In the time of Colonial America when indians would lose a young child they would take white captives and adopt them as their own. This went on for years until The Government made a decree for all indian captives to be returned back to white society. To avoid war the indians cooperated with the whites and returned all the white captives that they had taken into the society to live as an indian. Accept many of these captives were so used to the indian life that they didn’t want to go back to the white society. Many of these captives were all still children and were raised in the society since a young age so all they new was the life of the indian and didn’t know much about white culture. Three of these captives are Olive Oatman, Cynthia Ann Parker, and Frances Slocum. First there was Olive Oatman.
Olive Oatman was born in Illinois in 1837 she was one of seven children born to Royce and Mary Oatman. They had joined a wagon train in 1850 because of disagreements about how their religion was being run. They planned on moving to the banks of the Colorado river, but when they got to New Mexico the land was’t looking the way they had expected and went to seek on to find a different place. On February 18, 1851 a group of Yavapai Indians attacked them on the Gila River in Arizona. Four of the children were killed along with the parents, one child was injured, and two had been taken. The Indians captured and enslaved Olive and her sister. A year later a group of Mojave Indians came to trade supplies and adopted the two sisters. They were adopted by their Tribal Leader Espanola and his family.
The two girls were giving land. In 1855, the tribe experienced a large drout and Mary Oatman had died of starvation along with many other people in the tribe. After that Olive’s brother (the only other survivor from the Oatman massacre) had gotten word of were his sister was. He sent a ransom to get his sister back; the Indians, pleased with the ransom, sent Olive back to the whites.
On February 28, 1856 Olive started the twenty-day journey to Fort Yuma escorted by soldiers. She died of a heart attack on March 20, 1903 at the age of 65 in Texas.Second there is Cynthia Ann Parker. Cynthia was born in 1825 or 1824, the exact date is unknown.
Her parents were Silas M. Parker and Lucy Parker. In 1834 Cynthia’s grandfather was given a task of finding and establishing a safe and fortified against Comanche raids. He established Fort Parker on the banks of the Navasota River. On may 19, 1836 a force of about 600 Indians attacked the fort. The whites were outnumbered and lost the fort to the Indians. They captured Cynthia and five other teenage girls.
Over the years the girls were slowly ransomed off to the whites but Cynthia stayed with the Indians for about twenty-five years. Cynthia was adopted by a Camanche couple and enjoyed life with the Indians. She ended up marrying the chief of the village, Peta Nocona. They had three children, Quanah, who grew up to be the chief of the village, a son named Pecos, and a daughter named Toqusana. In 1860 Texas Rangers led by Cynthia’s father raided the village and captured all the women and children.
After being sure that all her children were alive she identified herself as being Cynthia.
