The Captivity Stories of John Tanner, Alvar Nunez Cabeza De Vaca and Olive Oatman

Every Captivity story has a reintegration process of some form and the process of reintegration remains consistent through time, culture and gender. Most captives struggle against a full reintegration and instead they use parts of their captive society and original society to create their own new life that is separate from both. They create new genres of living space that is accepted by neither society because of the influence of the other.

There are many different captivity narratives that can prove this point, this paper is going to focus on three. Those are John Tanner, Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca and Olive Oatman. These three were chosen specifically because they address the consistency issues of time, culture and gender. Cabeza de Vaca captivity experience and narrative is two hundred and fifty to three hundred and thirty years before Tanner and Oatman go through their respective captivities. Also, Cabeza is originally from and returns to a Spanish culture, whereas Tanner and Oatman are from the White society that inhabited North America during their respective times. Olive Oatman was chosen because she was a female, but also because she and Tanner share an aspect of their captivity. Both were taken in their young youth, where a lot of the other captivity narratives, like Cabeza endured their captivity during their adult years. Oatman and Tanner show that even though they were “raised” in an adoptive/captive society during their developmental years of childhood and adolescence, they leave that society to return to the original culture, however to live in a style they create separate from either society.

Cabeza’s captivity spanned the years 1528 to 1536. During that time he went from being a slave, to a holy man of the Indians with his companions, to a trader with prestige among the various tribes that he went through. Because of these different stages of his captivity, Cabeza was able to get several different angels for his view of each separate Indian society that he stayed with. For instance, when he was traveling not with his master he arrived at one point with the Avavares where they treated him and his companions well, giving them food and guiding them through the harsh land with only asking for healing in return (Favata 76). Cabeza still had the lens of being a slave, yet he wasn’t with his captors at the time and the Avavares were treating him like a healer, another lens Cabeza could look through. Each one of the lenses to look through his captivity has multiple layers on each other, as shown with the Avavares example and each one of these lenses lets Cabeza analyze his native society with and to create his own new position with after his return.

Cabeza didn’t have a society that really tried to reintegrate him past what was deemed an acceptable show. Spanish high society had a set of rules for everything, including the return of long lost citizens. Once they did the least that they could, it was done with. Cabeza did try to reintegrate himself to an extent. He sent letters like the Proem to the King and wrote his own account which could be taken as a way to let Cabeza back into the culture, but they could also have been simply trying to save face with the fact that his expedition has basically been wiped out and had cost a lot of Spanish money for no gain in return. Even in these accounts though, his new self emerged. Each of the Indian tribes that he had stayed with had changed him in some way, and through it all Cabeza emerged a completely different man with different world and culture views. In his account he gives the Indians too much grace to be considered acceptable by a typical Spaniard that would have always put the Indian down as savages not worth notice. Cabeza gives descriptions of them that are beautiful, tall, and how good they are at their various jobs of hunting or navigating. In his captivity he learned to respect them and is showed through in his account.

After he had made these shows of loyalty to the Spanish Empire Cabeza went on in his life, but not like the one he had before his captivity. When Cabeza got to Asuncion he was a large Indian’s Right activist. “Cabeza de Vaca’s . . . final message [is] that the conversion and pacification of the Indians is best accomplished by gentle means” (Boruchoff 391). Which is exactly what Cabeza went about trying to do. He didn’t want to dominate the Indians, he wanted to live peacefully with them, so “He gave orders for the clergy to take the Indians under their care. He also decreed that mistreated Indians were to be taken from their masters and put in worthier hands” (Favata 13). He instituted other reforms as well, but this was radical for any Spaniard to do. This was almost a completely new idea. A person of higher status (not superbly high, but still ranking) wanted the rights of people that could be his slaves. This was not an accepted position in the mainstream Spanish life however, and Cabeza lost his influence in such matters. He was not a part of his inherent society, yet because he fought for Indian rights, he was not a part of that society either. The captive society changed him and he was never again a part of either culture.

