Olive Oatman
Newspaper series written by Lowell Parker
A chill mid-March wind blew across Texas Panhandle plains the morning they laid Mrs. Frank B. Fairchild to rest.
It was a day as bleak as the occasion was somber. Nevertheless, almost everybody in the village of Sherman turned out for the church service, and many joined the cortege to the cemetery.
Mrs. Fairchild had lived in Sherman around 30 years, and everybody there knew and loved her for her good works. During those years she had taken loving care of several orphans, adopted another as her own and in various ways proven herself a kindly, charitable woman of fine character.
***
All who filed past the open casket noticed for the last time the blue tattoo lines that still marred Mrs. Fairchild's chin, and sight of this disfigurement caused them to remark that at last Olive had peacefully reached the end of a long and fearsome road. They all knew the story of Olive's life, and all knew that before her marriage Mrs. Fairchild was Olive Oatman.
And who, a present generation may ask, was Olive Oatman?
Well, Olive Oatman was a 14-year-old, short, plump but not fat, little farm girl back in northern Illinois when her father, in the year 1850, decided to join a Mormon wagon train forming at Independence, Mo. He hoped to set forth for a new life in a model society to be established on the banks of the Colorado River.
That decision led Royse Oatman, his wife and four of their seven children to sudden and horrible death at Oatman Flat, a few miles west of present-day Gila Bend.
It was a decision that led to an even more horrible fate for daughter Olive and her little sister, Mary Ann, 7, for they were to become captives and slaves of Indian marauders. Mary Ann was to die after three years of brutal mistreatment and undernourishment. Olive, older and stronger, was to survive until her rescue some two years after her sister's death.
She and her brother, Lorenzo, a 15-year-old who escaped capture, were to be the only survivors of what became known as the Oatman Massacre, one of the cruelest, bloodiest episodes in early Arizona history.
Hard to believe nowadays that it happened right here in Maricopa County. Hard to believe that a journey that began so happily and optimistically could end so tragically.
Their hopes were so high, their dream so bright when the emigrants departed Independence on Aug. 10, 1850, with James Brewster, devout and idealistic, at their head. Theirs was a sizable party consisting of 50 men, women and children, 20 covered wagons and a drove of cattle.
Southward and westward they wound their way, and all went well until they reached the village of Mora in what is now northeastern New Mexico. But there the party broke up, for some were dissatisfied with Brewster's leadership and others wanted to change their ultimate destination to California.
By now it was October.
At a trial fork just outside Mora, 30 of the band turned toward Utah Territory, hoping to reach Los Angeles. With Royce Oatman as leader, the others headed southward.
***
It was then that trouble began. Indians stole some of their horses and most of their cattle. One man died. Food was in short supply.
But the Oatman party pressed on through country that then was still a part of Mexico. They reached Santa Cruz, just east of Nogales, and then proceeded northward to Tubac and old Tucson. There they rested for a month, fearing dangers ahead to such an extent that only three families finally set forth for the Pima Indian villages on the Gila River some 90 miles away.
Reaching the villages, the by now small, poorly equipped party felt fairly safe because friendly Pimas, enemies of the Apaches, always drove marauding warriors away. Again the emigrants rested, and again they split up, with only Royse Oatman, 41 and in ill health, determined to forge on across the desert to the safety of Ft. Yuma.
So, on March 11, 1851, the Oatmans, man and wife and seven children, the oldest 17-year-old Lucy, began a 190-mile trek across Indian-infested, almost uncharted wilderness. Exhausted by their earlier trials, they were tired, worn and meagerly supplied. But Royse was determined to press onward.
The Oatman Massacre was only eight days away.
A Gila River ford, about 70 miles southwest of present day Phoenix as the crow flies, was the halfway mark between Pima villages and the Colorado. This point the bedraggled party reached on March 18. And there began a series of mishaps that were to lead to the massacre next day.
***
First, their wagon mired on an island, forcing the frightened family to spend the night in mid-stream and convinced father Royse that his four oxen were nearing end of their tether. Nevertheless, these worn beasts next morning mustered enough strength to pull out of the mire and drag the wagon to the opposite shore.
But the team was unable to pull up the slope to a mesa later to be known as Oatman Flat. This necessitated unloading the wagon, toting its contents by hand up to the flat, and there reloading.
