Synopses & Reviews
In 1851 Olive Oatman was a thirteen-year old pioneer traveling west toward Zion, with her Mormon family. Within a decade, she was a white Indian with a chin tattoo, caught between cultures.
The Blue Tattoo tells the harrowing story of this forgotten heroine of frontier America. Orphaned when her family was brutally killed by Yavapai Indians, Oatman lived as a slave to her captors for a year before being traded to the Mohave, who tattooed her face and raised her as their own. She was fully assimilated and perfectly happy when, at nineteen, she was ransomed back to white society. She became an instant celebrity, but the price of fame was high and the pain of her ruptured childhood lasted a lifetime.
Based on historical records, including letters and diaries of Oatmanand#8217;s friends and relatives, The Blue Tattoo is the first book to examine her life from her childhood in Illinoisand#8212;including the massacre, her captivity, and her return to white societyand#8212;to her later years as a wealthy bankerand#8217;s wife in Texas.
Oatmanand#8217;s story has since become legend, inspiring artworks, fiction, film, radio plays, and even an episode of Death Valley Days starring Ronald Reagan. Its themes, from the perils of religious utopianism to the permeable border between civilization and savagery, are deeply rooted in the American psyche. Oatmanand#8217;s blue tattoo was a cultural symbol that evoked both the imprint of her Mohave past and the lingering scars of westward expansion. It also served as a reminder of her deepest secret, fully explored here for the first time: she never wanted to go home.
and#160;
Review
“Margot Mifflin is a great storyteller. . . . The Blue Tattoo is well written and well researched; it re-opens the story of white women and men going West and Native people trying to survive these travels.”June Namias, Pacific Historical Review -- Mark D. Van Ells - Journal of Popular Culture
Review
“Mifflins treatment of Olives sojourns [provides] an excellent teaching opportunity about Americas ongoing captivation with ethnic/gender crossings.”Western American Literature -- Pacific Historical Review
Review
“Mifflin engagingly describes Oatmans ordeal and theorizes about its impact on Oatman herself as well as on popular imagination…. Her book adds nuance to Oatmans story and also humanizes the Mohave who adopted her. Recommended for general readers as well as students and scholars.”Library Journal -- Western American Literature
Review
"Blyth's argument, as well as his narrative and use of traditional and non-traditional sources, is impressive and provides a framework for understanding the permeating role of violence in two borderlands communities."and#8212;Brandon Jett, Southwestern American Literature
Review
"Chiricahua and Janos represents a valuable addition to the growing literature examining violence in zones of intercultural contact, both in the Americas and around the globe."and#8212;Paul Conrad, Journal of Interdisciplinary History
Review
andquot;Built on solid archival research and making good use early on of Chiricahua oral tradition, Chiricahua and Janos adds to the growing body of United Statesandndash; Mexico border lands studies focused on indigenous autonomy of action.andquot;andmdash;Jesanduacute;s F. De La Teja, Hispanic American Historical Review
Review
and#8220;At a time when western historians have rediscovered the borderlands to great effect,
Chiricahua and Janos presents a valuable new framework for thinking about Spanish-Indian relations in the American Southwest. It is a substantial contribution to the fields of Borderlands and Native American history.and#8221;and#8212;Karl Jacoby, author of
Shadows at Dawn: A Borderlands Massacre and the Violence of Historyand#160;
Review
and#8220;The story this book has to tell will prove important and compelling.
