Taino native american: What Became of the Taíno? | Travel

Caribbean Native American Indian Tribes

“Who are the Tainos? The U.S. Government says they are extinct, but they are not. Most likely you might know them as Latinos, a Spanish speaking person of Latin American (the Spanish speaking part of the Americas, south of the U.S.) descent. Not all, but many modern day Tainos are unaware of their lineage. To understand how that could happen you must know the story from the beginning.

Approximately 1,500 years ago, the Arawak people of South America began migrating northward along the many scattered islands located between South and North America, an area we now refer to as the Caribbean. For a thousand years their population grew and the people lived in harmony. The people covered all the islands of the Caribbean, the major ones as they are now known: Cuba, Puerto Rico and Hispaniola as well as all the smaller ones: the Bahamas, Bimini, Jamaica etc. Certain groups of island people identified themselves as Lokono, Lucayan, Carib, Ciboney, Arawak, but most islands were primarily inhabited by people who called themselves Taino, which stood for “the good people” in their language. The different groups intermarried extensively to strengthen ties amongst themselves.

Theirs was a beautiful culture. They were aware of a Divine presence whom they called Yocahu, and to worship and give thanks was a major part of their lives. They had a social order that provided the leaders and guidelines by which they all lived. They hunted, fished, cultivated crops and ate the abundant fruits provided by nature. They were clever and ingenious and had everything they needed to survive. They had beautiful ceremonies that were held at various times – birth, death, marriage, harvest, naming and coming of age, to name a few. They had special reverence for the Earth Mother (Atabey) and had respect for all living things knowing that all living things are connected. There was little need for clothing due to the tropic heat, but upon reaching puberty both males and females would wear a small woven loincloth. Puberty was also the time at which they were considered old enough to be married. The population estimates for the Taino people at the height of their culture are as high as 8,000,000. That was in 1492….

In 1492, the Italian explorer, Christopher Columbus, was loaned three small, old ships from King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain for a questionable voyage across the sea in which he hoped to reach India or China. Although Marco Polo had sailed around the world 300 years earlier, and the Norsemen 500 years earlier, there were few sailors willing to sail into the unknown, so the King and Queen released some prisoners early to accompany Columbus on the voyage. On October 12, 1492 after two months at sea Columbus and his crew finally spotted land. Upon reaching the land, Columbus fell to his knees, thanked God for a safe voyage and planted a flag in the ground, claiming the land for Spain – as the Tainos who had lived there for 1,000 years watched from behind trees and bushes.

The Taino had never before seen white men, clothed people, people with beards or ships like that – they thought these people must be from heaven. So the Taino came out to greet them, as was their custom, and brought the travelers – who surely must have been tired and hungry – food, drink and gifts. Such strong swimmers were the Taino that some of them swam right out to the boats some three miles offshore.

That very first night Columbus wrote in his journal that these islands were very heavily populated by a handsome, strong, well-built and peaceful people who had only simple weapons and that with as few as 50 of his men and their weapons he could take over. Much is said about Columbus’ desire to convert the “savages” to Christianity, but very little is said about his quest for gold, although Columbus mentions gold in his journal 70 times in his first two weeks in the islands. The very first day, Columbus “took” several Native boys aboard his ship to show him where the gold was.

Columbus spent the next two months looking for gold. Just when he was about to return to Spain, on Christmas Eve his ship the Santa Maria ran aground and sank. The Taino people helped him to retrieve every salvageable item. A problem arose in that now all the sailors who had accompanied Columbus could not fit on the two remaining (and smaller) ships. So a fort was built using the salvaged wood from the Santa Maria and 39 men were left behind at a fort Columbus called La Navidad. Shortly thereafter, Columbus set sail for Spain, taking some of the Natives and birds, food and plants to show the King and Queen.

Columbus was received in a manner never before seen and his stories of the “New World” were listened to with awe. King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella immediately gave Columbus seventeen large ships, livestock & supplies to return to their newly acquired lands and colonize them. This time there was no shortage of men willing to sign up for the ocean voyage: 1,200 men eagerly signed up for the voyage and the chance to get rich quick on the gold to be found in the New World.