By then it was late in the day, and wife Mary set about preparing a scanty meal, She was in the midst of this domestic endeavor when some 20 fierce-appearing Tonto Apaches arrived on the scene.
Little Olve Oatman, was first to sport a band of Indians approaching her family's emigrant camp on a level flat above the Gila River about 20 miles northwest of today's town of Gila Bend. She warned her father and he watched apprehensively as the red men neared.
Only one close-up look was needed to determine that these were dangerous Indians. Their faces were painted and they bore little resemblance to the friendly Pimas and Papagos with whom the Oatmans previously had spent some time.
***
However, this band of about 30 at first seemed peaceful enough. Speaking in Spanish, they asked for tobacco and father Royse Oatman gave them all he had. Then they asked for bread, and Mrs. Oatman handed some around. When they wanted more, Oatman explained he could spare no more.
That triggered the tragedy that was to become known as the Oatman Massacre.
Father Royse and the boy, Lorenzo, were the first struck down with war clubs. Lucy, oldest of the daughters, was clubbed to death when she tried to protect Olive and Mary Ann who were being dragged away by two of the savages. Mrs. Oatman clung desperately to her three youngest, a display of maternalism that in no way softened the hearts of their attackers.
It was all over in minutes. Father, mother, brothers and sisters clubbed to death before the horrified eyes of Olive and Mary Ann.
While the two youngsters sobbed hysterically, the Tonto Apaches broke open food boxes, tore the wagon apart and jerked off their victims' shoes, even taking those of Olive and Mary Ann. Carrying the girls in their arms, the bloodstained marauders fled across the Gila to their own camp, where they staged a celebration.
***
As soon as their feast was over, the Indians set forth through darkness, driving the barefoot girls before them. Little Mary Ann kept up the pace only because she was whipped every time she faltered. Later, when she appeared half dead, one of the Indians carried her in her arms.
In three agonizing days and nights the captive girls traveled 200 or more miles until at last they reached a village, a thatched-hut settlement somewhere in the Tonto Basin. Again, there was a big celebration, but little rest or comfort for the tired, footsore girls. They were put to work digging roots almost immediately.
Neither the girls nor their captors were to know for some years to come that another Oatman survived; brother Lorenzo, left for dead beside his father, was very much alive.
Although badly beaten and bloodstained, the boy regained consciousness not long after his attackers fled the Oatman campsite. A resolute youngster, Lorenzo took a tearful look at the bodies around him and then crawled toward the river. Groggy and at times only semiconscious, he started to walk the 90 miles back to the Pima Villages.
He had covered about 30 miles of the distance in two days when, according to one historian, he was picked up by two mounted Pimas who carried him the rest of the way. Another version has it that two emigrant families, who earlier had traveled with the Oatmans, found Lorenzo limping along the trail. Frightened by his report of what happened, they all returned to the Pima Villages.
There Lorenzo quickly recovered from his injuries and joined a reinforced party of emigrants headed for California. What thoughts that boy must have had as he again approached the bluff that later was to be known as Oatman Flat. But, still, he had courage enough to examine the massacre site and conclude that two of his sisters had been carried away.
***
Consequently, upon reaching Ft. Yuma, the boy tried to interest people there in a search for Olive and Mary Ann. His pleas were ignored, and finally he went on to San Francisco.
Meanwhile, his sisters were undergoing the horrors of slavery. They were the lowest of the low among a degraded tribe who took pride in the fact that they were considered the dregs of Apachedom. For a year the girls were treated brutally, forced to work at menial tasks and made to exist mainly on a diet of roots and insects.
Then came rescue -- of a sort. They were sold to a party of Mohaves who occasionally journeyed eastward from their village on the Colorado River to barter with Tonto Apaches. Among the visiting party was Topee-ka, daughter of a chief and about the same age as Olive. She took a liking to the sisters.
***
So now another long journey lay ahead. It took 10 days at about 35 miles a day to reach Topee-ka's village on the river somewhere near today's Needles, California.
Living with Topee-ka in the chief's house, Olive and Mary Ann found better treatment, but they still were captives, still slaves.
To make sure tat no one mistook their status, medicine men tattooed four vertical lines of blue dots on each girl's chin, an unerasable sign of their servitude.
Mohave Indians holding Mary Ann and Olive Oatman as slaves lived a hand-to-mouth existence even though they were a shade above the economic and social scale of Tonto Apaches who had captured the girls originally.
