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Within a decade, she was a white Indian with a chin tattoo caught between cultures. Here to tell the story is the executive editor of True West magazine, Bob Bosebell. Let's take a listen. I need to start this with a confession and a disclaimer. Some of the things I'm about to tell you are going to be very hard to believe, okay?
And I must say that I had a hard time believing much of this research myself, but here we go. This is a tragic tale that all started with a bold and crazy philosophy. In 1848, a young Latter-day Saints excommunicated prophet made a bold prediction that would impact a beautiful young girl named Olive Oatman. James Collins Brewster was 24 years old, and he came up with this prophecy, and that was that there was this place in the West, which he called Land of Bashan, and it was going to be the Eden-esque place that they would live happily ever after.
Here's a quote from him, Fear not, for I am with you. I will bring your people from the East and gather you in the West. The wilderness and the wasteland will fall away, and the desert will rejoice and blossom as the rose.
It shall blossom abundantly and the glory of Bashan shall be given to it. Now, the place he was predicting for the Land of Bashan was actually at the confluence of the Colorado River and the Gila River. Today, that area is known as Yuma, Arizona, and in the 1850s, this was probably one of the most God-forsaken spots on earth. He didn't apparently know that because in his prophecies, he said that there would be pine trees growing on the banks of the river there, and so on August 10, 1850, 93 Brewsterites, including the Royce Oatman family of nine, took off from Independence, Missouri in 43 wagons headed for the Land of Bashan. One of the participants on the wagon train, Susan Thompson, she said that the journey in the beginning was a continuous picnic, and when they had stored goods, they would stop for lunch and have just a delightful time. The men would go out hunting, and in the evenings, they would gather around the campfires and they would sing and the young people would dance, and she said that there was plenty of frolic, quote, and plenty of lovemaking. Of course, the good times did not last, and by the time the wagon train reached Socorro, New Mexico, the number of wagons had been cut in half, and petty infighting, alternate visions, just all the usual human conditions that would take place on a long trip like this happened.
And so by the time the wagon train reached Maricopa Wells, which is south of present-day Phoenix, Arizona, the number of wagons had been cut down to three. Now this is where the story starts to get a little bizarre. The Royce Oatman, his wife, was pregnant eight and a half months, and so he was anxious to get to the Land of Bashan, Yuma, and it was only 120 miles away. And as every day went by, they were there for a month, and then a strange thing happened. Two riders came in from the west. One of them was a 25-year-old entomologist who was out looking for beetles, as in the bugs, okay? And he had a guide who we called Juan the Cenorian, as in Sonora, Mexico, and he had traveled from the east coast all the way around San Francisco.
He had taken a packet down to San Diego, and him and another physician had been out on a dry lake east of San Diego looking for beetles, and then him and that physician traveled to Yuma, Yuma Crossing it was known then, and they went all the way down to the Gulf of Mexico, that's 40 miles, looking for beetles, and at one point, he sent home to his father, I believe it was in Baltimore, 10,000 beetles stuck and primed and shipped them to his father. So, Dr. Lacante was his name, and he said to Royce Oakman that he never encountered any Indians on the path from Yuma all the way to Maricopa Wells, and that he didn't even see any sign of Indians. So Royce made the decision to continue on his own, the other two families declined because of safety reasons, and so Royce Oakman took off with his family of nine, his wife's eight and a half months pregnant on their own, and they went around the big bends called Gila Bend, and they came back around the other side, and they were overcome by Dr. Lacante, who had been down to Tucson, that's a hundred mile run from Maricopa Wells, probably at the Cushing Street Bar, had a great time, found some beetles, then came back, and now he's like the Road Runner, beep beep, coming up behind the Oakman family, and he finds the Oakman family very distraught, they're going slow, they're oxen are not fit for the trip, and they're very depressed, and so Royce asked Dr. Lacante if he would take a note to General Heitzman at Port Yuma, Camp Yuma at the time, to come back and send somebody out to help them, well then a weird thing happens, Dr. Lacante and Juan the Cenorian take off, and they encounter about six Indians on the trail, and they made a feint to fight, and then they took off and disappeared, well turns out that the Indians that were facing them were just doing that as a ruse so that the other Yavapais that were with them could steal their horses, so they stole their horse and their mule, and they took off down the trail, so now Lacante feels bad about telling the Oakmans that