Upon arrival at La Navidad in the second voyage, Columbus found the fort burned to the ground and all 39 of the men he had left behind had been killed. It seems the sailors left behind had “misbehaved” as our history books tell it, but their “misbehaving” was in often in the form of rape of the local women and children and theft of anything they saw that they wanted.

One of the local leaders – or Kasikes as they were called – named Caonabo, had met with the other leaders and all but one agreed that men who were gods would never have behaved in the manner the Spanish had, and they decided the Spaniards had to go, and so they eliminated the Spaniards and the threat they posed to their people.

Columbus vowed to find Caonabo and retaliate. From that point on, life as the Taino knew it ended. Columbus forced all of them over the age of 14 to work in the gold mines searching for gold for the Spaniards. Those who refused were killed. Those who did not make their quota of gold had their hands cut off and were left to bleed to death. Taino women were given to Spaniards to do with whatever they wished. The fields, unattended, failed to yield enough food for the Taino (and the Spaniards whose supplies had run out). All were hungry. Many Taino starved to death, others were worked to death. They were beaten, tortured, raped, enslaved and murdered. Columbus found Caonabo – they tricked him in order to capture him – and he was put on a ship that was sent to Spain and was never heard from again.

When the time came for Columbus to return to Spain, he did not have nearly enough gold to pay for his expedition, so he had his men round up 1,000 of the very biggest and strongest Taino. They found they could only fit 500 of them in the stinking holds of the ships, so Columbus took those 500 aboard to be sold at the slave market in Seville to raise money to repay the King and Queen, and he gave the other 500 Taino to Spanish colonists. Over 250 of the Taino died en route to Spain, and their bodies were tossed overboard.

When Columbus returned for the third time, not much had changed, there was still little gold. The colonists brutally forced the Taino to look for it. The food shortages were so severe it was said that the Spaniards fed Taino babies to their dogs. The mood among the Taino was one of complete and utter helplessness and desperation. Some took their own lives to escape the brutalities and indignities. The colonists, failing to get rich quick as they had hoped, threatened to revolt against Columbus. Word got back to the King and Queen of the situation and Columbus was sent back to Spain in chains to stand trial for his “mismanagement” of the islands. He was stripped of his titles and all claims to the lands he had “discovered” (to those who had lived in the islands and thought they had discovered them, he would always be known as the “invader”).

He lived to make a fourth voyage to the islands. The people there, once proud and strong, were reduced from an estimated 8 million to 60 thousand in 10 years’ time. Those that remained ran up high in the densely forested hills and mountains and hid.

But, they survived. Many later married Spaniards; others married the African slaves that Columbus’ ships later brought in to replace the decimated Taino work force. You can see the existence of all three races in the faces of many modern day Caribbean peoples – but they all fall under the category of “Latino”. If you look at maps, many areas still retain their original indigenous place-names. If you listen to the language, you will still hear many indigenous words used. And although the Caribbean has be explored and exploited again and again by the many greedy adventurers who have passed through, many of the customs practiced by the Taino are still in use and a big part of the culture throughout the Caribbean today.

What is the logic behind the government giving a man credit for discovering lands that were already densely populated, and honoring that same man whose actions had the devastating consequences of slavery and death to so many people, with one of our eight federal holidays (i.e. holy day)? Or, is there any logic at all there?

And, why are the Taino people, who do still exist in spite of what you may be told, denied legal federal recognition? And, why are Native Americans, who have given so much to the formation of this country, still not honored with a federal holiday of their own?

Please do more than think about this. .. do something about this….. let’s all work together to end the insult and injustice to the people who have truly paid the highest possible price for the land in which we all live today.”