Chiricahua and Janos reflects trends in a burgeoning historiography of the Spanish-Indian borderlands, especially with its scholarly attention to Indian communities as independent political actors in larger narratives of imperial, national, and international expansion and conflict.and#8221;and#8212;Juliana Barr, author of
Peace Came in the Form of a Woman: Indians and Spaniards in the Texas Borderlands
Review
and#8220;A thesis driven book backed by detailed narratives.and#8221;and#8212;Wayne E. Lee,
America Historical Reviewand#160;and#160;
Review
and#8220;[An] example of the violent peace that cultural differences and local goals can produce.and#8221;and#8212;Robert C. Galgano, The Journal of American Historyand#160;
Review
and#8220;This inaugural contribution to a new borderlands and transcultural series from the University of Nebraska Press provides a compelling microhistory while addressing big-picture questions about the region.and#8221;and#8212;Carla Gerona, Western Historical Quarterlyand#160;
Review
"This is an intriguing and welcome addition to the literature on the conflict between Apaches, Spaniards, Mexicans, and Americans."and#8212;Robert K. Watt, Journal of Arizona History
Review
"Thoroughly researched and clearly and concisely written. . . . This book is recommended for anyone, even the more casual reader, interested in the earlier frontier history of the Greater Southwest."and#8212;Dennis Reinhartz, Terrae Incognitae
Review
and#8220;This revisionist approach is applicable to border areas around the world, as well as any place where violence is endemic.and#8221;and#8212;J. A. Stuntz, Choice
Review
andquot;Aand#160;thoughtful documentation of one woman's struggle to maintain her ancestral homeland.andquot;andmdash;Booklist
Review
and#8220;With great insight and sensitivity, Dawn Marsh has pieced together Hannah Freemanand#8217;s story. All who have ever wondered what happened to Pennsylvaniaand#8217;s Native people should read this book.and#8221;and#8212;Nancy Shoemaker, author of A Strange Likeness: Becoming Red and White in Eighteenth-Century North America
Review
and#8220;Using the closely examined life of a single eighteenth-century Native American woman, Dawn Marsh convincingly challenges Pennsylvaniaand#8217;s claim to a more just and humane treatment of its indigenous peoples, persuasively contending that Native Americans adopted complex strategies to preserve their cultural heritage, and explores the significance of the continuing mythology of and#8216;Indian Hannahand#8217; Freemanand#8212;all in a good read.and#8221;and#8212;Melton McLaurin, author of Celia, A Slave
Review
"This volume is an act of resurrection, well worth the contemporary reader's immersion in another life and time."and#8212;Annie Dawid, High Country News
Review
andquot;Katie Gale offers an imaginative reflection on human dignity and resilience.andquot;andmdash;Lisa Blee, Western Historical Quarterly
Review
and#8220;Katie Galeand#8217;s story is unique in its scale; few accounts of the nineteenth-century Northwest focus on the life of a single Native woman and her family. LLyn De Danaanand#8217;s writing is big history made deeply human, offering insights not just into Native American history but also into the arrival of industrial capitalism on Puget Sound, the politics of statehood and race in Washington, and the profound transformation of local landscapes.and#8221;and#8212;Coll Thrush, author of Native Seattle: Histories from the Crossing-Over Place
Review
and#8220;I have followed LLyn De Danaanand#8217;s writing path for years now. She is talented and bold, and this new book puts her firmly where she belongsand#8212;at the heart of the American voice. Good stuff, highly recommended.and#8221;and#8212;Luis Alberto Urrea, author of The Deviland#8217;s Highway and Into the Beautiful North
Synopsis
In 1851 Olive Oatman was a thirteen-year-old pioneer traveling west toward Zion with her Mormon family. Within a decade, she was a white Indian with a chin tattoo, caught between cultures.
The Blue Tattoo tells the harrowing story of this forgotten heroine of frontier America. Orphaned when her family was brutally killed by Yavapai Indians, Oatman lived as a slave to her captors for a year before being traded to the Mohaves, who tattooed her face and raised her as their own. She was fully assimilated and perfectly happy when, at nineteen, she was ransomed back to white society. She became an instant celebrity, but the price of fame was high and the pain of her ruptured childhood lasted a lifetime.
Based on historical records, including letters and diaries of Oatmans friends and relatives, The Blue Tattoo is the first book to examine her life from her childhood in Illinois, through the massacre, her captivity, and her return to white society, to her later years as a wealthy bankers wife in Texas. This Bison Books edition features a postscript by the author with a newly discovered letter from Oatman.