he didn't encounter any Indians, because he just about had a fight with some, and so he leaves a note and says, you know, be careful, we ran into these Indians, and he leaves a note, but they're too late, because here's what happened, those same Indians came walking up the trail, now in the movies an Indian attack is at dawn, they come riding in, they're yipping and yipping, and they're shooting arrows, and they're attacking, and they're underneath their horses and stuff, no, Lorenzo Oatman later wrote that they came walking up the trail, and said hi in Spanish, and profuse the most eloquent terms of friendship, and they wanted some tobacco which he produced, and then they wanted meat, and he said he didn't have enough, he just had enough for his family, and when he said no he couldn't do that, they all stepped off to the side and started talking among themselves, and what they were literally doing was, you kill her, I'll kill him, they were divvying up who they were going to kill, and they decided to save the two girls because they could use them for slaves or whatever, and so with a war hoop they brandished their war clubs and they killed everybody right in front of Ollie Oatman and her sister, who is seven, and they hit Lorenzo, her brother, in the head four times, should have killed him, and he staggered over to an edge and fell over the side, so they probably got out of reach where they could hit him anymore, and so then they grabbed the two girls, they took the wheels off the wagon, they knifed all the fleece pillows, and they had to watch this, the two girls, and then they took them with a bunch of food off to about a mile north of there, and they made some of the food, and then offered them some in a derisive way, mocking them, and Lorenzo woke up, he had a bloody head, and in the meantime they took the bonnets and their shoes of the two girls and made them walk 90 miles to their encampment, and the girls were treated as slaves, and they were beaten, and it was a pretty awful existence. And you've been listening to True West magazine executive editor Bob Bozebell tell one heck of a story about this family, led by Royce Oatman and their quest to get from Missouri to this new sacred land of theirs, somewhere out west around the area of Yuma, what would now be known as Yuma, Arizona, and by the time they reach Arizona, cut down to three, but Royce Oatman and his family, they kept heading towards their new home, relying on information about this area being Indian free, and what a truth to learn that that information you relied upon would cost you everything, your family and more, and your two daughters being captured and treated as slaves by the local Indian tribe. When we come back, what happens next?
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21 Plus, terms and conditions apply. And we continue with our American stories, and with the executive editor of True West magazine, Bob Bosebell, telling the story of the Oatmans and the two remaining daughters. Let's pick up where we last left off. And so with a war whoop, they brandished the war clubs and they killed everybody right in front of Ollivoltman and her sister, who is seven. And they hit Lorenzo, her brother, in the head four times, should have killed him. And so then they found the bodies, the alarm went out, and Lorenzo was taken to Fort Yuma where he was helped back to his wounds. And he went on to California, and he spent every single day trying to find authorities who would go and find his sisters. Well, about a year into their captivity, they were not found. The Mojave's came, traders with the Yavapai, and they traded for the two girls. And they left, I believe, two horses and some vegetables and whatever. And now they took the young girls to their encampment, which is on the Colorado River, up about where Needles, California is.
In fact, some believe that the encampment was on the ninth green of the Needles Golf Course. I'm not sure that's true, but as I said, so many things in this story are just so crazy. And so Olliv and her sister, they move in with the chief's family.
And it's debated to this day were they were they slaves and captives or were they treated as family. Well, then a strange thing happens. There's a railroad survey that's coming through and they come through and they spend two weeks in that area talking to all the tribes and stuff.
And Olliv does not appear. Now what happens is that someone comes through Fort Yuma and they say, I've heard that there's a woman up in the Mojave camp. And so he sends a courier named Francisco with a bluff.
And he says, if you don't give up those girls, you're going to be at war with the U.S. Army. And so they said that they're not giving her up. So Francisco goes across the river to the Arizona side and talks to the chiefs over there. And they said, we don't we don't want any trouble. Let's give her up.
So this is a critical juncture because this is five years in. So now Francisco and with his two of his cousins, they take Olliv Altman and they have to go down the Colorado River, 250 miles to Fort Yuma. And the commander there, Heintzman again, he doesn't believe that she's a white woman. She's that assimilated and she's wearing a branch, you know, a bush skirt kind of a thing.
