture and Olive's life within the tribe was the highlight of the story for this reader, but the entire book was a can't-put-it-down kind of read.
Michael Houghton
Ben Franklin Bookshop
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Page Turner
21 Sep 2009
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
Most books about women captured by the Indians are filled with how awful life was. This book shows that not all Indians were brutes and often times the women that were captured were not mistreated. Great read, remarkable courage .
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