The Oatman Massacre: A Tale of Desert Captivity and Survival by Brian McGinty (review)

8 8 W e s t e r n A m e r ic a n L it e r a t u r e S p r in g 2 0 0 7 over a large part of Grey’spapers. In the case of the aforementioned diaries and photographs, Pauly says he was allowed to inspect them and publish a general description but not to quote or otherwise reproduce them. Nevertheless, he excerpts plenty of passages from letters referring explicitly to Grey’s often contentious liaisons and the peculiar conjugality he and Dolly somehow sustained. In sorting out this scattered body of correspondence, Pauly acknowledges his debt to earlier editors and biographers such as Candace Kant, Joe Wheeler, and G. M. Farley, but he surpasses these worthy predeces­ sors in using this material to present an ambitiously detailed and carefully contextualized account. Furthermore, the novels themselves are not neglected. Following the lead of May and Jane Tompkins, he goes so far as to map Grey’s plots and characters against the author’speripatetic life, reading them as imagi­ native transformations of struggles with his active libido, his recurrent bouts of depression, and the various commercial, domestic, and sporting worlds through which he wandered. By showing a polite regard for Grey’s accomplishments but a healthy skep­ ticism of his character and talent, Pauly finally exorcises the sycophantic spirit of the first biographer, Frank Gruber, whose 1970 Zane Grey polished a con­ ventional portrait of the writer in accordance with the Victorian morality of his novels and the family’s interest in posthumously marketing the still-famous name. In an important sense, however, this new and widely noticed book is only the latest and most objective of the authorized biographies. Not until the complete trove of Greyiana is released to public collections and all restrictions lifted on its use can we enjoy full confidence that every twisting trail has been followed and every hidden valley explored. Still, Thomas Pauly has ridden more deeply than anyone yet into this particular map of the West. The Oatman Massacre: A Tale of Desert Captivity and Survival. By Brian McGinty. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2005. 288 pages, $27.95. Reviewed by Wendy Witherspoon University of Southern California, Los Angeles The literary history of the Indian captivity narrative is strewn with inaccura­ cies and racial prejudices, and the work of historical correction in many cases is long overdue. The story of the 1851 massacre of the Oatman family and the subsequent captivity of two Oatman girls is certainly a case in point, and Brian McGinty’s investigation of the event is a welcome rectification of a significant legend in the history of the Southwest. McGinty reconstructs the Oatman family’s ordeal as it joins the “Brewsterites,” a group of dissident Mormons who rejected Brigham Young’s claim to the church presidency and who followed the boy “prophet,” James Colin Brewster. Brewsterites believed the “true” promised land would be built B o o k r e v ie w s in present-day Arizona at the confluence of the Gila and Colorado rivers. About fifteen Brewsterite families set out for this “true” Mormon Zion from Independence, Missouri, in 1850. Arguments between families began almost immediately, however, and by the time the Oatmans came in sight of the Gila River in February 1851, they were all alone. As they rested on a cliff overlooking the river, the family was attacked by a band of southwestern Indians. The attackers killed most of the family but left an unconscious, fourteen-year-old boy named Lorenzo for dead and took thirteen-year-old Olive and eight-year-old Mary Ann captive. Mary Ann died in captivity, and Olive lived with the Mohave Indians for six years before being located and returned to white society. Royal B. Stratton’s sensationalizing account of the story, Captivity of the Oatman Girls (1857), sold briskly throughout its first decade in print and never went out of print for the next 150 years. Proceeds from the book and from Olive’s lecture tours, where Olive displayed the distinctive chin tattoos she received during her years with the Mohaves, provided necessary income for Olive. But...