Lady Olive Ann Oatman

(1837 – March 20, 1903)

“prominent blue tattooing of Oatman’s face by the Mohave”

Olive Ann Oatman (1837 – March 20, 1903) was a woman from Illinois whose family was killed in 1851, when she was fourteen, in present-day Arizona by a Native American tribe, possibly the Tolkepayas (Western Yavapai); they captured and enslaved her and her sister and later sold them to the Mohave people. After several years with the Mohave, during which her sister died of hunger, she returned to American society, five years after being carried off.

In subsequent years, the tale of Oatman came to be retold with dramatic license in the press, in her own “memoir” and speeches, novels, plays, movies and poetry. The story resonated in the media of the time and long afterward, partly owing to the prominent blue tattooing of Oatman’s face by the Mohave. Much of what actually occurred during her time with the Native Americans remains unknown.

 

 

 

 

Death and legacy

Olive Oatman Fairchild died of a heart attack on March 20, 1903, at the age of 65. She is buried at the West Hill Cemetery in Sherman, Texas.

The town of Oatman, Arizona, a ghost town renewed by tourists from a nearby gambling town, is named in her honor.

In 1965, the actress Shary Marshall played Oatman, with Tim McIntire as her brother, Lorenzo, and Ronald W. Reagan as Lieutenant Colonel Burke, in “The Lawless Have Laws” episode of the syndicated western series Death Valley Days, hosted by Reagan near the end of his acting career. In the storyline, Burke leads Lorenzo in a search for his sister, whom he has not seen in five years since an Indian raid on their family.

The character of Eva portrayed by Robin McLeavy in the AMC television series Hell on Wheels is very loosely based on Olive Oatman, but outside of being captured by a group of Indians and bearing the distinctive blue chin tattoo, and being raised Mormon there are very few similarities between the character of Eva and the actual life of Olive Oatman.

Novelist Elmore Leonard based a short story, The Tonto Woman, on a white captive woman who was tattooed in the manner of Oatman.

In an episode of the series The Ghost Inside my Child: The Wild West and Tribal Quest, a southern American Baptist family claims that their daughter Olivia says she is the reincarnation of Olive Oatman.

 

Bron: From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Foto’s: Olive Oatman 1838–1903, by Benjamin F. Powelson (1823–1885)