Olive Oatman is known as the mysterious woman with the blue tattoo on her chin. Kidnapped as a child by the Yavapai Indians, then received by the Mohave Indians and eventually saved by her brother, she devoted part of her life to talking about the survival and strength of the human being without realizing the mess left in her mind and even her identity of life.
It is possible that many people are familiar with this story, no doubt, the serene face of the protagonist attracts, with her gaze and above all her singular tattoo, where the ethnic, the wild, some would say, hits the Western image that any good woman. educated in good condition that he used to show in the mid-19th century.
- Olive Oatman suffered two tragedies that marked her all her life: first the loss of her biological family by the attack of the Yavapais.
- Then when she was uprooted from her second family.
- The Mohave.
However, Olive Oatman was not just any lady from Arizona, she was a woman who caused her several traumas throughout her life, someone who tried to adapt and survive every turn that fate brought her and he survived, no doubt, because her strength was admirable, an odyssey that was immortalized in books like “The captivity of Oatman’s girls?”(1856) or Margot Miffin’s “The Blue Tattoo: The Life of Olive Oatman. “
However, there is something that has not been talked about in those years, Olive Oatman had never felt so free as when she lived with the Mohaves, in fact, almost 100 years later, her name was placed in a small town, a corner where this young woman lived in the company of the natives and where curiously she was happier than ever.
It is 1850 and in the arid but still majestic lands of Colorado, in the United States, along a lonely and rocky path, we can see a caravan of settlers making their way with their animals, their cars and their infinite hopes of settling in what was formerly called the “New World”.
However, the new world was already inhabited, it had legitimate owners who would not yield to the desire to conquer a group of strangers with airs of grandeur, among these settlers was the Oatman family, Mormons who moved carelessly, driven by the fanaticism of a spiritual leader, Pastor James C. Brewster, it was this character that inevitably led them to disaster. They knew nothing about these lands, nor did they want to hear the warnings. They were so firm in their purpose and so blind in their faith that they did not realize that this land already had owners, a wild and rather violent ethnicity: the Yavapai.
The Indians annihilated virtually the entire group of pioneers who led this expedition; after the murder, they decided to take two white girls as slaves: Olive Oatman, 14, and her sister Mary Ann, 8. After the tragedy, something did not wait much better for the two girls: they had to endure almost a year of abuse, deprivation and continued humiliation on the part of these indigenous people who denounced the white man so much.
However, their fate changed when a nearby tribe learned of the girls’ story.
This tribe was the Mohave, they were the ones who decided to save them by making a change: they handed over several horses and blankets in exchange for the white girls, the convert was sealed, and Olive and her little sister began a new life. a life that took a 180-degree turn to the misery to which they were subjected were adopted by the Espanesay and Aespaneo family, welcomed by a land full of beauty, with fields of wheat and poplars where they slept in the company of a benevolent people.
Thus, and to demonstrate his union with the community, the traditional tattoo of his people was performed; such a tattoo guaranteed his union with his life after death, religious symbol and communion with the mohave. It was quiet years, when Olive had the opportunity to mourn the loss of her parents and strengthen ties with her new family.
However, there were also difficult times, years of drought when people were starving and many children died, including Olive’s sister, Mary Ann, who was allowed to bury according to her own religion, even giving her land where Olive planted a garden. wildflowers.
Olive Oatman was almost 20 years old when a messenger from Fort Yuma arrived in Mohave, learned of the presence of a white woman and demanded her return, it must be said that this tribe never held the young woman captive, she was always told. who was free to leave whenever she wanted, however, Olive never had any particular interest in going back to what the white man called civilization. That was good. It felt good.
However, everything changed when he learned that the one requesting his return was Laurence, his younger brother, whom he believed dead by the brutal attack on Yavapai that decimated his family, decided to leave, decided to return to his family and the Mohaves accepted. However, it was a decision Olive would regret years later.
That’s why they called her the “blue tattoo woman. ” Because of the Victorian costumes with which he immediately dressed her to erase his past with the Indians, he could not cover the tattoo that adorned his chin. However, not everyone knew that his arms and legs also had flashy tattoos that never saw the sunlight and wind of Colorado.
After his return to civilization, everything was very quick for Olive Oatman. A book has been written about its history and some of the achievements achieved have been offered for your personal use. He graduated from college and also funded the training of his brother Laurence. Later, he began lectured in the United States to discuss his experience, the Yavapai and the Mohave.
However, what the book told about its history and what people expected to hear in its lectures were anecdotes about the savagery of the indigenous people, their ignorance and inhumanity. Oliva, under pressure, had to lie to survive in this town that she had now taken in. her in a new stage of her life.
In 1865 he married a wealthy farmer. A man who asked him for one thing: forgetting his past, leaving school and putting on a veil to cover his tattoo to get out, he did so, letting time also pass, drip, year after year and subject to what was perhaps the worst slavery. of his life, a new tattoo was formed in her: the pain and remembrance of those years with the Mohaves, where her existence was fulfilling, free and happy?
Olive Oatman has spent much of her life with severe headaches, depression and remains in clinics in Canada, where she has tried to cure the desire of her family, the Mohaves, who died at age 65.