Topless, of course, black hair, tattoos on her chin. Only when one of his aides holds her hair back behind her ear and there's a white spot behind her ear, does he believe that she's a white person. So they call her brother, Lorenzo, who arrives at the fort and they sit in a room for an hour and they can't talk to each other. And he can't believe it's his sister. And she's forgotten how to speak. She's probably mortified.
She's probably traumatized. Now, they gave her some clothes to wear and they sent her across the river, the Colorado River, over to the Arizona side and they put her in care of the Great Western. This is Sarah Bowman, who is one of the most incredible, over six foot tall, the biggest leg in Mexico.
Probably ran a brothel. But they knew that Sarah would take care of her. Sarah Bravo, she was also known as the Great Western, named after one of the biggest ships on the seas at that time because she was so big. She takes care of Olive as only she could and nurses her and helps her make the transition back into Anglo society of life or whatever. And so now Lorenzo and Olive, they take a stagecoach into California and they land at Susan Thompson's hotel in Monte, California, which is El Monte today. And Susan Thompson was the one on the wagon train who was 17 at the time and knew the old ones very well. And they made it successfully, safely to California and they started a hotel there. Now, this is a critical juncture in our story because Susan Thompson says that Olive Oatman was very distraught and she admitted to Susan Thompson, Olive Oatman did, that she left two of her children behind. Now Olive and her brother go and she's in Huayrica, California, which is way up north.
Okay. And she runs into a minister. Stratton is his name. And he is amazed at her story. And he writes up a book of her life story. And he admits in the beginning that much of what actually happened to her has been left out and thankfully will probably never be known. And the book takes off. It was put off as a religious book in California, as a local press, small kind of a thing. And it becomes a national bestseller.
They cannot keep it on the shelves. And she becomes a celebrity on the speaking tour. You know, she has those tattoos. And by the way, she claimed that the tattoos marked her as a slave. But we now know that married women have the vertical blue tattoos on their chin. That's what designated them as a wife. So she has these tattoos and she's giving talks all over the country. And she claims a couple of things. One is she claimed that they were never unchaste towards her. They always respected her on that level because in that time and era, you could not. They called it in Victorian times, you know, fate worse than death, that you would, you know, actually have relations with a Native American. Seems a little radical today.
But at the time, that was exactly how they positioned it. So now she's a celebrity and going all over the country, making a lot of money actually from her speaking fees. And the book is a huge success. So then what happens is she marries a rich Texan.
She goes to Sherman, Texas, and she retires from speaking and she adopts a daughter and the daughter dies unexpectedly, does not live. Well, one other thing that I've got to tell you is, OK, the Prophet Brewster, remember, he claimed that he was going to send them to the land of Bashan where the crops would grow and the wine would meet the sea and blah, blah, blah. Irony of Ironies in 1902, Teddy Roosevelt, yes, that Teddy Roosevelt, he minted the Bureau of Reclamation and the Yuma Project diverted the Colorado River to irrigate more than fifty eight thousand acres along the river all the way to Mexico. The water turned the harsh desert into a lush table land supporting two hundred and seventy five farms and ninety thousand residents farming year round. Today, those farms produce one hundred and ninety six million crops every year. The Chamber of Commerce in Yuma claims that 90 percent of all the wintertime leafy vegetables in the United States come from this area, an area that was once prophesized as the land of Bashan. Let's end with a quote from Brewer.
The wilderness and the wasteland shall fall away and the desert will rejoice and blossom as the rose. Amen. My goodness, what happened to him? I mean, he survives this assault. He has seen this. Now he's got to go describe to American authorities, the American military what happened.
Can you imagine that sit down when it finally happens? You seeing your sister and you can barely recognize her and nobody, nobody believes the story and they don't believe she's white, but she survived and survived witnessing the butchery of her own family. I don't know how you survived that.
Perhaps the best way to survive it is to put it behind you or forget it. The story of Olive Oatman, the story of her family, the story of hope, suffering and redemption. And in the end, transcendence here on Our American Stories.
New out of nowhere obstacles, new all or nothing moments, new less than likely triumphs. Season two of the Unshakeables podcast has it all. Hi, I'm Ben Walter, CEO of Chase for Business and host of the show. We're excited to bring you more inspiring stories from small business owners who share the what are we going to do moments that ended up changing everything. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. Chase mobile app is available for select mobile devices.
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