How two young children survived one of the most treacherous stories in recent history....

Do you often find yourself wondering if the Wild West was really all that wild? Perhaps you’ve seen a few movies and heard some stories, but you feel like there’s more going on here than these dramatic displays of borderline fiction. Or maybe you’re a bit of a historian. And you’re simply looking to learn more about one of the most powerfully informative (and incredibly sad) tales of the Old Wild West. Whatever the case may be, the massacre of the Oatman family is something worthy of historical focus. 

Just imagine fighting for your family’s survival, barely scraping by, and then watching everything you own to be taken from you. Royce Oatman experienced such a fate, and although it’s horrific what happened to the Oatman family, it’s not the whole story. The Wild West, a time in America between 1850 and 1910, is often overdramatized in Hollywood, which does a splendid job of making the Indians seem like savages and the cowboys come across as heroic gunslingers. While at times this may be true, at other times, it’s not. We’re all free to study and analyze the history books at our own discretion, drawing our own conclusions. But it’s important that we look at things from as objective a perspective as possible.

With a bit of insight into the Native American culture, paired with a larger understanding of how the settlers of the west actually lived, you'll be able to decipher what happened to the Oatman family of your own accord, empowering an honest understanding of this history. In The Captivity of the Oatman Girls, you’ll discover:

• Powerful insight into the truth of the relations between the settlers and the Plains Indians of North America
• Why the actions of the colonists in the late 18th century bordered genocide - and how this shifted the landscape forever 
• Why retaliation and vengeance created an exponential rise in violence - and why much of this could have been avoided