It didn't hurt that Olive Oatman was a gothic beauty. Add to that her dual citizenship as a Mormon and a Mojave and you have a brooding intensity that blindsided and captured everyone who came to see her.
Daily Whip Out: "Olive Turned Upside Down"
"The Mojaves were terrific mimics who loved a good tease and a bawdy joke; almost every description of them before their reservation days mentions their laughter, and they were considered 'notoriously outspoken and uninhibited.'"
—Margot Mifflin, "The Blue Tattoo: The Life of Olive Oatman"
What happens when a Mormon girl gets thrown into the free wheeling, uninhibited world of the Mojaves?
"I shall not be taken by these miserable brutes. I will fight as long as I can, and if I see that I am about to be taken, I will kill myself."
—Olive Oatman, age 14, before her abduction
"Have the white and Indian parts inside you found a way to make their peace?"
—Cassie Morgan
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