The Blue Tattoo: The Life of Olive Oatman
- ISBN13: 9780803211483
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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 Yavapai 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 Illinois—including the massacre, her captivity, and her return to white society—to 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.
(20090910)
Themocracy
The book was okay. It gave a bit more detailed account than some others I have read about her life.
Rating: 3 / 5
I wish I could give this book a better review. I was looking forward to reading it, only to discover the author, Margot Mifflin, basically doesn’t know much about writing a biography, let alone dealing with the American West. If you like a politically correct spin on what should have been a very good book, you might like this. Olive Oatman deserves better. Her life was fascinating. Too bad the book is more about the tattoo on Oatman’s face than Oatman’s real life.
Rating: 2 / 5
I learned about the Oatman Family Massacre while doing some research on Arizona (was thinking about moving there) and became intrigued by the story. I knew nothing about the event beforehand. When “The Blue Tattoo” by Margot Mifflin was published, I had to read it. Ms. Mifflin did a amazing job in capturing the life of Olive Oatman; before, during and after her capture by the Indians. This is definitely a winner.
Rating: 5 / 5
Mifflin’s book is fascinating. The story it tells is such a wonderful slice of American history–revolving around the capture of Olive and Mary Ann Oatman, their sale from one tribe to another, the sale of Olive BACK to the whites, then the exploitation of her story, her lecture series, and finally, her attempt to lead a life as a married Anglo woman. I could just envision this story being made into a movie–of course, I fear the story would get distorted by Hollywood–but if I were Prof. Mifflin’s agent, I’d be on the horn to Hollywood. This solid piece of scholarship tells a fascinating story — lots of insight into western expansion — all by focusing on the story of this one woman. 5 stars.
Rating: 5 / 5
Maybe 15 years ago I found a used reprint copy of the ‘Captivity of the Oatman Girls’ while on a trip through the Mother Lode country with my wife and kids. The prose was turgid and the story heated up; the author’s provocative sexual elisions made for a rollicking if only partially believable tale. I couldn’t stop wondering what Olive’s life was like after she returned to “civilization”. Since then, I always shiver a bit when I drive under the freeway sign on the Arizona border that says “Oatman exit”. Wow. Here is the real place where her family was massacred and her brother left for dead by the local indians.
This book is exactly the kind of scholarship that needed to be done on the topic. Although the girls were kidnapped and their family destroyed, Olive Oatman ended up living for four years with the Mohave indians in a land-locked paradise of cool water and abundant food. She was not a captive but an adopted daughter and her return to 19th century ‘civilization’ was anything but a rescue. The book is a sweeping review of the widely dispersed resources available to a trained researcher: archives, secondary literature, ethnographic studies, newspaper articles and eyewitness accounts. The author has assembled an extremely readable account of Olive’s life and the historical period of Western expansionism. This is not a biography. It is a very interesting story; fascinating and immanently readable. I particularly liked the fact that the author dealt with Olive’s twofold cultural assimilation at an impressionable age, first to a Native American culture at age 14 and then back to the Anglo world five years later. Rather than declaim on the effect it had on her personality, the author allows friends and relatives to share their impressions from letters and first hand accounts. Naturally, it would have been incredibly hard to remain true to BOTH cultures at the time; I understand why Olive had a air of constant melancholy about her. Her life with the Mohave had been free and casual; her life back in ’society’ was stilted and austere.
The book is amply researched but immanently readable. Altogether an insightful picture of a young woman whose life was profoundly uprooted two times over. If you are looking for a lurid and exploitative adventure, read “The Captivity of the Oatman Girls”. If you are interested in real history and the human condition where the stone age meets the Age of Expansion, read “the Blue Tattoo.”
Rating: 4 / 5