These Mohaves were farmers of a sort, and abundance of their crop depended mostly upon the erratic rise and fall of Colorado River waters. Roots, berries, bugs and occasionally some wild game supplemented what little they grew.
***
Naturally, their two white laves seldom had anything more to eat than leftovers from the squaws' specialty of the day.
Little Mary Ann, by now nearly 10, grew weaker and weaker. As death neared, she and Olive joined pitifully in signing hymns they still remembered, a devotional exercise that bemused but also entertained their owners. Finally, Mary Ann died and Olive faced alone a future too horrible to contemplate.
However, Olive was not to be the tribe's sole captive very long, for the rains came, food was abundant and men of the village regained their strength. Renewed energy put the tribe in a feisty mood and a band of warriors departed on a long journey to pick a scrap with their favorite enemy, the Cocopahs.
***
To her dismay, Olive learned that if the war party suffered any casualties her life would be sacrificed. She lived under this cloud of apprehension five long months until the warriors returned unharmed with several captives, among them a young Cocopah wife and mother named Nowereha.
Grief-stricken over separation from her family, Nowereha soon ran away. She was recaptured and, as an object lesson, was nailed with thorns to a huge cross. After hours on the cross, she finally was killed by a fusillade of arrows.
Olive was forced to occupy a front-row seat for this fearsome show.
Thus, time went by, just one long, hazardous day after another. Sometimes Olive was well-treated. Sometimes her masters, and everybody was her master, abused and threatened her. Any moment might be her last.
But, meanwhile, her brother, Lorenzo, remained convinced that his two sisters were being held captive somewhere in the desert wilderness. After three years in San Francisco, the boy, now nearly 20, moved to Los Angeles where he hoped to pick up some scrap of information from travelers coming through from Ft. Yuma.
Late in the year 1854 Lorenzo wrote pleadingly to Ft. Yuma and the letter, fortunately, fell into the hands of a kindly enlisted carpenter named Henry Grinnell. Grinnell, a newcomer to Yuma, was intrigued and began making inquiries. A year went by before he learned that the Oatman girls had been traded to a Mohave band and that only Olive was still alive.
With no help from officialdom, Grinnell persisted in his search, finally obtaining the aid of a Yuma Indian courier and interpreter named Antonio Francisco. And finally Lt. Col. Martin Burke, although not very enthusiastic, consented to be of some help.
Armed with a note from the colonel and some blankets and beads for barter, Francisco set forth to rescue Olive Oatman. The note was not much of a threat. It merely stated: "Francisco, Yuma Indian, bearer of this, goes to the Mohave Nation to obtain a white woman there named Olive. It is desired that she come to this post or send her reasons why she does not wish to come."
Almost five years to the day after Olive's capture, Francisco, a brave man, arrived at the Mohave village. His reception was unfriendly, but he persisted despite threats of torture. Council meetings were called, and violent arguments between the tribesmen ensued.
Olive, who by now knew the language well, shivered apprehensively through it all. The Indians demanded that she translate Col. Burke's note. As quick-witted as she was resolute, Olive ad libbed to this effect:
"A large army will be sent to kill all Mohaves and all Yumas unless I return with Francisco."
That did it.
Ten days and 350 miles later, Olive Oatman arrived at Ft. Yuma in a bark mini-skirt. Reunion with her brother, who arrived at the fort a few days later, was said to be a scene so touching that even the soldiers wept.
Brother and sister, sole survivors of the Oatman Massacre, soon thereafter were taken in tow by the Rev. Royal B. Stratton who proceeded to write a book about the whole affair. The good reverend later took the two young people by ship to New York where Olive became somewhat of a celebrity on the lecture circuit.
At Rochester, N.Y., late in 1865, Olive Oatman became Mrs. Frank B. Fairchild. She and her husband spent several years in Michigan and then moved to Sherman, Texas, where Olive lived to be 66, a ripe old age in view of the vicissitudes of her earlier years.
***
A bit over 20 years ago, Daughters of the American Revolution placed an inconspicuous little monument in the desert about 15 miles north of Sentinel, a hamlet just off Interstate 8. This marks the supposed burial spot of the Oatmans massacred at nearby Oatman Flat.
Also in memoriam, after a fashion, is the Mohave County town of Oatman which, some say, was so named after a rather successful Indian prospector who claimed to be the son of Olive Oatman.
Not too many believe this story, for Olive Oatman, to her dying day, never mentioned having borne a son by one of her captors.
