Captivity of the Oatman Girls: Being an Interesting Narrative of Life among the Apache and Mohave Indians . . . Twenty-Second Thousand.
New-York: Published for the Author, by Carlton & Porter, 1859. One of a number of printings subsequent to the 1857 first edition. 8vo (7.5 x 5.38 inches), original blind-stamped brown cloth, 290, 2 page. Frontispiece portrait, three inserted plates (one included in the pagination count), illustrations in the text. Spine and board edges sunned; front hinge cracked, with the muslin visible, but holding; a good copy. Item #20872
One of the best-known captivity narratives of the period, first published in San Francisco in 1857: “The Oatman family belonged to a small schismatic sect of Mormons. Its leader, after a revelation, pointed to the Colorado River, below the junction with the Gila, as the proper location of Zion. On their way there, the Oatmans were beset by Indians and most of them were killed. However, one of the daughters, Olive Oatman, survived her captivity and afterward, her adventures were vividly recounted by Royal Stratton and became a best-seller of the time” (Wagner-Camp 294:1-8). This copy with the contemporary inscription in ink on the front blank, “Rich’d W. Rouse’s Book Bought of Wm. Taylor the California street preacher at the Urbana camp meeting August 21st 1859.” The Methodist evangelist William Taylor had been called to California in 1848 and achieved a certain level of fame; his memoir, Seven Years of Street Preaching in California was first published in 1857 and printed at the press of Carlton & Porter (and subsequently reprinted a number of times; Seven Years of Street Preaching appears in the advertisements of other printings of the Oatman captivity from Carlton & Porter); his follow-up memoir, California Life Illustrated was published the following year. The intersection between popular religion and the sale of popular literature at a camp meeting is suggestive of the hustle of the itinerant minister and the shifting line between sacred and secular sensation. The Urbana provenance would seem to be Ohio: Taylor dots Ohio newspaper accounts in 1859, including an appearance in the pulpit under a solid roof in a Methodist chapel in Urbana, O. in November, 1859; 1860 newspaper accounts suggest the Urbana, O. camp meeting was a regular August feature. This suggests a contemporary George W. Rouse of Cleveland seems a likely candidate for the provenance.
Price: $500.00