Arizona Legends and Lore

by Dorothy Daniels Anderson

  In time, they moved to Texas where James started the First Bank of Sherman, Texas and where Olive Oatman Fairchild lived out her days in a large, beautiful home built for her by her devoted husband. Her peaceful life was given to doing charitable works. She was particularly devoted to helping orphan children. Her sensitive understanding of the plight of these children was acknowledged by all who knew her. Having no children of their own, the Fairchilds even adopted one of these orphans who became their much beloved daughter.

  Olive Oatman after her release from captivity. Notice tattoo on chin. (Courtesy Arizona Historical Society, Tucson)

  Many who knew her during those years in Texas, before her death at the age of sixty-five, said she grew very shy. Rarely was she willing to meet strangers. Whenever Olive went into the town of Sherman, she would wear a large hat with a dark veil covering her face.

  Olive Oatman Fairchild never returned to Arizona. Possibly she felt no need to. Every day, in spite of the countless washings, she could see when she looked into her mirror, those clear tattoo marks on her chin. Perhaps that looking-glass reflection reminded her all too vividly of her life among the Indians of Arizona.

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Arizona Development Board, Amazing Arizona: Historical Markers in Arizona, Vol. 1, 1521 West Jefferson Street, Phoenix, 1960.

  Dr. Al Daniels, descendant of the Oatman family, interview, 1987.

  J. B. Fairchild, Letter to Sharlot Hall, The Commercial National Bank, Sherman, Texas, December 21, 1905.

  Sharlot Hall, “Olive A. Oatman—Her Captivity With the Apache Indians, and Her Later Life,” Out West, July to December, 1908, pages 216–227.

  Major Samuel P. Heintzelman, Original journal from January 1, 1851-December 1853, “Concerning the establishment of an army post at the junction of the Colorado and Gila rivers.” Yuma County Historical Society.

  Olive Oatman, Original lecture notes used in her speeches, Arizona Historical Society, Yuma.

  Reverend Edward J. Pettid, S.J., “The Oatman Story,” Arizona Highways, November 1968, pages 4–9.

  Reverend Royal Byron Stratton, The Captivity of the Oatman Girls, San Francisco: Whitton, Towne and Company, 1857.

  Olive Oatman Fairchild’s residence in Sherman, Texas (Courtesy of Sharlot Hall Museum Archives, Prescott)

  No Tame House-Cat Woman

  As the first white child to be born in Lincoln County in the territory of Kansas in October 1870, Sharlot Hall never saw another child during the early years of her life. Her only playmates were some buffalo calves her father had captured on one of his hunting trips. In spite of their enormous size, they became quite tame. She helped to feed them and loved to push her face into their long, rough coats of fur. They, in turn, lumbered behind this little girl of the prairie, following her wherever she went.

  Sharlot’s mother, a former school teacher, had married James Hall when she was twenty-two years old, after her family had come to Kansas to homestead. Sharlot was their firstborn. For a long while, the only woman Sharlot knew was her mother. As a small child, Sharlot followed her mother everywhere: to feed the chickens, weed the garden, wash the clothes and to bake bread in a Dutch oven in their cabin’s large fireplace.

  As isolated as they were, Adeline Hall did not ignore her daughter’s education. She wanted Sharlot to know that there was a much larger world out there beyond the ranch. When the chores were done she began to teach three-year-old Sharlot all she knew. In those days there was very little reading material available out in a secluded homestead. They had two books which came from Adeline’s father, Grandfather Boblett. So Sharlot’s first reading primers were the daunting texts of the Library of Mesmerism and the Phrenological Journal.

  Sharlot didn’t always understand what she read, but she loved sounding out the words. What mattered was to say them, rolling them trippingly off her tongue. There were other books, her mother said, that told stories about people’s lives.

  James Hall was a product of the frontier, with only minimal schooling. He did not trust educated people, his wife being the only exception. Occasionally Sharlot’s father would read stories to her from a Farm and Ranch magazine. She soon noticed that all the stories seemed the same. The hero was always the noble farmer and the villain was always the doctor, the lawyer or the clerk, the educated person. She wondered if all stories had the same patterns, told over and over again.

  When other pioneers moved into the area, Sharlot soon discovered that all the frontier settlers seemed to distrust educated people. On those rare occasions when groups would gather for a visit, Sharlot would try to explain about her love for reading, her sense of wonder over words, but the response was always the same. “What does a farm girl, a ranch girl need with reading? No call for it, just trying to have high-faluting ways.”

