Tonto Apaches and Mohave Indians

In 1851, Tonto Apaches captured Olive and Mary Ann Oatman and, as happened a lot, they were then traded to the Mohave Indians that lived along the Colorado River.  (The river is now the dividing line between Arizona and California.)  Olive survived five years of drought, starvation, and death by illnesses only to be traded to a white man.  What's cool is that that white man had been sent by her brother, Lorenzo.  That man had been searching for Olive for over a year.

Have you ever watched a cable TV series, "Hell on Wheels?"  (It's not for children...)  One of the female characters in the series was once a captive of Indians and carries a chin tattoo as a symbol of her earlier acceptance into an Indian community.  Interestingly enough, that tattoo is vaguely familiar to the one Olive Oatman carried to her grave...


In 1857, Lt. Beale noted in his personal journal that he believed a military presence in the Kingman area would be necessary to protect emigrants from Mojave Indian aggression.

In 1858, just a few months after Lt. Beale and his men (and camels!) finished their survey work on the wagon road, folks were already heading west.  When one of these groups made it back to Albuquerque, one of their men wrote a letter to the editor of his back-home newspaper:

The Indians came running from every quarter out of the brush, completely surrounding the camp, and attacked us.  They kept up a continued shooting of arrows for near two hours and part of them, having driven off all the stock except a few near the wagons, they all left ... Miss Bentner had been found dead, her clothes torn off and her face disfigured.  From this and the fact of an Indian shaking some scalps at us, which he had fastened on a pole, we supposed that they (the Bentner family) had all been killed.  Mr. Alpha Brown was also killed and eleven wounded (including a small girl who was shot through the shoulder with an arrow) ... We concluded to return the way we had come ... Out of near four hundred head of cattle, we saved seventeen head, and out of thirty-seven horses, probably ten..."  
Despite much hardship most of the group made it back to Albuquerque, walking most of the way.

Fort Mojave was established the next year - just as Lt. Beale had warned would be necessary.