A chill mid-March wind blew across Texas Panhandle plains the morning they laid Mrs. Frank B. Fairchild to rest.
It was a day as bleak as the occasion was somber. Nevertheless, almost everybody in the village of Sherman turned out for the church service, and many joined the cortege to the cemetery.
Mrs. Fairchild had lived in Sherman around 30 years, and everybody there knew and loved her for her good works. During those years she had taken loving care of several orphans, adopted another as her own and in various ways proven herself a kindly, charitable woman of fine character.
***
All who filed past the open casket noticed for the last time the blue tattoo lines that still marred Mrs. Fairchild's chin, and sight of this disfigurement caused them to remark that at last Olive had peacefully reached the end of a long and fearsome road. They all knew the story of Olive's life, and all knew that before her marriage Mrs. Fairchild was Olive Oatman.
And who, a present generation may ask, was Olive Oatman?
Well, Olive Oatman was a 14-year-old, short, plump but not fat, little farm girl back in northern Illinois when her father, in the year 1850, decided to join a Mormon wagon train forming at Independence, Mo. He hoped to set forth for a new life in a model society to be established on the banks of the Colorado River.
That decision led Royse Oatman, his wife and four of their seven children to sudden and horrible death at Oatman Flat, a few miles west of present-day Gila Bend.
It was a decision that led to an even more horrible fate for daughter Olive and her little sister, Mary Ann, 7, for they were to become captives and slaves of Indian marauders. Mary Ann was to die after three years of brutal mistreatment and undernourishment. Olive, older and stronger, was to survive until her rescue some two years after her sister's death.
She and her brother, Lorenzo, a 15-year-old who escaped capture, were to be the only survivors of what became known as the Oatman Massacre, one of the cruelest, bloodiest episodes in early Arizona history.
Hard to believe nowadays that it happened right here in Maricopa County. Hard to believe that a journey that began so happily and optimistically could end so tragically.
Their hopes were so high, their dream so bright when the emigrants departed Independence on Aug. 10, 1850, with James Brewster, devout and idealistic, at their head. Theirs was a sizable party consisting of 50 men, women and children, 20 covered wagons and a drove of cattle.
Southward and westward they wound their way, and all went well until they reached the village of Mora in what is now northeastern New Mexico. But there the party broke up, for some were dissatisfied with Brewster's leadership and others wanted to change their ultimate destination to California.
By now it was October.
At a trial fork just outside Mora, 30 of the band turned toward Utah Territory, hoping to reach Los Angeles. With Royce Oatman as leader, the others headed southward.
***
It was then that trouble began. Indians stole some of their horses and most of their cattle. One man died. Food was in short supply.
But the Oatman party pressed on through country that then was still a part of Mexico. They reached Santa Cruz, just east of Nogales, and then proceeded northward to Tubac and old Tucson. There they rested for a month, fearing dangers ahead to such an extent that only three families finally set forth for the Pima Indian villages on the Gila River some 90 miles away.
Reaching the villages, the by now small, poorly equipped party felt fairly safe because friendly Pimas, enemies of the Apaches, always drove marauding warriors away. Again the emigrants rested, and again they split up, with only Royse Oatman, 41 and in ill health, determined to forge on across the desert to the safety of Ft. Yuma.
So, on March 11, 1851, the Oatmans, man and wife and seven children, the oldest 17-year-old Lucy, began a 190-mile trek across Indian-infested, almost uncharted wilderness. Exhausted by their earlier trials, they were tired, worn and meagerly supplied. But Royse was determined to press onward.
The Oatman Massacre was only eight days away.
A Gila River ford, about 70 miles southwest of present day Phoenix as the crow flies, was the halfway mark between Pima villages and the Colorado. This point the bedraggled party reached on March 18. And there began a series of mishaps that were to lead to the massacre next day.
***
First, their wagon mired on an island, forcing the frightened family to spend the night in mid-stream and convinced father Royse that his four oxen were nearing end of their tether. Nevertheless, these worn beasts next morning mustered enough strength to pull out of the mire and drag the wagon to the opposite shore.
But the team was unable to pull up the slope to a mesa later to be known as Oatman Flat. This necessitated unloading the wagon, toting its contents by hand up to the flat, and there reloading.
By then it was late in the day, and wife Mary set about preparing a scanty meal, She was in the midst of this domestic endeavor when some 20 fierce-appearing Tonto Apaches arrived on the scene.
