The Blue Tattoo Quotes

“Since the 1970s, feminist academics have revisited the story in their explorations of women-in-captivity literature and examinations of the female body in nineteenth-century writing.”
― Margot Mifflin, The Blue Tattoo: The Life of Olive Oatman

“On slow news days, newspaper editors pulled the Oatman drama out of storage and ran it as a novelty item, often in the Southwest, sometimes in multiple parts.”
― Margot Mifflin, The Blue Tattoo: The Life of Olive Oatman

“perhaps more difficult, assimilation occurred after her ransom, when she was plucked from her tribe against her will. Willing ransomees did not cry on their return, pace the floor in tears at night afterward, or rush to shake the hands of their former oppressors years later. But there was simply no running back to the Mohaves from Los Angeles, or from Oregon, and the social and financial rewards Oatman reaped for turning her back on the Mohaves were tangible and immediate, while the risks of declaring herself an Indian lover were tremendous. In an act of self-preservation, she was able to cross back over and make herself a life first as a public figure, then as a working woman helping orphans, and finally as a mother, giving her own orphan child the unconditional love her mother, and Aespaneo, and Sarah Abbott, in turn, had given her.”
― Margot Mifflin, The Blue Tattoo: The Life of Olive Oatman

“The triumph of Oatman’s story was in what she achieved both as a captive and on her return. She assimilated twice: first, as a Mohave, where the evidence is overwhelming that she was fully adopted into the tribe and that she ultimately considered herself a member. She was taken at a vulnerable age, had no known family to return to, and bonded with the family that both rescued her from the Yavapais and gave her their clan name. She submitted to a ritual tattoo, bore a nickname that confirmed her insider status, and declined to escape when the Whipple party appeared in the valley or through the many Quechan runners or local Mexicans who could have carried a message to Fort Yuma for her. By the time Francisco came looking for her, Olive had become a Mohave, and almost certainly didn’t want to go “home.”
― Margot Mifflin, The Blue Tattoo: The Life of Olive Oatman

“Nahl’s erasure of the tattoo in the book, removes from the story the possibility that the tattoo made her Mohave. And it neglects a larger truth: the Mohaves did not tattoo their captives; they tattooed their own.”
― Margot Mifflin, The Blue Tattoo: The Life of Olive Oatman

“When she took the stage in the late 1850s, Olive became the first American woman to show her tattooed body publicly for profit. 32 At the time, tattoos were virtually unseen in the United States.”
― Margot Mifflin, The Blue Tattoo: The Life of Olive Oatman

“Stratton claimed his information came from seven years of travel among tribes along the Pacific, something that may have come as a surprise to the Methodists, who had sent him west to harvest settlers’ souls, not to carouse with savages.”
― Margot Mifflin, The Blue Tattoo: The Life of Olive Oatman

“Captivity of the Oatman Girls was published at a perfect moment for success—particularly for a female audience. It appeared at the height of the industrial revolution, when women were reading more because of increased education for girls, lower birthrates, and lighter domestic workloads, thanks to new technology. Middle-class women were becoming voracious readers not only because they were better schooled but also because they were trapped: their domestic responsibilities were reduced by manufacturing, yet they were confined to the home.”
― Margot Mifflin, The Blue Tattoo: The Life of Olive Oatman

“Olive’s tattoo played an important role in the book: it appears on the face of the returned captive, where it registers as a mark of permanent violation, unlike her Mohave wardrobe, which signaled only temporary membership. Olive’s portrait, with her tattoo drawn in finer, more delicate lines than those of the actual tattoo, served as the coda to Life Among the Indians. The blue tattoo was the flourish that would make it a stand-alone story, supplying visual evidence of Olive’s ordeal and its irreversible impact.”
― Margot Mifflin, The Blue Tattoo: The Life of Olive Oatman

“Stratton, of course, had the advantage: Olive knew he controlled the book’s production and understood that too much sympathy for the devil would reflect badly on her, reducing her chances of “resuming her position in society,” as the Daily Alta had put it. Olive was again a captive—this time of her ghostwriter.”
― Margot Mifflin, The Blue Tattoo: The Life of Olive Oatman

“Stratton omitted, exaggerated, and fabricated information in order to deliver a title that was at once pious and titillating for his publisher, Whitton, Towne and Company, an arm of the Methodist Book Concern, which was trying to boost book sales in order to fund less lucrative church projects. His selective storytelling created a collage effect: there was what he knew and told, what he knew and did not tell, and what, perhaps, Olive never revealed, which cannot be reclaimed or reconstructed. Stratton even acknowledged the omissions in his conclusion: “Much of that dreadful period is unwritten, and will remain forever unwritten.”
― Margot Mifflin, The Blue Tattoo: The Life of Olive Oatman