Tanner’s captivity was different from Cabeza’s in several aspects. Tanner was not someone outside of the captive society as Cabeza still was in his role as trader. Tanner was raised as an Ottawa Indian, took an Indian wife (a couple of them) which bore him children, had his trade as an Indian hunter and was therefore fully integrated into the life. His original society, the White society, still had influence on him however. He longed to reconnect to his blood relatives and thought about returning for a long time before he actually did. After a lifetime of living with his Indian families, he returned, as an adult and as an Indian, to his family.

His life long adoption into the Indian nations would keep him forever separated from the American Whites and their way of living. They even called him the “White Indian,” which shows that the Whites did acknowledge him as being of their blood, but it kept him distanced in the same way. He is White, but not enough. He is Indian, but too White, once Tanner had returned to the Whites he never again would have been able to return to the Indians he had “come from”.

He did try to reintegrate himself for a short time. He had forgotten his native tongue during his captivity, and it was re-taught to him so he could communicate with his family. He stayed with the Whites and tried to blend. To reintegrate himself he even took a White wife, but she ran away from him with their child and got a divorce with some distance between them (Drimmer 143), his Indian lifestyle had intruded upon his current living once again. Despite all of his efforts to go back though, it seemed that the White Indian name would truly rule the rest of his life.

So, Tanner created a space for himself. A whole new category of being. He became the White Indian as he had been labeled. He continued to believe in the Great Spirit and many of teachings that were similar, things he learned from the Ottawa’s. He still lived his life as a hunter, as he had in his captive society, but it was in the outskirts of the White world. He had distinctly distanced himself from the Whites, but had not returned to the Indians. His life as a hermit with mixed heritage was a new one. Usually, as in the case of Cabeza, the captive goes back to his original society and tries to live there. The captive is obviously different, yet still within the original society. Tanner didn’t though. He felt better living just outside the society so that he could still have the freedoms that he chose. If he had stayed in White civilization completely he would have had to conform to their ideals in many ways, which would have included how he lived and what he believed in. So, he became a complete outsider to both, that still had connections in how he lived to both societies, something that no one had actually done before. Living separate, yet with both at the same time.

Oatman was one captive that did return to life in her original society, but because she was a woman she had to go through obstacles. First off, her captivity days are less known because of what she chose to divulge to the public. For instance, “Olive Oatman’s status among the Mohaves from the time of her sister’s death until her return to Fort Yuma on 22 February 1856 is not clear” and “The implication is that she remained an unmarried family member” (Derounian 35). Her status throughout her entire captivity is unclear and there’s an implication that she was unmarried, yet many people speculated that she had married and even given birth to children to return. There simply isn’t any concrete evidence for her narrative that would be accepted by the current White society, though on the issue of her virginity “she always insisted that she was chaste when rescued” (Dillon 34). Many White people didn’t believe that though, simply because she was a woman in a captive situation and her word just wasn’t good enough. That shows how hard it was in Oatman’s time to come back to a society where her very word was distrusted simply because of being a woman, not to mention that she had visible tattoo’s on her face that set her apart as being marked by the savages she had lived with for so long.

Oatman had been adopted into her captive society and been raised with Chief Espenesay’s family. She learned how their society ran, how they treated women and all the various differences between White and Indian society. The Mohaves let women more rights than the Whites let their women have. Mahave women had rights over children and living and what they did with their time more than the White woman and Oatman was a witness to all of these things.

When she returned to White civilization she initially conformed back to what they expected of her simply because she didn’t know how to adjust to the society that she had left so long ago. She answered all the questions posed her and didn’t protest her treatment in the White society, she simply went along with everything they told her to do. “Olive Oatman was in bad physical condition and in an even worse mental state. But once she was reunited with Lorenzo, she began to mend” (Dillon 35). Once she got back to her loving brother Lorenzo, who had orchestrated her rescue and only cared about her, she began to make herself anew. She could never again be a part of the Indian society now that she was back with the Whites, yet they would never fully accept her as she wanted to be accepted. For one thing, she was a woman, for another, she had lived too long with the Indians and even had physical brands of the events she went through. Oatman lived with someone who simple cared about her and not her tattooed markers, her brother, and she was able to create herself beyond the bounds of White living.

