Olive Oatman’s Story First Mentions in The Press

It Happened on
April 5, 1856

The following articles are the first mentions of Olive Oatman in the American press. Olive Oatman (1837-1903) was an American pioneer whose family was massacred by Native Americans in 1851, leading to her and her sister Mary Ann’s capture; she spent five years with the Mojave tribe, receiving a distinctive blue chin tattoo, before being rescued, becoming a sensation lecturing on her ordeal, marrying, and living the rest of her life with the indelible mark of her captivity.


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Olive Oatman

white American woman celebrated in her time for her captivity and later release by Native Americans in the Mojave Desert region when she teenager