• The provoking account above of an alternative view of the history of the Taino peoples was contributed anonymously, and is presented here by Spider – who does not necessarily espouse all the views of the author – as an inclusion to her website in order that people may more fully understand all aspects of Taino history and culture. For more information along these lines, please see also the website, The United Confederation of Taino People (UCTP).
• Additionally – regarding the Tainos – Spider highly recommends the information provided by her friend and fellow Beike ceremonial leader, Miguel Sague, of the Caney Indian Spiritual Circle. Here you will find enlightening and uplifting spiritual and historical information about Taino traditions. Caney spirituality is based on the shamanic belief in the power and sacredness of the spirits of Nature, expressed through belief in its ceremonies and art and in stories of the Taino deities of Yoka Hu and Ata Bei. For more information along these lines, please see Miguel Sague’s wonderful website, The Way of the Cemi: A Realm of Profound Spirituality and Ancient tradition.
• For a listing and (a work in progress) links to other Native American Indian tribes, please also see the Healing Center On-Line’s Alphabetical List of Federally Recognized Native American Indian Tribes.
• Also at the Healing Center On-Line: Native American Books, special Native American Websites and Resources, pages by Native American physician and healer Dr. Lewis Mehl-Madrona, author of the books, Coyote Medicine, Coyote Wisdom, Coyote Healing and Narrative Medicine: The Use of History and Story in the Healing Process.

Cuba’s Taíno people: A flourishing culture, believed extinct

Loading

Culture & Identity | Cultural Traditions

(Image credit: Roberto Machado Noa/Getty Images)

By Christopher P Baker6th February 2019

Although it’s commonly believed that the indigenous Taíno were extirpated after Spanish conquest in 1511, their bloodlines, identity and customs were never completely extinguished.

A

A commonly repeated belief says that Cuba’s indigenous Taíno people were extirpated shortly after the Spanish conquest in 1511. Yet signs of living Taíno culture appear as my car bounces down the track to El Güirito, a remote hamlet at Cuba’s easternmost extreme that’s sandwiched between the azure Atlantic Ocean and surging mountain ranges smothered in throttling green.

It’s easy to see how pockets of indigenous people could survive in this wild, rugged place, passing down their genes through the centuries.

Arriving at El Güirito, I’m greeted by indios campesinos, humble farmers proud of their Indian heritage. Their coppery complexions, square jaws and prominent cheekbones – so distinct from elsewhere in Cuba – remind me of Amerindian faces I’ve seen in the Amazon.

Many rural Cuban families live in simple bohíos (thatched huts) with palm-plank walls. Yet nowhere else in Cuba have I seen graves topped by thatch and surrounded by guamo (conch) shells, preserving a Taíno superstition meant to thwart evil spirits. Nor still-smouldering plots of boniato (sweet potato), yucca and maize, newly cleared by slash-and-burn and heaped in earthen mounds, Taíno-style. Nor weathered campesinos prodding at the soil with coas, long, sharpened hoes that pre-date Columbus’ arrival in Cuba on 27 October 1492.

I’m as close as I’ll ever come to seeing the idyll Columbus saw on his first voyage to the New World.

Cuba’s indigenous Taíno people were extirpated shortly after the Spanish conquest in 1511 (Credit: Christopher P Baker)

“[The indigenous people] show the most singular loving behaviour… and are gentle and always laughing,” Columbus recorded. Conquistador Diego Velázquez’s arrival in 1511 would change that forever. Those Taíno not put to the sword or worked to death fell victim to smallpox, influenza and measles, against which they had no defence. Within 100 years of Columbus’ landfall, virtually the entire indigenous population – heavily concentrated in the fertile lowlands of eastern Cuba – had perished.

Yet contrary to popular claims, Taíno bloodlines, identity and customs were never completely extinguished.

You may also be interested in:
• The shipwreck that created a culture
• The US islands of slave descendants
• The islands with a ‘third gender’

Many survivors mixed with Spanish colonists or fled the flatlands to endure in palenques (hidden redoubts) in the rugged, densely forested mountains inland of Baracoa ­– an ancient Taíno village that, in 1511, became Cuba’s first Spanish colony. Encircled by a mountain meniscus unfurling like an abanico fan around the Bahía de Miel (Bay of Honey), this insular enclave wasn’t connected by road to the rest of Cuba until 1964.

