R. B. Stratton

“ She would often think and speak in the most affectionate manner of ‘dear pa and ma,’ and with confidence she would say, ‘they suffered an awful death, but they are now safe and happy in a better and brighter land, though I am left to starve among savages.’ She seemed now to regard life no longer as worth preserving, and she kept constantly repeating expressions of longing to die and be removed from a gloomy captivity to a world where no tear of sorrow dims the eye of innocence and beauty. She called me to her side one day and said: ‘Olive, I shall die soon; you will live and get away. ”

“ They ate worms, grasshoppers, reptiles, all flesh, and were, perhaps, living exhibitions of a certain theory by which the nature of the animal eaten leaves its imprint upon the man or human being who devours it. For whole days, when scarcely a morsel for another meal was in the camp, would those stout, robust, lazy lumps of a degraded humanity lounge in the sun or by the gurgling spring; at noon in the shade or on the shelves of the mountains surrounding, utterly reckless of their situation, or of the doom their idleness might bring upon the whole tribe. ”

“ Hewit, Lorenzo came to San Francisco. After Dr. Hewit had left for the States he began to reflect on his loneliness, and more deeply than ever upon his condition and that of his sisters. Sometimes he would stray upon the hills at night in the rear of the city, so racked with despair and grief as to determine upon taking his own life, if he could not secure the rescue of the captives. He found the stirring, throbbing life of San Francisco beating almost exclusively to the impulses of gold-hunting. ”

“ When I remember what my eyes have witnessed, I am led to wonder and adore at my preservation for a single year, or that my life was not brutalized, a victim to their inhumanity.
“I felt cheerful again, only when that loneliness and desolateness which had haunted me since Mary’s death, would sadden and depress my spirits. The same woman that had saved my life, and furnished me with ground and seed to raise corn and wheat, and watched it for me for many days, now procured from the chief a place where I might store it, with the promise from him that every kernel should go for my own maintenance.” ”

“ A Sabbath-school scholar, dying in an Indian [212] camp, three hundred miles from even the nearest trail of the white man, buoyed and gladdened by bright visions of beatitudes that make her oblivious of present pain, and long to enter upon the future estate to which a correct and earnest instruction had been pointing!
Who can say but that there lives the little Mohave boy or girl, or the youth who will yet live to rehearse in the ear of a listening American auditory, and in a rough, uncouth jargon, the wondrous impression of that hour upon his mind. ”

“ But the unpierced heathenism that thus stretches [284] its wing of night upon these swarming mountains and vales, is not long to have a dominion so wild, nor possess victims so numerous. Its territory is already begirt with the light of a higher life; and now the foot-fall of the pioneering, brave Anglo-Saxon is heard upon the heel of the savage, and breaks the silence along his winding trail. Already the song and shout of civilization wakes echoes long and prophetic upon those mountain rocks, that have for centuries hemmed in an unvisited savageness. ”

“ We had gathered less during the summer of ‘musquite,’ and nothing but starvation could be expected. This seemed to throw the sadness of despair upon our condition, and to blot all our faint but fond hopes of reaching our native land. We knew, or thought we knew, that in case of an extremity our portion must be meted out after these voracious, unfeeling idlers had supplied themselves. We had already seen that a calamity or adversity had the effect to make these savages more savage and implacable. I felt more keenly for Mary Ann than myself. ”

“ Often has my little sister come to me with a heart surcharged with grief, and the big tears standing in her eye, or perhaps sobbing most convulsively over the maltreatment and chastisement that had met her good intentions, for she ever tried to please them, and most piteously would she say: ‘How long, O how long, dear Olive, must we stay here; can we never get away? do you not think they intend to kill us? O! they are so ugly and savage!’ Sometimes I would tell her that I saw but little chance for escape ”

“ With eager eyes Carpentero stood gazing for some time, when three Indians and two females, dressed in closely woven bark skirts, came down to the ferry on the opposite side of the river. At that he bounded toward them, crying at the top of his voice, “They have come; the captive girl is here!” All about the fort were soon apprised that it was even so, and soon they were either running to meet and welcome the captive, or were gazing with eagerness to know if this strange report could be true. ”

“ These hours of plying our fingers (not sewing) in the ground flew quickly by, but not without their tears and forebodings that ere we could gather the results, famine might lay our bodies in the dust. Indeed we could see no means by which we could possibly maintain ourselves to harvest again. Winter, a season of sterility and frozen nights, was fast approaching, and to add to my desolateness, I plainly saw that grief, or want of food, or both, were slowly, and inch by inch, enfeebling and wasting away Mary Ann. ”

“ Let the mind of the reader pause and ponder upon the situation of that forlorn family at this time. Still unattended and unbefriended; without a white person or his habitation within the wide range of nearly a hundred miles; the Gila, a branch of which separated them from either shore, keeping up a ceaseless, mournful murmuring through the entire night; the wild wind, as it swept unheeding by, sighing among the distant trees and rolling along the forest of mountain peaks, kept up a perpetual moan solemn as a funeral dirge. ”

“ When every preparation is made by the family to proceed, no defense studied or thought necessary, then these hideous man-animals spring upon them with rough war-clubs and murder them in cold blood; and, as if to strew their hellish way with the greatest possible amount of anguish, they compel these two girls to witness all the barbarity that broke upon the rest, and to read therein what horrors hung upon their own future living death. ”

“ Besides, this journey now before them has been preceded by lesser ones, and these had been so frequent and of such trivial result as that vanity seemed written upon all the deep and checkered past, with its world of toil and journeyings. In a subdued whisper, but with speaking countenances and sparkling eyes, these parents are dwelling upon this many-colored by-gone.
Mr. Oatman is a medium-sized man, about five feet in height, black hair, with a round face, and yet in the very prime of life. Forty-one winters had scarcely been able to plow the first furrow of age upon his manly cheek. ”

