Author: STRATTON, R.B.
Title: Captivity of the Oatman Girls: Being an Interesting Narrative of Life Among the Apache and Mohave Indians...
Description: New York, Carlton & Porter, 1858. Hardcover. 12mo. Green blind-embossed cloth with gilt spine lettering and pictorial stamping (rebacked with original spine laid down). 290pp, 2pp. Frontispiece, map, 14 wood engravings. Very good. Binding is a bit edgeworn and rubbed, though ornate spine gilt still bright; new endpapers (except front pastedown); text block tight and nice, though moderately age toned and with sporadic foxing. One of the most famous of Indian captivity narratives involves the Oatman family, Mormons who were attacked near Yuma, Arizona, while emigrating westward from Illinois by Native Americans (not Apache, but likely Western Yavapai), at which point the parents and four siblings were killed. Olive and younger sister Mary Ann (who later died from starvation) were taken captive, while brother Lorenzo was left for dead. Four years later, after being traded to the Mohaves, Olive with blue-tattooed chin was released at Fort Yuma. With Stratton's narrative in 1857 Olive and Lorenzo Oatman became a sensation and the book a bestseller; they toured the country with Stratton and received part of the royalties, joining the lecture circuit; she married wealthy rancher John B. Fairchild, penned a memoir and retired to Texas, while her extraordinary tale captured the public imagination and became the stuff of poetry, novels and later film and television. Offered here is an exceptional copy of the enlarged third edition ("Twenty-Seventh Thousand") presented by Olive Oatman to her cousin, whose large farmstead near Morrison, Illinois, was adjacent to her family's farmstead. Alfred Noyes Abbott (1862-1929) was a noted Illinois farmer, cattle and hog rancher, state legislator, president of the Illinois State Farmers' Institute and Deputy Commissioner of the Illinois Commission to the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition; his father was Asa McFarland Abbott (1820-89), a pioneering Illinois gunsmith and farmer of note whose home was a well-documented Underground Railroad site and whose wife Sarah Sperry was sister of Mary Ann Oatman (1813-51). On the front flyleaf, A.N. Abbott boldly pens, "Presented to A.N. Abbott by Olive Oatman Fairchild about 1893." He signs the top edge of this pastedown as well as five more times (three on inner flyleaves and also on "Preface to the First Edition" page and opening of "Contents"). On page 33 he makes a couple of tiny editorial corrections (twice crossing out the place name "Henly" and writing in "Hemlo") and on the blank leaf following the final text page he pens about a dozen lines noting the date and place of Lorenzo's death in 1901 and the birth, marriage and death date of Olive -- closing with "Let them rest in peace." Other than the quite rare first edition and scarce second edition, this family copy of the third edition rates one of the most intriguing, choice association copies. AYER 284. FIELD 1515. GRAFF 4006. HOWES S 1068. RITTENHOUSE 542. SABIN 92743. WAGNER-CAMP 294. .

Keywords: Native American Western Americana


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