Throughout the colonial period, Spanish authorities refused to acknowledge the existence of Taíno people. Yet 19th-Century records are full of references to caseríos (Indian kinship communities) in the mountains of eastern Oriente province. Even José Martí, revolutionary apostle of Cuban independence, recorded (in the days preceding his death in a Spanish ambush in May 1895) how he was tracked by the ‘indios de Garrido’ – Indian scouts from Yateras under the command of Spanish Lieutenant Pedro Garrido Romero.

As recently as the 1940s, Cuba’s preeminent geographer and anthropologist Antonio Nuñez Jiménez – who would later hold top positions in the Castro government – had documented dozens of caseríos scattered throughout the Sierra del Cristal and Macizo Nipe-Sagua-Baracoa mountains. Following the 1959 Cuban Revolution, however, the communist government vehemently promoted the notion of the Taíno’s extinction. It dissuaded distinct racial identification and instilled a singular mind set of ‘Cubanness’, intended to equalise everyone. “The government was drastic about it for years and didn’t want it to come up,” says José Barreiro, Cuban-American former director of the Office for Latin America at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, in a 2016 article for Smithsonian Magazine.

Christopher P Baker: “It’s easy to see how pockets of indigenous people could survive in this wild, rugged place” (Credit: Christopher P Baker)

Not even Baracoa and its remote, rugged hinterland was spared the government’s gauche promotion of a singular ‘New Man’ mindset. “We families knew we were Indian, but as children we were told not to discuss it with other people,” said Rafael Cobas Romero, a member of El Gūirito’s Grupo Kiribá-Nengón, a cultural ensemble that keeps alive 19th-Century kiribá and nengón country music and dance forms that are rustic precursors to son, Cuba’s iconic traditional music (of Buena Vista Social Club fame).

Today the living Taíno identity is acknowledged, and no longer viewed as a challenge to cubanidad (Cuban identity). Instead, it’s promoted (albeit somewhat begrudgingly) as a touristic asset. Appropriately, I’ve brought my US motorcycle group to El Gūirito for a cultural ‘people-to-people’ encounter during our ride across Cuba (US embargo law states that US citizens traveling to Cuba for group travel may legally do so only for ‘people-to-people educational exchange’).

The ensemble strikes up, interpreting their traditional sounds with age-old Cuban instruments – the tambor (African drum), tres (Cuban guitar), claves (hardwood percussion sticks), güiro (gourd scraper), maracas, marimbula (plucked box), and a güayo scraper inherited from the Taíno serrated stone grating board used to shred yucca. Indios campesinos take our hands, kiss our cheeks and invite us to dance, showing us how to glide our feet across the floor like fish moving through water.

“Kiribá and nengón are rooted in our traditional guajiro (peasant) lifestyle. But our culinary traditions date back to the pre-Columbian era,” Teresa Roché Lore, the group’s director, explained.

Spread out before us is a buffet of uniquely baracoense dishes – distinctive from Cuba’s predictable pork, rice and beans – served Taíno-style in coconut shells and jícaras (hollowed gourds) or laid out on bateas (wooden trays). I savour spinach-like calalú simmered in leche de coco (coconut milk), and bacán, a steamed corn dough stuffed with plantain and pork, wrapped in blanched banana leaves. There’s lechita, shrimp in a well-seasoned coconut sauce, and a tiny opaque fish called tetí, fried then simmered in coconut milk with slivers of sweet peppers and onions. We end with delicious desserts, including yemitas, sweet balls of grated coconut and chocolate, and a chocolate drink called chorote made from coconut milk and cacao thickened with corn starch.

The communist government promoted the notion of the Taíno’s extinction to dissuaded racial identification and instilled a mind set of ‘Cubanness’ (Credit: Christopher P Baker)

While many residents of El Gūirito display Amerindian features, Cuba’s Taíno descendants can’t always be identified by physical traits.

“You can be looking at a very Afro-Cuban or Iberian-looking person, but the DNA tells a different story,” Barreiro says in the article.

The government’s volte face echoes studies carried out in 2013 showing that Cuban blood is spiced with Taíno DNA, like ajiaco (a hearty Cuban stew of various meats, vegetables and tubers). The average proportion of Native American ancestry in the veins – 8% nationwide – climbs to 15% in eastern provinces (and far more in some individuals). It’s almost exclusively derived from maternal lineage, likely from the conquistadors brutal rape of Taíno women.