“Their book, called Life Among the Indians: Being an Interesting Narrative of the Captivity of the Oatman Girls, would consist of first-person narration by both Olive and Lorenzo, with an introduction and interstitial commentary by Stratton. Though Olive starred, it was Stratton’s production: even a brief look at Olive’s and Lorenzo’s letters confirms that the book’s passages attributed to the Oatmans, neither of whom had the literary skills to write their own stories, are heavily ventriloquized.”
― Margot Mifflin, The Blue Tattoo: The Life of Olive Oatman

“Since no two captives’ experiences are identical, Oatman’s allegiance to the Mohaves cannot be fully theorized through comparison. Variables beyond age, gender, and length of captivity played into a captive’s desire and potential for assimilation. Other factors included the tribe’s motivations for taking prisoners, its treatment of captives, the individual whims of the abductors, whether captives had remaining family members, either within or outside the tribe, and whether they married and had children during captivity.”
― Margot Mifflin, The Blue Tattoo: The Life of Olive Oatman

“Captivity scholars have wrestled with the question of how many of the tens of thousands of captives taken by Indians from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries resisted or refused return, and why. One of the few systematic analyses of transculturation ever undertaken involved 641 New England captives seized (by both Indians and the French) between 1605 and 1763. This study concluded that girls aged seven to fifteen were most likely to “take” to their new cultures; 54 percent of girls in the sample group voluntarily stayed with their captors, while only 30 percent of boys did. 8 No studies specific to Southwest tribes or nineteenth-century captives exist;”
― Margot Mifflin, The Blue Tattoo: The Life of Olive Oatman

“Or send her reasons why she does not wish to come.” Burke’s caveat may have been inspired by the knowledge that a year earlier when the Whipple party had spent a week with the Mohaves, Olive had not presented herself, or by Francisco, who had talked with Espaniole months earlier and may have gleaned that Olive preferred to stay.”
― Margot Mifflin, The Blue Tattoo: The Life of Olive Oatman

“After entering the Mohave valley, Mollhausen had asked, in his diary, “How long will it now be before a reason is found or invented for beginning a war of extermination against the hitherto peaceful Indians of the valley of the Colorado?” 20 Sooner than he had probably imagined. Within five years, the only trace of the thriving, unified nation Whipple and Mollhausen had met on the bank of the Colorado would be footprints in the sand.”
― Margot Mifflin, The Blue Tattoo: The Life of Olive Oatman

“Whipple reported seeing as many as six hundred Indians in a single day in his camp. Few spoke Spanish; most communicated with the whites using hand gestures. Whipple noticed “several sad-looking fellows in the crowd” who were slaves taken in an expedition against the Cocopas, but he saw no white girls, and more significantly, was never approached by the Oatmans, who either remained in their village above the campgrounds or socialized with the others, passing as Mohaves. 15 Either scenario is telling. If they were hidden from the Whipple party, this omission from Olive’s biography is glaringly conspicuous: it was not just her first opportunity for escape during her captivity but also one of the more dramatic events of her Mohave life. And if she wasn’t hidden, she was in a situation where she roamed freely with Mohaves of all ages, but never sought help from any of the hundred-odd whites in the area. Three years into their captivity, with no knowledge that their brother had survived the Oatman massacre, seventeen-year-old Olive and twelve-year-old Mary Ann had crossed the threshold of assimilation.”
― Margot Mifflin, The Blue Tattoo: The Life of Olive Oatman

“The sight of the white men’s beards, now tumbling down their chests after many months of travel, afforded them—especially the women—considerable glee. Some tried to touch them to verify that they were real, but, wrote Mollhausen, “they gave us to understand, in an unmistakable manner, that they did not consider these appendages at all attractive, though we were rather proud of them, as testifying to the length of our journey.” When the bearded men rode past them, the women burst into laughter and “put their hands to their mouths, as if the sight of us rather tended to make them sick.” 13 Unaccustomed to hairy faces, the women thought the beards made the men look like talking vaginas. 14 Mollhausen, meanwhile, could not determine whether Mohave men, who had little or no facial hair, shaved, singed, or plucked.”
― Margot Mifflin, The Blue Tattoo: The Life of Olive Oatman

“The experience of past centuries has shown that the insolence and injustice of the whites, when in close and frequent intercourse with at first innocent savages, will soon stifle any germ of confidence that may be springing up, and transform their friendliness into hostility. The native, who seeing himself trampled upon, revolts against the domination of the white race, is then at once treated like a noxious animal, and the bloody strife never ends till the last free inhabitant of the wilderness has fallen.” 8”
― Margot Mifflin, The Blue Tattoo: The Life of Olive Oatman

“Standing now astride two cultures, Olive had unwittingly made history: she was the first known tattooed white female in the United States.”
― Margot Mifflin, The Blue Tattoo: The Life of Olive Oatman

