The Mormon Girl Who Was Raised By The Mohave
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Born in 1837, Olive Oatman was one of seven siblings all raised in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints before she found herself at the center of one of the most interesting stories of the American West.
In 1850, when Oatman was just 13 years old, her parents joined a Mormon wagon train traveling to California. Midway through their journey, the Oatmans were attacked by members of the Western Yavapai tribe who slaughtered her parents and four of her siblings.
Oatman was then taken captive by the Yavapai and kept as a slave at their nearby village where she was forced to forage for food and carry firewood, and was often beaten and otherwise mistreated if she did not comply.
After a year with the Yavapai, she accompanied them to an inter-village trade, where she was sold to the Mohave tribe for a horse. The Mohave were much more prosperous than the Yavapai and, luckily for Oatman, were also more compassionate.
Oatman was given a plot of land to farm and traditional Mohave clothes to wear, and she was also tattooed on her chin and arms, a tribal custom reserved for members of the tribe.
Then, when Oatman was 19 years old, a messenger arrived at the Mohave village from Fort Yuma, saying they had heard there was a white girl living with the Mohaves and demanding that she be returned.
Fearing the white men would destroy them, the Mohaves brought Olive to Fort Yuma, where officers dressed her in Western clothing, deeming her Mohave clothing, consisting of a skirt and nothing above the waist, to be inappropriate.
Oatman then reintegrated into American society after a few years, though she always looked back on her time with the Mohave fondly. She would later recount her experience in the book The Captivity of the Oatman Girls Among the Apache and Mohave Indians.
