ArizonaRealCountry.com 21 July 2019 treatment of the girls improved. The chores were just as hard, but the attitude was less vicious, especially towards Mary Ann. Learn the Indian’s Language The girls were learning to converse in the language of their captors. They were often asked how many whites existed and when they gave their captors an estimate, they were not believed. Gradually the Indians began to accept that the estimates might be true. They wanted to know how whites lived and what they ate. The Indians believed the whites became so powerful because they were guided by an evil being, according to Olive. In 1852, the girls were traded to the Mohave tribe. The girls brought two horses, three blankets and some vegetables and beads in trade. They were marched 350 miles to their new home. The Mohave tribe numbered about 1500. They raised some crops to feed themselves but had much less game to hunt and hunger plagued the Mohaves as well. Olive and Mary Ann were not treated any better by the Mohave. They were slaves of their new owners as well and beaten or starved for moving too slowly while working. Tattooed for Identity They had been with the Mohave several seasons when they were told their faces were to be tattooed. It was a custom of the tribe to tattoo females. Olive pleaded that she and her sister be spared this disfigurement. She was told the markings would identify them as belonging to the tribe, and if they ever escaped or were stolen, they would always come back to the tribe. The thin black stripes around the chin were applied with a sharp stick and plant pigments. It was a time of drought. As it continued, the crops withered and died. What roots could be found were dug up, but Mary Ann and Olive found their food practically cut off. In desperation, Olive left the camp with a party of Mohave to search for food. They found some berries and returned. By now Mary Ann was extremely malnourished. Members of the tribe were dying and what food there was was being hoarded. Mary Ann Dies Mary Ann lingered on for many days but after three years in captivity her small body could not fight back the ravages of malnutrition. She was buried in the ground as Olive requested. Olive herself was too weak to even walk but she was saved from death by starvation by a woman who had hidden away a bit of corn. She made this into a gruel for Olive. Lorenzo too had suffered more hardships after his rescue and treatment at Maricopa Wells. He was taken to Fort Yuma where he spent his recovery. He then traveled to San Francisco with his physician. Eventually, he traveled east, trying to make a new life for himself, but his energies were spent trying to raise help in his search for his sisters he had seen taken captive. Major Adamant In Refusing Help While recovering at Fort Yuma, Lorenzo had pleaded with Major Heinzelman to send out a rescue party for his sisters. The Major, again put in the position to help save the girls, again refused. Lorenzo had followed the same route he had taken with his family and searched the entire area, hoping to find the Indians who had taken his sisters. It had been five years since they had been captured and Lorenzo tried constantly to find some trace of them. He was becoming a rather weary 20-year-old. Then one day in early 1856 he was in Los Angeles when he opened the Los Angeles Star to find the headline “American Woman Rescued from the Indians.” The brief story named the woman as Olive Oatman and said she had been taken to Fort Yuma. New Commander Sends Rescuer It seems a Lt. Col. Burke had replaced the uncaring Major Heinzelman as commander of the fort. Burke had dispatched a man named Francisco, a Yuma Indian to find Olive and obtain her release. Burke had sent a note with Francisco. It said Francisco’s purpose was to bring Olive Oatman back to Fort Yuma. Olive translated the note for the Mohaves. It said if Francisco did not bring Olive back soldiers would be sent to slaughter all of the Mohave and Yuma Indians they found. The Mohaves held a long discussion and then decided that one female captive was not worth facing Burke’s troops. In February of 1856, five years after she and her sister had been captured and her family slaughtered, Olive Oatman returned to Fort Yuma with Francisco. She was dressed in a bark shirt. She was given new clothes, greeted warmly by the families at the fort and taken in by one of them, the Parishes. Francisco was awarded a horse for his bravery and his status with his tribe increased considerably. Two Oatman Survivors Reunited Olive soon learned of Lorenzo’s survival. It took Lorenzo 10 days to reach the fort from Los Angeles after he read the headlines of Olive’s rescue. Brother and sister were reunited and the two became inseparable. They went to Oregon and stayed with a cousin, and they went to school in California. They traveled with the minister and author R. B. Stratton to New York to promote his book on the Oatman family ordeal. Olive was able to have the tattoos removed while still at Yuma with the Parish family. It was said it took some time and care to remove the tattoos. Parish wrote later that Olive was torn between staying with white society or returning to her Indian husband in the wilds for the first few months after she was rescued. In 1865 she married a Texas banker and cattleman named John B. Fairchild. They adopted a baby girl. Fairchild burned all the copies of Stratton’s book and stopped her tours. Olive always kept a jar of hazelnuts, a Mohave staple, as a reminder of her experience. She died in Texas in 1903 at the age of 65. In 1852, the girls were traded to the Mohave tribe. Olive and Mary Ann were not treated any better by the Mohave. They were slaves of their new owners as well and beaten or starved for moving too slowly while working. They had been with the Mohave several seasons when they were told their faces were to be tattooed. Olive was torn between staying with white society or returning to her Indian husband in the wilds for the first few months after she was rescued.