Once stable, she was a powerful woman that wasn’t going to be bound like most White women were. She had endured things that White women gasped about in gossip. She had even killed; “. . . I went up to her and struck her twice with this tomahawk, when she fell dead upon the ground” (Stratton 214). White women had never experienced such things and could not fathom living in such an existence, but Oatman used all of her experiences to live the life she chose. Things that had happened during her captivity were not used as crutches or excuses for Oatman, she used them as tools to further a life that she wanted to live. Nothing was beyond her reach when she decided to go for it.

She defied the norms by traveling a teaching circuit where she had her own prestige and power. People went to see her tattoo’s and to hear her words. Oatman spoke what she wanted to speak without filters from an outside source. She had complete control over what she said to the masses that gathered. She had complete control over her own life. This kind of lifestyle for a woman did not come from the White society, is came from her adoptive Mohave society where woman had more rights. She shaped what she wanted from the Mohave society into the White society and made her own living. Women weren’t supposed to be so different and outspoken, leading their lives was left to the men that they married and gave their life too. Oatman did marry, but her husband John B. Fairchild had also endured being a captive and would better understand her in her life. So, she married and had children, the aspiration of any good White woman, but Oatman still did the teaching circuit where she had control over her words and what others heard. Her message was her own and she continued to give it as she saw fit. Being a White woman and being married, yet still independent was extremely rare in the society, and Oatman put it right out in the White public eye. She showed the White American world what woman could do and helped spur women’s rights to be independent and powerful and their own being.

Captives all share a similar experience, but it is not necessarily the image in most people’s minds. Yes, they do endure hardships, not enough food, and physical beatings at times, but there is more. All captives live a life that was completely different from one that they had known, and it changes all those who experience it. Yet all captives must return to their original society, otherwise they aren’t considered captives, they are either dead or considered traitors to live wholly with a different culture. A captive returns to their original society, yet they cannot be wholly assimilated back into that society. They have seen too much of how other people live, they’ve lived too much of a different life, and they don’t particularly want to be bound by their original or adoptive societies.

So, as Cabeza, Tanner, and Oatman did, they create their own lifestyle that is separate from both of the societies, but has elements of both. Cabeza made a life in the Spanish world to try and help the Indians of which he had gained a great respect and love for. Tanner lived outside of both, yet close to them as well, using all of his adoptive training and belief’s to survive on the edge of White civilization. Oatman took ideas from her adoptive life and charged into her original society in terms that were viewed as impossible, after all, she was a White woman. They all resist a full reintegration into their original society and instead create new ways of living that is unique to each individual. They live as they want to live because they make it happen from their two societal backgrounds, which is every persons ultimate desire. To live as they want to live.

Works Cited

Boruchoff, David A. “The Narrative of Cabeza de Vaca (Book).” Early American Literature Vol.39. Issue 2 (2004): 385 – 394.

Derounian-Stodola, Kathryn Zabelle. “The Indian Captivity Narratives of Mary Rowlandson and Olive Oatman: Case Studies in the Continuity, Evolution, and Exploitation of Literary Discourse.” Studies in the Literary Imagination Vol. 27. Issue 1(1994): 33 – 46.

Dillon, Richard S. “The Ordeal of Olive Oatman.” American History Vol. 30. Issue 4 (1995): 30 – 35.

Drimmer, Frederick. Captured by the Indians; 15 Firsthand Accounts, 1750 – 1870. New York: Dover Publications, 1961.

Favata, Martin A. and Jose B. Fernandez. The Account: Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca’s Relacion. Houston: University of Houston, 1993.

Stratton, R.B. Captivity of the Oatman Girls. Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1983.