They came to a steep ascent.  The oxen balked.  So the family unpacked the wagon and began to carry their possessions up the hill.

After the first load, they stopped for lunch; then continued to bring up their goods.

After the wagon was repacked, Lorenzo happened to look down the hill.  He was the first to see them:  nineteen Yavapai meandering up the hill.  He alerted his father, Royce.  Royce told the family not to be alarmed.

The Indians asked for tobacco.  Royce shared a pipe with them.  They also demanded food.  Royce was hesitant, as his family had little, but he gave them some bread.  They demanded more and started to search the wagon.  Royce refused.

The Yavapai walked off to talk among themselves.

They pulled knives and clubs – it was over within a few minutes.  Lorenzo and Royce were the first to go down.  Royce’s wife, Mary Ann, and several of their children, Lucy, Roland, Royce Jr., and Charity Ann, followed.  Only their daughters, Mary Ann and Olive, were not harmed.  Seven-year-old Mary Ann had crumpled to the ground, crying into her hands.  Fourteen-year-old Olive fainted.

It was February 18, 1851, on a mesa near the Gila River in, what would become, southern Arizona.  It was also the beginning of the five-year captivity of Olive Ann Oatman.

The Oatmans were Mormons from Illinois.  More Specifically, they were Brewsterites.  The Brewsterites were a splinter sect that formed in 1837.  James C. Brewster, eleven-years-old at the time, claimed to have had divine revelations.

Brewster claimed that there was a “promised land” at the mouth of the Colorado River:  fertile, wooded, and temperate.  He also claimed that the Indians in the area were friendly.  He was wrong on all counts.

Eventually, Brewster decided to lead his followers to this “promised land” and, in May, 1850, the Oatmans started west.  Collecting some families along the way, they arrived in Independence, Missouri, in June.  The Brewsters arrived in mid-July.

The party consisted of about ninety people:  a dozen or so families and some bachelors.

They finally set off in early August – a very late start for a cross-country trek.

About one hundred miles into the trip the squabbling began.  Some wearied of the monotony of travel, some worried about Indians.  There were also religious arguments.  And at some point, Brewster had a new revelation: the “promised land” wasn’t at the mouth of the Colorado, it was on the Rio Grande near Socorro, Mexico.

In early October, the party divided.  Brewster wanted to go to Santa Fe to pick up his mail.  About thirty people went with him.  The rest, including the Oatmans, pressed on.

In early November, the two parties met in Socorro.  The Oatman party went on without Brewster and his group.

The Oatmans arrived in Tucson in early January.  Five families stayed there to farm and wait for other emigrant trains.  The Oatmans and two other families moved on, after spending about a month in Tucson.

They arrived in Maricopa Wells in early February.  Travel from there was dangerous and the other two families decided to stay.  But Oatman, who by now had given up the idea of a “promised land” on the Colorado, wanted to go to the goldfields in California.  And, after having covered fifteen hundred miles with only two hundred to go, he decided to push on.  It was a fatal mistake.  About two weeks later, he, and most of his family, would die on the mesa.

The Yavapai ransacked the wagon and looted the dead.  After about an hour they pushed the barefoot girls – the Indians did not want to leave any shoe prints for anyone to follow – down the hill to begin a sixty-mile four-day march.

During the march the Indians killed the Oatman’s stock and ate them.  (The reason for the Oatman attack was probably hunger.  The drought during the previous year had left little for the Yavapai to eat in late winter.)

The march was grueling.  The Indians kept a fast pace.  The girls’ feet bled.  Mary Ann collapsed and couldn’t go on.  She was beaten.  Olive pleaded for her sister and one of the warriors carried Mary Ann.

When they reached the Yavapai village the sisters were surrounded by the tribe.  The Yavapai yelled and spit at them, and threw dirt at them.  Some even slapped them.

Captives were taken for various reasons.  In the case of the Oatman sisters it was to be slaves.  For the next year they carried water and wood, and dug roots.  They did whatever they were told to do.

Over time they learned the Yavapai language and, as a result, became a source of entertainment to the Indians.  The Yavapai asked many questions about them, whites, in general, and white society.  Because of their entertainment value, they were treated somewhat better.

In the fall of 1851, the Mohave came to trade with the Yavapai.  Seeing the girls, the Mohave wanted to trade for them.  But an agreement couldn’t be reached and the Mohave left.

After the Mohave departure, the Yavapai discussed trading the girls.  They didn’t want the U.S. government to find out about the massacre, and thought that trading the sisters to the Mohave, a remote tribe, might forestall this.

Meanwhile, Mary Ann, who had been prone to sickness back in Illinois, caught a bad cold during the winter.  Olive wondered if she would live to be traded.

In the spring of 1852 six Mohave came back to barter for the girls.  One of the six was the chief’s seventeen-year-old daughter, Topeka.

For two horses, three blankets, vegetables, and beads, Mary Ann and Olive changed hands.  It was to be for the better.  Their lives would improve and Olive would eventually be reunited with someone she thought was long dead.