“Olive’s tattoo marked the first stage of her transformation into a Mohave. She was now visually integrated into the tribe and physically traceable as a Mohave because of it.”
― Margot Mifflin, The Blue Tattoo: The Life of Olive Oatman

“Tsosie says Olive would only have been given a clan name if she were considered a full Mohave. But her clan name also masks her marriage status. If, after some period of adaptation, she was married—and Mohave girls of the period did so in their early to mid-teens—her name wouldn’t show it. The Mohaves were serial monogamists with no wedding ceremony. Marriage meant living together; moving out signaled divorce.”
― Margot Mifflin, The Blue Tattoo: The Life of Olive Oatman

“Tsosie alleges that the very fact that Oatman was nicknamed confirms her acceptance within the culture; if she had been marginalized within the tribe, she would never have warranted one. Along with “Aliútman,” the name stuck, and Mary Ann, perhaps too young for teasing, went by her given name.”
― Margot Mifflin, The Blue Tattoo: The Life of Olive Oatman

“Olive acquired the nickname “Spantsa,” which meant “rotten vagina” or “sore” vagina. 23 She may have been menstruating when she arrived, wrapped in rags, or she may have been perceived as unhygienic by comparison to the Mohaves, who bathed every day in the Colorado River, unlike whites, for whom a splash of toilet water was considered a substitute for washing. 24”
― Margot Mifflin, The Blue Tattoo: The Life of Olive Oatman

“But the Mohaves, like their allies the Quechans, loved bawdy sobriquets referring to—or flatly advertising—genitalia. Quechan names for men at the time, for example, included “Big Cock,” “Cock-with-a-Blue-Head,” and “Good Fucker.” One Mohave woman was nicknamed “Charcoal Testicle,” indicating she liked sex so much that she burned men’s testicles. 22”
― Margot Mifflin, The Blue Tattoo: The Life of Olive Oatman

“the sexual practices of the uninhibited Mohaves surely gave a young Mormon from the Midwest ample reason for embarrassment. The Mohaves considered sex natural, fun, and emotionally inconsequential. Children witnessed it at a young age because they lived in one-room houses with their parents and other adults. Many lost their virginity by the time they reached puberty, and most girls had sex soon after they began menstruating. Adult Mohaves encouraged the young to indulge themselves sexually while they could, so that by their mid-teens, they were jaded, at which point, wrote the psychoanalyst George Devereux, “frills” were added to keep things lively: “The Mohave will actually devote some time to thinking up sexual ‘stunts,’ to make the act more exciting.” If their hosts’ sexual frankness didn’t kick the girls’ culture shock to new heights, their flexible definition of gender did: children’s gender was not considered fixed until after puberty and transvestism was not only accepted but merited its own confirmation ceremony, after which some homosexual Mohaves crossed over to become same-sex wives or (less often) husbands. 19”
― Margot Mifflin, The Blue Tattoo: The Life of Olive Oatman

“the Mohaves were highly nationalistic, their sense of patriotism had always been more a mental than a territorial construct—one that would soon be tested.”
― Margot Mifflin, The Blue Tattoo: The Life of Olive Oatman

“The blueprint for their ruin had already been drafted. Just as they had had no idea that their land had been handed from Spain to Mexico in 1821, the Mohaves were probably unaware that the United States had acquired the region at the end of the Mexican-American War in 1848. Soon after, with no perceived conflict of interest, the Department of the Interior had combined the government agency that was designed to protect Indians (the Bureau of Indian Affairs) with the departments responsible for assessing, dividing, and redistributing their land (the General Land Office and the Geological Survey and Territorial Office). “Indian Removal” was the precursor to a transcontinental railroad, and in its first two years of statehood, California spent over a million dollars executing it. 12”
― Margot Mifflin, The Blue Tattoo: The Life of Olive Oatman

“The challenge of separating fact from fiction in retelling the Oatman saga has not been easy. Debunking the rumors that swirled around her in life and death is a fairly simple matter of fact checking; distinguishing between what she truly experienced in captivity and how Stratton presented it in Captivity of the Oatman Girls, the biography he ghostwrote for her, is more challenging. But by analyzing Stratton’s motivations in telling her story, his knowledge of and attitude toward Indians and his theological and colonial vision of the West, and by examining the passages in Captivity of the Oatman Girls that are provably false, a clear pattern of manipulation emerges, and it is possible to disentangle—to a degree—his story from hers.”
― Margot Mifflin, The Blue Tattoo: The Life of Olive Oatman

“A hundred and fifty years after Oatman’s return, writers—amateur and professional, religious and scholarly—continue to rework it, invariably reflecting their own cultural fantasies as vividly as Oatman’s particular experience.”
― Margot Mifflin, The Blue Tattoo: The Life of Olive Oatman