“ We felt and feared that a road stretching to such a distance, through an uninhabited and wild region, might be infested with marauding bands of the Indians who were known to roam over the mountains that were piled up to the north of us; who, though they might be persuaded or intimidated to spare us the fate of falling by their savage hands, yet might plunder us of all we had as means for life’s subsistence. While in this dreadful suspense, one Dr. Lecount, attended by a Mexican guide, came into the Pimole village. ”

“ Thus he came to learn human nature, but was not discouraged. Could we turn upon these pages the full tide of the heart-yearnings and questionings that struggled in that young man’s heart, by daylight, by twilight, by moonlight, as he strolled (as often he did) for reflection upon old ocean’s shore, on the sandy beach, in the wood, it might cause the heart of the reader to give heed to the tales of true grief that daily strew his way, and kindle a just contempt for a mere artificial sympathy. ”

“ When I saw that she was dead, I could but give [196] myself up to loneliness, to wailing and despair. ‘The last of our family dead, and all of them by tortures inflicted by Indian savages,’ I exclaimed to myself. I went to her and tried to find remaining life, but no pulse, no breath was there. I could but adore the mercy that had so wisely thrown a vail of concealment over these three years of affliction. ”

“ In imagination we lean out our souls to listen to the sobs and sighs that went up from those hearts—hearts bleeding from wounds and pains tenfold more poignant than those that lacerated and wrung their quivering flesh. We look upon them, as with their captors they encircle the wild light of the successive camp-fires, kindled for long distant halts, upon their way to the yet unseen and dreaded home of the “inhabitants of rocks and tents.” ”

“ Months rolled by, finding us early and late at our burden-bearing and torturing labors, plying hands and feet to heed the demands of our lazy lords, and the taunts and exactions of a swarm of heathen urchins, sometimes set over us. But since the coming of these Mohaves a new question had been presented, and a new source of anxious solicitude had been opened. Hours at a time were spent apart, dwelling upon and conversing about the possibilities and probabilities, with all the gravity of men in the council of state, of our being sold to another tribe, and what might be its effects upon us. ”

“ We have confidence that every reader will share with us the feelings of gratitude to Almighty God for the blessings of civilization, and a superior social life, with which we cease to pen this record of the degradation, the barbarity, the superstition, the squalidness, that curse the uncounted thousands who people the caverns and wilds that divide the Eastern from the Western inheritance of our mother republic. ”

“ How little it knows of its power or skill to triumph in the hour of sudden and trying emergency, only as the reality itself shall test and call it forth. Olive lives to-day to dictate a narrative of five gloomy years of captivity, that followed upon a totally different issue of an event that during that night, as a possibility merely, was the matter of vows and resolutions, but which in its reality mocked and taunted the plans and purposes that had been formed for its control. ”

“ The moon, gradually ascending the sky, was fast breaking in upon the deep-shade spots that at her first rising had contended with ridges of [121] light spread about them. That moon had witnessed the night before my childish but sincerest vow, that I would never be taken alive by Indian savages, and was now laughing at the frailty of the resolution and the abruptness with which the fears to which it pointed had become reality! ”

“ This remove, the steps to which have been traced above, proved their last; for though bright, and full of promise and hope, at the outset, tragedy of the most painful and gloomy character settles down upon it at an early period, and with fearfully portentous gloom, thickens and deepens upon its every step, until the day, so bright at dawn, gradually closes in all the horror and desolation of a night of plunder, murder, and worse than murderous and barbarous captivity. ”

“ A man of diligence and fidelity, he merited and won the confidence of all who knew him. He possessed a heart that could enter into sympathy with the subjects of suffering wherever he found them. Soon after coming to Fort Yuma, he had learned of the fate of the Oatman family, and of the certainty of the captivity of two of the girls. With all the eagerness and solicitude that could be expected of a kinsman, he inquired diligently into the particulars, and also the reliability of the current statements concerning these unfortunate captives. ”

“ If ever the bright throng that flame near the throne would delight to cease their song, descend and poise on steady wing to wait the last heaving of a suffering mortal’s bosom, that at the parting breath they might encircle the fluttering spirit and bear it to the bosom of God, it was when thou didst, upon the breath of sacred song, joined in by thy living sister, yield thy spirit to Him who kindly cut short thy sufferings that he might begin thy bliss. ”

“ My father, sad, and seemingly spell-bound with his own struggling emotions, was a little on one side, as if oblivious of all immediately about him, and was about in the act of lifting some of the baggage to the wagon, that had as yet remained unloaded since the ascent of the hill, when, casting my eyes down the hill by the way we had come, I saw several Indians slowly and leisurely approaching us in the road. ”

“ We planted our wheat, and carefully concealed the handful of corn and melon-seeds to plant in the spring. This we enjoyed very much. It brought to our minds the extended grain-fields that waved about our cottage in Illinois, of the beautiful spring when winter’s ice and chill had departed before the breath of a warmer season, of the May-mornings, when we had gone forth to the plow-fields and followed barefooted in the new-turned furrow, and of the many long days of grain-growing and ripening in which we had watched the daily change in the fields of wheat and oats. ”

“ But there was one spot in that valley of captivity that possessed a mournful attraction for the emancipated captive. Near the wigwam where she had spent many hours in loneliness, and Indian converse [266] with her captors, was a mound that marked the final resting-place of her last deceased sister. Gladly would she, if it had been in her power, have gathered the few moldering remains of that loved and cherished form, and borne them away to a resting-place on some shaded retreat in the soil of her own countrymen. ”