OLIVE OATMAN.
CAPTIVITY
OF THE
OATMAN GIRLS:
BEING AN
Interesting Narrative of Life
AMONG THE
APACHE AND MOHAVE INDIANS.
CONTAINING
AN INTERESTING ACCOUNT OF THE MASSACRE OF THE OATMAN FAMILY, BY THEAPACHE INDIANS, IN 1851; THE NARROW ESCAPE OF LORENZO D. OATMAN; THECAPTURE OF OLIVE A. AND MARY A. OATMAN; THE DEATH, BY STARVATION, OFTHE LATTER; THE FIVE YEARS’ SUFFERING AND CAPTIVITY OF OLIVE A.OATMAN; ALSO, HER SINGULAR RECAPTURE IN 1856; AS GIVEN BY LORENZO D.AND OLIVE A. OATMAN, THE ONLY SURVIVING MEMBERS OF THE FAMILY, TO THEAUTHOR,
R. B. STRATTON.
TWENTIETH THOUSAND.
New-York:
PUBLISHED FOR THE AUTHOR,
BY CARLTON & PORTER, 200 MULBERRY-STREET.
FOR SALE BY INGHAM & BRAGG, 67 SUPERIOR-ST., CLEVELAND, O.
1858.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year1857, by
LORENZO D. OATMAN,
in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the NorthernDistrict of the
State of California.
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
During the year 1851 news reachedCalifornia, that in the spring of that year a family by the nameof Oatman, while endeavoring to reachCalifornia by the old Santa Fe route, had met with a most melancholyand terrible fate, about seventy miles from Fort Yuma. That whilestruggling with every difficulty imaginable, such as jaded teams,exhaustion of their stores of provisions, in a hostile and barrenregion, alone and unattended, they were brutally set upon by a hordeof Apache savages; that seven of the nine persons composing theirfamily were murdered, and that two of the smaller girls were taken intocaptivity.
One of the number, Lorenzo D. Oatman, aboy about fourteen, who was knocked down and left for dead, afterwardescaped, but with severe wounds and serious injury.
But of the girls, Mary Ann and Olive Ann, nothing had since been heard, up tolast March. By a singular and mysteriously providential train ofcircumstances, it was ascertained at that time, by persons living atFort Yuma, that one of these girls was then living among the Mohavetribe, about four hundred miles from the fort. A ransom was offeredfor[6]her by the ever-to-be-remembered and generous Mr. Grinell, then a mechanic at the fort; and throughthe agency and tact of a Yuma Indian, she was purchased and restored tocivilized life, to her brother and friends. The younger of the girls,Mary Ann, died of starvation in 1852.
It is of the massacre of this family, the escape of Lorenzo