Synopsis
2019 Tucson Weekly "40 Essential Arizona Books" pick
2014 One Book Yuma selection
2010 Best of the Best from the University Presses (ALA) selection
2010 Caroline Bancroft History Prize Finalist
2009 Southwest Book of the Year
In 1851 Olive Oatman was a thirteen-year old pioneer traveling west toward Zion, with her Mormon family. Within a decade, she was a white Indian with a chin tattoo, caught between cultures. The Blue Tattoo tells the harrowing story of this forgotten heroine of frontier America. Orphaned when her family was brutally killed by Yavapai Indians, Oatman lived as a slave to her captors for a year before being traded to the Mohave, who tattooed her face and raised her as their own. She was fully assimilated and perfectly happy when, at nineteen, she was ransomed back to white society. She became an instant celebrity, but the price of fame was high and the pain of her ruptured childhood lasted a lifetime. Based on historical records, including letters and diaries of Oatman's friends and relatives, The Blue Tattoo is the first book to examine her life from her childhood in Illinois--including the massacre, her captivity, and her return to white society--to her later years as a wealthy banker's wife in Texas. Oatman's story has since become legend, inspiring artworks, fiction, film, radio plays, and even an episode of Death Valley Days starring Ronald Reagan. Its themes, from the perils of religious utopianism to the permeable border between civilization and savagery, are deeply rooted in the American psyche. Oatman's blue tattoo was a cultural symbol that evoked both the imprint of her Mohave past and the lingering scars of westward expansion. It also served as a reminder of her deepest secret, fully explored here for the first time: she never wanted to go home.
Purchase the audio edition.
Synopsis
"The Blue Tattoo is well written and well researched; it re-opens the story of white women and men going West and Native people trying to survive these travels."--June Namias, Pacific Historical Review
2019 Tucson Weekly "40 Essential Arizona Books" pick
2014 One Book Yuma selection
2010 Best of the Best from the University Presses (ALA) selection
2010 Caroline Bancroft History Prize Finalist
2009 Southwest Book of the Year
In 1851 Olive Oatman was a thirteen-year old pioneer traveling west toward Zion, with her Mormon family. Within a decade, she was a white Indian with a chin tattoo, caught between cultures. The Blue Tattoo tells the harrowing story of this forgotten heroine of frontier America. Orphaned when her family was brutally killed by Yavapai Indians, Oatman lived as a slave to her captors for a year before being traded to the Mohave, who tattooed her face and raised her as their own. She was fully assimilated and perfectly happy when, at nineteen, she was ransomed back to white society. She became an instant celebrity, but the price of fame was high and the pain of her ruptured childhood lasted a lifetime.
Based on historical records, including letters and diaries of Oatman's friends and relatives, The Blue Tattoo is the first book to examine her life from her childhood in Illinois--including the massacre, her captivity, and her return to white society--to her later years as a wealthy banker's wife in Texas. Oatman's story has since become legend, inspiring artworks, fiction, film, radio plays, and even an episode of Death Valley Days starring Ronald Reagan. Its themes, from the perils of religious utopianism to the permeable border between civilization and savagery, are deeply rooted in the American psyche. Oatman's blue tattoo was a cultural symbol that evoked both the imprint of her Mohave past and the lingering scars of westward expansion. It also served as a reminder of her deepest secret, fully explored here for the first time: she never wanted to go home.
Synopsis
2019 Tucson Weekly "40 Essential Arizona Books" pick
2014 One Book Yuma selection
2010 Best of the Best from the University Presses (ALA) selection
2010 Caroline Bancroft History Prize Finalist
2009 Southwest Book of the Year
"The Blue Tattoo is well written and well researched; it re-opens the story of white women and men going West and Native people trying to survive these travels."--June Namias, Pacific Historical Review
In 1851 Olive Oatman was a thirteen-year old pioneer traveling west toward Zion, with her Mormon family. Within a decade, she was a white Indian with a chin tattoo, caught between cultures. The Blue Tattoo tells the harrowing story of this forgotten heroine of frontier America. Orphaned when her family was brutally killed by Yavapai Indians, Oatman lived as a slave to her captors for a year before being traded to the Mohave, who tattooed her face and raised her as their own. She was fully assimilated and perfectly happy when, at nineteen, she was ransomed back to white society. She became an instant celebrity, but the price of fame was high and the pain of her ruptured childhood lasted a lifetime. Based on historical records, including letters and diaries of Oatman's friends and relatives, The Blue Tattoo is the first book to examine her life from her childhood in Illinois--including the massacre, her captivity, and her return to white society--to her later years as a wealthy banker's wife in Texas.