Little Olve Oatman, was first to sport a band of Indians approaching her family's emigrant camp on a level flat above the Gila River about 20 miles northwest of today's town of Gila Bend. She warned her father and he watched apprehensively as the red men neared.
Only one close-up look was needed to determine that these were dangerous Indians. Their faces were painted and they bore little resemblance to the friendly Pimas and Papagos with whom the Oatmans previously had spent some time.
***
However, this band of about 30 at first seemed peaceful enough. Speaking in Spanish, they asked for tobacco and father Royse Oatman gave them all he had. Then they asked for bread, and Mrs. Oatman handed some around. When they wanted more, Oatman explained he could spare no more.
That triggered the tragedy that was to become known as the Oatman Massacre.
Father Royse and the boy, Lorenzo, were the first struck down with war clubs. Lucy, oldest of the daughters, was clubbed to death when she tried to protect Olive and Mary Ann who were being dragged away by two of the savages. Mrs. Oatman clung desperately to her three youngest, a display of maternalism that in no way softened the hearts of their attackers.
It was all over in minutes. Father, mother, brothers and sisters clubbed to death before the horrified eyes of Olive and Mary Ann.
While the two youngsters sobbed hysterically, the Tonto Apaches broke open food boxes, tore the wagon apart and jerked off their victims' shoes, even taking those of Olive and Mary Ann. Carrying the girls in their arms, the bloodstained marauders fled across the Gila to their own camp, where they staged a celebration.
***
As soon as their feast was over, the Indians set forth through darkness, driving the barefoot girls before them. Little Mary Ann kept up the pace only because she was whipped every time she faltered. Later, when she appeared half dead, one of the Indians carried her in her arms.
In three agonizing days and nights the captive girls traveled 200 or more miles until at last they reached a village, a thatched-hut settlement somewhere in the Tonto Basin. Again, there was a big celebration, but little rest or comfort for the tired, footsore girls. They were put to work digging roots almost immediately.
Neither the girls nor their captors were to know for some years to come that another Oatman survived; brother Lorenzo, left for dead beside his father, was very much alive.
Although badly beaten and bloodstained, the boy regained consciousness not long after his attackers fled the Oatman campsite. A resolute youngster, Lorenzo took a tearful look at the bodies around him and then crawled toward the river. Groggy and at times only semiconscious, he started to walk the 90 miles back to the Pima Villages.
He had covered about 30 miles of the distance in two days when, according to one historian, he was picked up by two mounted Pimas who carried him the rest of the way. Another version has it that two emigrant families, who earlier had traveled with the Oatmans, found Lorenzo limping along the trail. Frightened by his report of what happened, they all returned to the Pima Villages.
There Lorenzo quickly recovered from his injuries and joined a reinforced party of emigrants headed for California. What thoughts that boy must have had as he again approached the bluff that later was to be known as Oatman Flat. But, still, he had courage enough to examine the massacre site and conclude that two of his sisters had been carried away.
***
Consequently, upon reaching Ft. Yuma, the boy tried to interest people there in a search for Olive and Mary Ann. His pleas were ignored, and finally he went on to San Francisco.
Meanwhile, his sisters were undergoing the horrors of slavery. They were the lowest of the low among a degraded tribe who took pride in the fact that they were considered the dregs of Apachedom. For a year the girls were treated brutally, forced to work at menial tasks and made to exist mainly on a diet of roots and insects.
Then came rescue -- of a sort. They were sold to a party of Mohaves who occasionally journeyed eastward from their village on the Colorado River to barter with Tonto Apaches. Among the visiting party was Topee-ka, daughter of a chief and about the same age as Olive. She took a liking to the sisters.
***
So now another long journey lay ahead. It took 10 days at about 35 miles a day to reach Topee-ka's village on the river somewhere near today's Needles, California.
Living with Topee-ka in the chief's house, Olive and Mary Ann found better treatment, but they still were captives, still slaves.
To make sure tat no one mistook their status, medicine men tattooed four vertical lines of blue dots on each girl's chin, an unerasable sign of their servitude.
Mohave Indians holding Mary Ann and Olive Oatman as slaves lived a hand-to-mouth existence even though they were a shade above the economic and social scale of Tonto Apaches who had captured the girls originally.
