The Blue Tattoo - The Life of Olive Oatman

by Margot Mifflin
269 pages, Paperback, Copyright 2009
 
In 1851 Olive Oatman was a thirteen-year-old pioneer traveling west toward Zion with her Mormon family. Within a decade, she was a white Indian with a chin tattoo, caught between cultures. The Blue Tattoo tells the harrowing story of this forgotten heroine of frontier America. 
 
Based on historical records, including letters and diaries of Oatman's friends and relatives, The Blue Tatoo is a the first book to examine her life from her childhood in Illinois, through the massacre where she lost her family, her captivity, and her return to white society, to her later years as a wealthy banker's wife in Texas. This Bison Books edition features a postscript by the author with a newly discovered letter from Oatman.