Captivity of the Oatman Girls / Being an Interesting Narrative of Life Among the Apache and Mohave Indians

by R. B. Stratton

ARRIVAL OF OLIVE AT FORT YUMA.

From this Francisco was promoted and became a “Tie” of his tribe, and with characteristic pride and haughtiness of bearing, showed the capabilities of the Indian to appreciate honors and preferment, by looking with disdain and contempt upon his peers, and treating them thus in the presence of the whites.

Miss Olive was taken in by a very excellent family residing at the fort at the time, and every kindness and tender regard bestowed upon her that her generous host and hostess could make minister to her contentment and comfort. She had come over three hundred and fifty miles during the last ten days; frequently (as many as ten times) she and her guides were compelled to swim the swollen streams, running and rushing to the top of their banks with ice-water. The kind daughter of the chief, with an affection that had increased with every month and year of their association, showed more concern and eagerness for the wellbeing of “Olivia” than her own. She would carry, through the long and toilsome day, the roll of blankets that they shared together during the night, and seemed very much concerned and anxious lest something might yet prevent her safe arrival at the place of destination.

Olive was soon apprised of the place of residence of her brother, whom she had so long regarded as dead, and also of his untiring efforts, during the last few years, for the rescue of his sister.

“It was some time,” she says, “before I could realize that he was yet alive. The last time I saw him he was dragged in his own blood to the rocks upon the brow of that precipice; I thought I knew him to be dead.” And it was not until all the circumstances of his escape were detailed to her that she could fully credit his rescue and preservation. Lorenzo and his trading companion, Mr. Low, were about ten days in reaching the fort; each step and hour of that long and dangerous journey his mind was haunted by the fear that the rescued girl might not be his sister. But he had not been long at the fort ere his trembling heart was made glad by the attestation of his own eyes to the reality. He saw that it was his own sister (the same, though now grown and much changed) who, with Mary Ann, had poured their bitter cries upon his bewildered senses five years before, as they were hurried away by the unheeding Apaches, leaving him for dead with the rest of the family.

Language was not made to give utterance to the feelings that rise, and swell, and throb through the human bosom upon such a meeting as this. For five years they had not looked in each other’s eyes; the last image of that brother pressed upon the eye and memory of his affectionate sister, was one that could only make any reference to it in her mind one of painful, torturing horror. She had seen him when (as she supposed) life had departed, dragged in the most inhuman manner to one side; one of a whole family who had been butchered before her eyes. The last remembrance of that sister by her brother, was of her wailings and heart-rending sighs over the massacre of the rest of her family, and her consignment to a barbarous captivity or torturing death. She was grown to womanhood; she was changed, but despite the written traces of her outdoor life and barbarous treatment left upon her appearance and person, he could read the assuring evidences of her family identity. They met, they wept, they embraced each other in the tenderest manner; heart throbbed to heart, and pulse beat to pulse; but for nearly one hour not one word could either speak!

The past! the checkered past! with its bright and its dark, its sorrow and its joy, rested upon that hour of speechless joy. The season of bright childhood, their mutual toils and anxieties of nearly one year, while traveling over that gloomy way; that horrid night of massacre, with its wailing and praying, mingled with fiendish whooping and yelling, remembered in connection with its rude separation; the five years of tears, loneliness, and captivity among savages, through which she had grown up to womanhood; the same period of his captivity to the dominion of a harassing anxiety and solicitude, through which he had grown up to manhood, all pressed upon the time of that meeting, to choke utterance, and stir the soul with emotions that could only pour themselves out in tears and sighs.

A large company of Americans, Indians, and Mexicans, were present and witnessed the meeting of Lorenzo and his sister. Some of them are now in the city of San Francisco, to testify that not an unmoved heart nor a dry eye witnessed it. Even the rude and untutored Indian, raised his brawny hand to wipe away the unbidden tear that stole upon his cheek as he stood speechless and wonder-struck! When the feelings became controllable, and words came to their relief, they dwelt and discoursed for hours upon the gloomy and pain-written past. In a few days they were safe at the Monté, and were there met by a cousin from Rogue River Valley, Oregon, who had heard of the rescue of Olive, and had come to take her to his own home.

At the Monté they were visited during a stay of two weeks, in waiting for the steamer, by large numbers of people, who bestowed upon the rescued captive all possible manifestations of interest in her welfare, and hearty rejoicing at her escape from the night of prison-life and suffering so long endured.