“There are no more pure-bloods, but I know many extended families of Indian heritage that still live in their aboriginal areas,” said Baracoa’s historian, Alejandro Hartmann Matos, who has spent the past decade dedicated to rewriting the tale of the Taíno’s demise. He estimates there are at least 4,000 Indo-Cubans who are biologically more Taíno than not.

“Many people in other communities have Taíno blood but won’t admit it. We don’t live exactly like our ancestors, but we’re proud of our heritage,” said Isolino Cobas Romero, a sun-beaten guajiro who leads the El Gūirito dance troupe.

According to historian Alejandro Hartmann Matos, there are at least 4,000 Indo-Cubans who are biologically more Taíno than not (Credit: Roberto Machado Noa/Getty Images)

Taíno culture is most fully preserved in La Caridad de los Indios, a constellation of small caseríos of some 1,600 kin, nestled high in the lush Sierra del Cristal mountains overlooking Guantánamo. La Caridad de los Indios was the most remote palenque where Indian families settled after being ousted from their last lowland territory in 1850.

“There are Indians all over these mountains,” says 82-year-old Francisco ‘Panchito’ Ramírez Rojas, cacique (chief) of the Rojas-Ramírez clan, Cuba’s main Taíno extended family. Even Granma, Cuba’s official Communist Party newspaper, recently acknowledged the extended clan as living proof that the dictum of Taíno extinction is myth in an article titled Panchito, el último cacique (Panchito, the last chief).

The government’s acknowledgement of living Taíno culture owes much to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Cuba was suddenly critically short on food and medicine. In desperation, it turned to indigenous knowledge of traditional farming and natural medicines, shining a spotlight on a culture it had long denied.

“There are medicines all around us,” Panchito said, sweeping his arm in an arc. “The forest, this yard. They’re an entire pharmacy.”

Baracoense cuisine is distinctive from Cuba’s well-known staples of pork, rice and beans (Credit: Christopher P Baker)

The discovery that Cuba’s indigenous healers use scorpion stings to treat arthritis led Cuban scientists to ground-breaking cancer treatments. “We found that scorpion venom acts as an anti-inflammatory agent. It also stimulates the immune system and shrinks tumours,” explained Dr José Rodríguez Alonso, an Oxford-trained Cuban physician at Guantánamo’s Universidad de Ciencias Médicas.

Since the Cuban Revolution, most caseríos now have a clinic and school, and residential bungalows (many with solar panels) built by the State. But the community’s ways of life are infused with Taíno ceremonies, traditions and spiritual values common to many Native American cultures.

They fish tetí by the luna menquante (waning moon), and plant and harvest by the four lunar phases. They still pray to the sun, moon and Mother Earth. And they ask permission or forgiveness before harvesting or taking bark and leaves for cocimientos (healing remedies).

“The Spaniards killed most of us, but they left our roots,” Panchito said. “We mustn’t let this beautiful way that we have die.” He’s been passing on his knowledge to his children and grandchildren. But younger indios are leaving the mountains for a modern life in the cities. “Our race is disintegrating,” he lamented wistfully.

Francisco ‘Panchito’ Ramírez Rojas: “We mustn’t let this beautiful way that we have die” (Credit: Christopher P Baker)

But experiencing the ancestral rhythms and indigenous cuisine at El Gūirito – just 17km east of Baracoa – gives me hope. Watching Roché Lore and her kin guiding my group on the dance floor, I grasp how respectful visitation can be a viable way of helping keep alive traditional lifestyles by providing an income. Of investing indios campesinos in a future by giving touristic value to their past.

Burdened with the myth of extinction, most communities of Taíno descendants are still far off travellers’ radar. I’m inspired to take my next group into the mountains.

Our Unique World is a BBC Travel series that celebrates what makes us different and distinctive by exploring offbeat subcultures and obscure communities around the globe.

Join more than three million BBC Travel fans by liking us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter and Instagram.

If you liked this story, sign up for the weekly bbc.com features newsletter called “If You Only Read 6 Things This Week”. A handpicked selection of stories from BBC Future, Culture, Capital and Travel, delivered to your inbox every Friday.

