The Blue Tattoo: The Life of Olive Oatman (review)

Potential readers of The Blue Tattoo might fear an Oatman overdose, given that in 2005 the University of Oklahoma Press published Brian McGinty's The Oatman Massacre (see WAL 42.1 for review). In Margot Mifflin's work, the focus is on Olive Oatman as an "accidental ethnographer" who lived among the Mohave of Arizona/California during "their last decade of sovereignty" (6). Mifflin effectively describes the southwestern desert terrain as teeming with indigenous people who were themselves harassed by shifting political and territorial borders. This is the land over which the Oatmans traveled—or trespassed. In fact, neither Olive Oatman, nor Mifflin (nor McGinty) can definitively say which group participated in the initial killing of the Oatman party. Mifflin's treatment of Oatman's life among the Mohave, to whom she was eventually traded, is the more fully realized of the two accounts.

One strength of Mifflin's book is its lively narrative prose that is informed by recent scholarship but does not parrot it. The Blue Tattoo also contains unconventional insights about Oatman's body, from her vagina to her chin. Mifflin's earlier book was on the tradition of women's tattoos, so she is fearless when writing the body. The epilogue, "Oatman's Literary Half-Life," deftly explores reiterations of Olive, the most obvious being María Amparo Ruiz de Burton's Who Would Have Thought It?, a Death Valley Days episode featuring Ronald Reagan, and Elmore Leonard's "The Tonto Woman."

Both Mifflin and McGinty faced the same problem when trying to find the "true" story of the Oatman massacre. In 1857, Olive's experience was overwritten (in both senses of the word) by the author of her captivity narrative, R. B. Stratton. Though McGinty and Mifflin scoff at Stratton's inaccuracies, they often quote his work as if Olive were telling her story. While Mifflin attempts to distinguish the sparse historical record of Olive's experiences from Stratton's hateful rendition of it, she (like Olive, who lectured with Stratton) is dependent on him. Judging from Oatman's own lecture notes, Mifflin observes, "For her own survival, Olive had publicly chosen between binaries. She was an Indian hater … not an Indian lover yearning for her lost tribe" (179–80). Like Sophie's choice, Olive's "choice" may have entailed leaving behind her Mohave children. There were rumors, but even experienced journalists Mifflin and McGinty can only speculate.

If I were choosing between these two books for classroom use, I would select The Blue Tattoo. It provides a larger background of captivity narratives by women, including those who chose to stay with their tribes. Mifflin is most attentive to Olive's life among the Indians, while McGinty spends the first fifty-three pages on Mormon history and its outgrowths that proved a fatal attraction to Olive's father, Roys. (Stratton dubs him Royse, while Mifflin uses Royce. Is there so little archival information that even his name eludes the authors?) Mifflin's treatment of Olive's sojourns among Indians would provide an excellent teaching opportunity about America's ongoing captivation with ethnic/gender crossings, where "truth" is held captive by enigma.