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 year 1857, by
LORENZO D. OATMAN,
in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the Northern District of the
State of California.
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
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 Fe 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, 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, afterward escaped, but with severe wounds and serious injury.