Scientists have discovered the descendants of the “disappeared” people of America

Topic of the day

1. home

2. org/ListItem”>

   Technologies

February 20, 2018, 17:59

Print

The researchers found that the Taino Indians did not die out after colonization.
nine0003

• You will also be interested

  >

  • Archaeologists find the remains of a child buried with 142 dogs in Egypt

    13:01

  • nine0002 Scientists have found a new colony of emperor penguins in Antarctica

    11:06

  • Twitter cut 80% of employees after Muscom’s acquisition – CNBC

    21. 01 05:28

    nine0007

  • One of the largest meteorites in the last 100 years found in Antarctica

    20.01 19:31

  • nine0002 The United States will allocate funds for the development of analogues of “Dії” in the world

    20.01 17:06

  • Google lays off 12,000 employees

    20. 01 15:26

  nine0016

  Solar storm “torn off” the tail of a comet that is moving towards Earth: photo

  20.01 15:08

  • Paleontologists have found hundreds of eggs and nests of giant dinosaurs in India

    20.01 14:44

  • Scientists have found a planet with thermonuclear fusion in the core

    20. 01 13:58

  • nine0002 The number of stars visible to the naked eye has decreased: why it happened

    20.01 13:22

  • TikTok must follow new EU rules or face ban – EU commissioner

    20.01 00:44

  • Meta may allow posting photos of female nipples on Facebook and Instagram

    19. 01 14:39

Latest news

• FAZ: Pressure on Scholz intensifies in the EU due to the problem of supplying tanks to Ukraine

  15:30

  nine0007

• The occupiers got into the building in the Kherson region: a man died

  15:03

• Shakhtar may sell another Ukrainian to the Premier League – media

  15:00

• Pension calculation: how it affects the size of the salary

  15:00

  nine0007

• Deputy plans to deprive several more representatives of the Opposition Platform for Life mandate – media

  14:56

All news

Welcome!
Registration
Password recovery
Log in to be able to comment on content
Register to be able to comment on materials
Enter the email address you registered with and a password will be sent to it

Forgot your password?
To come in

The password can contain uppercase and lowercase Latin letters, as well as numbers
The entered e-mail contains errors

Register

Name and surname must consist of letters of the Latin alphabet or Cyrillic
The entered e-mail contains errors
This email already exists
The First and last name field has no errors
Email field has no errors

Remind password

The e-mail entered contains errors

No account? Register!
Already registered? Sign in!
Don’t have an account? Register!

}

the mystery of the woman with the face tattoo

This story took place in 1851 with a girl named Olive Oatman. Her parents Royce and Mary were Mormons. They were heading to California when the Indians attacked their convoy. They killed everyone except Olive, then 14, and her seven-year-old sister. nine0003

Anastasia Maksimova

Tags:

Books

tattoos

history of women

Mysterious stories

Indians

Getty images

The Oatman Massacre

The Oatmans had seven children ranging in age from one to fifteen. The family hoped to get to California and settle there, but did not have time to carry out their plans. nine0003

It is still not known exactly which tribe carried out the massacre 90 miles east of Yuma, but it was called the Oatman Massacre. Presumably, they were eastern Yavapais. The family is known to have been approached by a group of Native Americans. They asked for tobacco, food, and weapons, and later, for no particular reason, they attacked. All the Oatmans were killed, except for 14-year-old Olive, seven-year-old Mary Ann, and their brother, 15-year-old Lorenzo, who was beaten and left for dead.

When Lorenzo woke up, instead of eight bodies, he found six – Olive and Mary Ann were nowhere to be found. Lorenzo reached the nearest settlement of Mormon emigrants, who returned with him to the bodies of his relatives and helped bury them. Instead of graves, a stone pyramid had to be built around the corpses – the soil was too hard. nine0003

Where did Olive and Mary Ann go?

Tied with ropes, driven by the prods of spears, Olive and her little sister walked for several days through the desert, accompanied by Indians. As soon as they begged for water or rest, they began to shout at them, forcing them to move faster.