These Mohaves were farmers of a sort, and abundance of their crop depended mostly upon the erratic rise and fall of Colorado River waters. Roots, berries, bugs and occasionally some wild game supplemented what little they grew.
***
Naturally, their two white laves seldom had anything more to eat than leftovers from the squaws' specialty of the day.
Little Mary Ann, by now nearly 10, grew weaker and weaker. As death neared, she and Olive joined pitifully in signing hymns they still remembered, a devotional exercise that bemused but also entertained their owners. Finally, Mary Ann died and Olive faced alone a future too horrible to contemplate.
However, Olive was not to be the tribe's sole captive very long, for the rains came, food was abundant and men of the village regained their strength. Renewed energy put the tribe in a feisty mood and a band of warriors departed on a long journey to pick a scrap with their favorite enemy, the Cocopahs.
***
To her dismay, Olive learned that if the war party suffered any casualties her life would be sacrificed. She lived under this cloud of apprehension five long months until the warriors returned unharmed with several captives, among them a young Cocopah wife and mother named Nowereha.
Grief-stricken over separation from her family, Nowereha soon ran away. She was recaptured and, as an object lesson, was nailed with thorns to a huge cross. After hours on the cross, she finally was killed by a fusillade of arrows.
Olive was forced to occupy a front-row seat for this fearsome show.
Thus, time went by, just one long, hazardous day after another. Sometimes Olive was well-treated. Sometimes her masters, and everybody was her master, abused and threatened her. Any moment might be her last.
But, meanwhile, her brother, Lorenzo, remained convinced that his two sisters were being held captive somewhere in the desert wilderness. After three years in San Francisco, the boy, now nearly 20, moved to Los Angeles where he hoped to pick up some scrap of information from travelers coming through from Ft. Yuma.
Late in the year 1854 Lorenzo wrote pleadingly to Ft. Yuma and the letter, fortunately, fell into the hands of a kindly enlisted carpenter named Henry Grinnell. Grinnell, a newcomer to Yuma, was intrigued and began making inquiries. A year went by before he learned that the Oatman girls had been traded to a Mohave band and that only Olive was still alive.
With no help from officialdom, Grinnell persisted in his search, finally obtaining the aid of a Yuma Indian courier and interpreter named Antonio Francisco. And finally Lt. Col. Martin Burke, although not very enthusiastic, consented to be of some help.
Armed with a note from the colonel and some blankets and beads for barter, Francisco set forth to rescue Olive Oatman. The note was not much of a threat. It merely stated: "Francisco, Yuma Indian, bearer of this, goes to the Mohave Nation to obtain a white woman there named Olive. It is desired that she come to this post or send her reasons why she does not wish to come."
Almost five years to the day after Olive's capture, Francisco, a brave man, arrived at the Mohave village. His reception was unfriendly, but he persisted despite threats of torture. Council meetings were called, and violent arguments between the tribesmen ensued.
Olive, who by now knew the language well, shivered apprehensively through it all. The Indians demanded that she translate Col. Burke's note. As quick-witted as she was resolute, Olive ad libbed to this effect:
"A large army will be sent to kill all Mohaves and all Yumas unless I return with Francisco."
That did it.
Ten days and 350 miles later, Olive Oatman arrived at Ft. Yuma in a bark mini-skirt. Reunion with her brother, who arrived at the fort a few days later, was said to be a scene so touching that even the soldiers wept.
Brother and sister, sole survivors of the Oatman Massacre, soon thereafter were taken in tow by the Rev. Royal B. Stratton who proceeded to write a book about the whole affair. The good reverend later took the two young people by ship to New York where Olive became somewhat of a celebrity on the lecture circuit.
At Rochester, N.Y., late in 1865, Olive Oatman became Mrs. Frank B. Fairchild. She and her husband spent several years in Michigan and then moved to Sherman, Texas, where Olive lived to be 66, a ripe old age in view of the vicissitudes of her earlier years.
***
A bit over 20 years ago, Daughters of the American Revolution placed an inconspicuous little monument in the desert about 15 miles north of Sentinel, a hamlet just off Interstate 8. This marks the supposed burial spot of the Oatmans massacred at nearby Oatman Flat.
Also in memoriam, after a fashion, is the Mohave County town of Oatman which, some say, was so named after a rather successful Indian prospector who claimed to be the son of Olive Oatman.
Not too many believe this story, for Olive Oatman, to her dying day, never mentioned having borne a son by one of her captors.