Excerpt from Captivity of the Oatman Girls: Being an Interesting Narrative of Life Among, the Apache and Mohave Indians
During the year 1851, news reached California that in the Spring of that year, a family, by the name of Oatman, while endeavoring to reach California by the old Santa Few route, had met with a most melancholy and terrible fate, about seventy miles from Fort Yuma. That while struggling with every difficulty imaginable, such as jaded teams, exhaustion of their stores of provisions, in a hostile and barren region, alone and unattended, that they were brutally set upon by a horde of Apache savages; that seven of the nine persons composing their family were murdered, and that two of the smaller girls were taken into captivity.
One of the number, Lorenzo D. Oatman, a boy about fourteen, who was knocked down and left for dead, afterwards escaped, but with severe wounds and serious injury.
But of the girls, Mart Ann and Olive Ann, nothing had since been heard, up to last March. By a singular and mysteriously providential train of circumstances, it was ascertained at that time, by persons living at Fort Yuma, that one of these girls was then living among the Mohave tribe, about four hundred miles from the Fort. A ransom was offered for her by the ever-to-be-remembered and generous Mr. Grinell, then a mechanic at the Fort; and through the agency and tact of a Yuma Indian, she was purchased and restored to civilized 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 - and the captivity of the two girls - that the following pages treat.
A few months since, the Author of this book was requested, by the afflicted brother and son, who barely escaped with life, but not without much suffering, to write the past history of the family; especially to give a full and particular account of the dreadful and barbarous scenes of the captivity endured by his sisters. This I have tried to do. The facts and incidents have been received from the brother and sister, now living.
These pages have been penned under the conviction that, in these facts, and in the sufferings and horrors that befell that unfortunate family, there is sufficient of interest - though of a melancholy character - to insure an attentive and interested perusal by every one into whose hands and under whose eye this book may fall. So far as book-making is concerned, there has been brought to this task no experience or fame, in the author, upon which to base an expectation for the popularity of the work.
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