"I just read a book called “The Blue Tattoo” by Margot Mifflin. As I am in Island Park, Idaho, at a remote family-owned cabin (built 1953), reading is about my only option in terms of media entertainment. I want to tell you about this book, because while not anywhere near close to the best-written book I have read, the true story in its pages unsettled me, and I think that everybody needs to be unsettled at least once a week.

“The Blue Tattoo” explores the life of Olive Oatman, a Mormon pioneer whose family was slaughtered by the Yavapais Native American tribe. The only three survivors out of seven children and two parents were Lorenzo, who was clubbed and left for dead, and Olive and her sister, Mary Ann. These two sisters were taken as slaves to the Yavapais for a year, and after that time were traded to the Mojave tribe where they lived as equals. Four years later, after a full induction to the tribe, symbolized by Olive’s blue tattoo, Olive alone was taken back to white civilization. Her sister had died of starvation after two years with the Mojave, but her brother had made it to safety and was living in California at the time of Olive’s retrieval.

The rest of Olive’s life was marred by exploitation, but it wasn’t strictly Olive that suffered as a consequence. A Methodist priest, Royal Stratton, paraded her across the country lecturing about the savagery of Native Americans and publishing a lengthy book on the subject. The book produced three very successful editions, each new one included extra pages about the “strange habits and customs” of these natives. The book’s condemnation of the Mojave and of all native tribes was in stark contrast to interviews Olive gave immediately after her “rescue.” In these interviews, she told reporters that she was pretty much allowed to do as she pleased with the Mojave, that she was no slave and that she and her sister were treated as members of the family and that ultimately their lives had been saved by the kind natives."

Get the Story:
Natalie Pond: Book about girl taken by Native American tribe was ‘unsettling’ (The Lake Oswego Review 7/8)