When they reached the Yavapai village, the girls were settled there as slaves. They collected firewood and food in the forest, and local children kept burning them with smoldering branches. Olive and Mary Ann were often beaten, and Olive was sure that she would soon be killed. nine0003

But the Yavapai were in no hurry to kill. They kept the girls as servants for a year, until the Mohave tribe visited the village, changing the lives of Olive and Mary Ann forever.

Friends among strangers

A group of Mojave Indians came to the Yavapai for a routine exchange – they had long supported the trade. Noticing two white girls, the Mojave ransomed them and took them with them.

The Mojave village was located at the intersection of the Gila and Colorado rivers in California. It was much more prosperous and developed than the Yavapai village. The girls were taken into the family of the leader of the Espanesai tribe, whose wife Aespaneo and daughter Topeka took great care of them, and Olive many times later expressed her gratitude to both women. She emphasized that Espansay and Aespaneo raised them as their own daughters. nine0003

They were no longer slaves – they could work as long as they wanted, and were considered full members of the tribe. As a sign that they were now also Mojave, the girls were tattooed with cactus ink on their faces and forearms, like all other Mojaves. It was believed that by these tattoos, the representatives of the tribe would recognize each other after death, and the girls would be able to reunite with their new ancestors. Later in the book by Royal B. Stratton, the pastor who wrote the book about the sisters, Olive claimed to have been tattooed as a Mojave slave, but this is against the tribe’s tradition of tattooing only members of the tribe. nine0003

The Mojave were much friendlier than the Yavapais and often hosted by white immigrants, but not once did Olive and Mary Ann ask them for help. They were convinced that their brother Lorenzo had died and that they no longer had living relatives, and therefore there was nowhere to return.

But a few years later, grief came to the remaining Oatman family. The crops perished, and Mary Ann—along with most of the tribe—died. Olive admitted later that she managed to survive only thanks to her foster mother Aespaneo, who fed her secretly. nine0003

Homecoming

When Olive Oatman was nineteen, Francisco, a Yuma Indian messenger, appeared in the Mojave settlement with a message from Fort Yuma. The “whites”, he said, heard rumors that a white girl would live in the village, and the commander of the post ordered her to be returned to his own. The tribe tried to hide Olive by denying that she was “white”, but the messenger still forced them to part with the girl, threatening that otherwise the settlers would sweep the village off the face of the earth.

Olive herself was also involved in later negotiations: “I found that they told Francisco that I was not an American, but belonged to a race of people, similar to Indians, who supposedly live far from the setting sun. They painted my face, feet and hands in a dirty brown color that no other people I knew had. They told me not to speak to Francisco in English, instead to speak to him in another language, to say that I was not an American. But I spoke to him in broken English and told the whole truth, including what they were forcing me to say. He rose from his seat in anger and exclaimed that he would not tolerate this!” nine0003

The Mojave were furious – some even offered to kill Olive for such disobedience, but the tribal chief and his wife forbade Olive to be harmed. Instead, they agreed to “give up” her in exchange for some horses and blankets. Olive went with her escort to the fort, accompanied by her adopted sister Topeka, who was then 17 years old.

Prior to arriving at Fort, Olive insisted that she be given proper clothing, as she wore a traditional Mojave skirt that did not cover her body above the waist. At Fort, Olive was greeted with applause, and a few days later she was reunited with her brother Lorenzo. nine0003

Rumors

Returning to the tribesmen and what Olive told about her stay among the Mojave was full of inaccuracies. Olive said she was happy to be back home with the “whites”, and the Indians were often called savages. She claimed that the tattoos on her face were made so that she could not run, but this was not in line with Mojave traditions.

Olive reconnected with her childhood friend Susan Thomson. Many years later, Susan said that Olive missed her Indian husband and two sons very much. Olive herself denied such rumors. In Stratton’s book, she declared, “It will be said to the credit of these savages that they have never treated me offensively.” However, she could not say anything else – in those days, being suspected even in an ordinary conversation with an Indian would have tarnished the reputation of a decent girl irrevocably. What to say about intimate connection. nine0003

In 1857, a pastor named Royal B.