Oatman's story has since become legend, inspiring artworks, fiction, film, radio plays, and even an episode of Death Valley Days starring Ronald Reagan. Its themes, from the perils of religious utopianism to the permeable border between civilization and savagery, are deeply rooted in the American psyche. Oatman's blue tattoo was a cultural symbol that evoked both the imprint of her Mohave past and the lingering scars of westward expansion. It also served as a reminder of her deepest secret, fully explored here for the first time: she never wanted to go home.
Synopsis
Borderlands violence, so explosive in our own time, has deep roots in history. Lance R. Blythand#8217;s study of Chiricahua Apaches and the presidio of Janos in the U.S.-Mexican borderlands reveals how no single entity had a monopoly on coercion, and how violence became the primary means by which relations were established, maintained, or altered both within and between communities.
and#160;and#160;For more than two centuries, violence was at the center of the relationships by which Janos and Chiricahua formed their communities. Violence created families by turning boys into men through campaigns and raids, which ultimately led to marriage and also determined the provisioning and security of these families; acts of revenge and retaliation similarly governed their attempts to secure themselves even as trade and exchange continued sporadically. This revisionist work reveals how during the Spanish, Mexican, and American eras, elements of both conflict and accommodation constituted these two communities, which previous historians have often treated as separate and antagonistic. By showing not only the negative aspects of violence but also its potentially positive outcomes, Chiricahua and Janos helps us to understand violence not only in the southwestern borderlands but in borderland regions generally around the world.
and#160;
Synopsis
On July 28, 1797, an elderly Lenape woman stood before the newly appointed almsman of Pennsylvaniaand#8217;s Chester County and delivered a brief account of her life. In a sad irony, Hannah Freeman was establishing her residencyand#8212;a claim that paved the way for her removal to the poorhouse. Ultimately, however, it meant the final removal from the ancestral land she had so tenaciously maintained. Thus was William Pennand#8217;s and#8220;peaceable kingdomand#8221; preserved.and#160;
A Lenape among the Quakers reconstructs Hannah Freemanand#8217;s history, traveling from the days of her grandmothers before European settlement to the beginning of the nineteenth century. The story that emerges is one of persistence and resilience, as and#8220;Indian Hannahand#8221; negotiates life with the Quaker neighbors who employ her, entrust their children to her, seek out her healing skills, and, when she is weakened by sickness and age, care for her. And yet these are the same neighbors whose families have dispossessed hers. Fascinating in its own right, Hannah Freemanand#8217;s life is also remarkable for its unique view of a Native American woman in a colonial community during a time of dramatic transformation and upheaval. In particular it expands our understanding of colonial history and the Native experience that history often renders silent.
Synopsis
A gravestone, a mention in local archives, stories still handed down around Oyster Bay: the outline of a woman begins to emerge and with her the world she inhabited, so rich in tradition, so shaken by violent change. Katie Kettle Gale was born into a Salish community in Puget Sound in the 1850s, just as settlers were migrating into what would become Washington State. With her people forced out of their accustomed hunting and fishing grounds into ill-provisioned island camps and reservations, Katie Gale sought her fortune in Oyster Bay. In that early outpost of multiculturalismand#8212;where Native Americans and immigrants from the eastern United States, Europe, and Asia vied for economic, social, political, and legal powerand#8212;a woman like Gale could make her way.
As LLyn De Danaan mines the historical record, we begin to see Gale, a strong-willed Native woman whoand#160;cofounded a successful oyster business, then wrested it away from her Euro-American husband, a man with whom she raised children and who ultimately made her life unbearable. Steeped in sadnessand#8212;with a lost home and a broken marriage, children dying in their teens, and tuberculosis claiming her at forty-threeand#8212;Katie Galeand#8217;s story is also one of remarkable pluck, a tale of hard work and ingenuity, gritty initiative and bad luck that is, ultimately, essentially American.
About the Author
Margot Mifflin is an author and journalist who writes about women, art, and contemporary culture. The author of Bodies of Subversion: A Secret History of Women and Tattoo, she has written for many publications, including the New York Times, the New Yorker, Entertainment Weekly, the Believer, and Salon.com. Mifflin is an assistant professor in the English Department of Lehman College of the City University of New York (CUNY) and directs the Arts and Culture program at CUNYand#8217;s Graduate School of Journalism, where she also teaches.and#160;