  Sharlot learned to accept the work of the farmer’s life, doing it well so as to forestall any punishment, like the taking away of her precious books. Her hands took on a swift skill. She accepted the fact that what was needed was for her to hang up the saddles, wire the gates shut against roving calves, cut wood for the stove and cook meals. Books and poetry were for high-toned people, not for the rancher, not for a farmer’s daughter. She was afraid to ask where such people lived. She knew it must be somewhere very, very different from the open prairie of Kansas.

  Then, one evening, some neighbors came over to the cabin for a social visit. In the course of the evening, they began to talk about this old, odd man, Mr. Cushion, funny kind of name, who lived in the area. The visitors said that he shut himself up in his cabin for days with all those books of his, then he’d go wandering around the hills by himself all the time.

  Everyone began to laugh and make fun of Mr. Cushion, except Sharlot. She became determined to meet Mr. Cushion and to somehow get him to allow her to read his books. Was he high-toned? Why then did he live in a cabin in Kansas?

  For days she would watch his cabin after she had completed her chores. When he went for walks, she would follow him, ever careful not to be seen. She had to figure out a way to get him to let her read his books. But it did not appear to be an easy thing to do. Mr. Cushion didn’t seem interested in nature; he never laughed or sang or whistled. Did he hate everybody? Is that why he shunned all the neighbors?

  Her determination soon yielded to desperation. What could she do? What could she say? Finally one day, she could bear it no longer. She jumped out some twenty feet in front of him on the trail.

  “My name is Sharlot Mabridth Hall,” she shouted. “I read books. I have read the Library of Mesmerism four times and the Phrenological Journal six times!” Surprised, Mr. Cushion stopped and looked at the determined little eight-year-old girl before him, her anxious face staring into his. “Folks around here say you’re crazy to have all those books, but I don’t think so,” she said. “I think you must be the richest man in the territory of Kansas to own all those words.”

  Then her precious words failed her and she stood trembling, unable to move, waiting for this man to decide her fate.

  Finally, after what seemed like an eternity of waiting, he said, “So you like to read, Sharlot Mabridth Hall; then you’d best come to my cabin and show me just how well you can read.”

  Sharlot’s heart soared. From that point on, Mr. Cushion, that wonderful odd old man, lent her books. She read quaint old histories and books on philosophy. She read Kant and Swedenborg. It didn’t matter to her that she did not always understand it all; she loved the words.

  Then James Hall decided that Kansas was getting far too crowded for him. He liked space without the encroachment of people. Sharlot’s uncle, her mother’s brother, wrote from the territory of Arizona describing the open empty land that was there for the taking. They were to move to Arizona.

  As a going-away present, Mr. Cushion gave Sharlot two books. These were the first books she ever owned and she treasured them. One was a book of poems by Bret Harte. Whenever she had completed her chores, she would go out in the fields and hills by her
self and read those poems out loud to the birds, the rabbits, the farm animals. To write poetry would be the most wonderful thing that a person could ever do. The other book that the old scholar gave her was completely unsuitable for a young girl, but she treasured it anyway. It was Daniel Defoe’s The History of the Devil.

  For Sharlot, the trip to Arizona was exciting. She reveled in the constantly changing scenery, the sense of freedom. Because the family would be traveling on public thoroughfares, Sharlot’s father insisted that she ride sidesaddle, rather than the usual astride and bareback that was permitted in the confines of the farm.

  One day, instead of paying attention to her horse, Sharlot spent her time looking out for the possibility of finding a small left-over nugget of gold on the way. She had heard stories of gold being discovered in Arizona. All she wanted was one small nugget, just enough to buy herself some books. Intent on her search, she allowed her horse to wander with too loose a rein. The horse spooked at something and threw her off. She landed flat on her back, injuring her spine so severely that she was plagued with back problems for the rest of her life. She did not tell anyone of her fall. Fearful of getting punished, she got back on the horse and rode with the pain for days.

  The Hall family camped out on the ranch of Uncle John Boblett, while Sharlot’s father looked around for suitable land on which the family could settle. While at Uncle John’s place, the family went to visit the town of Prescott, located some ten miles away. At that time, Prescott was the largest town in the territory after Tucson.

  Prescott was the biggest town Sharlot had ever seen. It had a theater, a concert hall, a new city hall, two banks, two schools, three newspapers, four stables, five churches and eighteen saloons. The veneer of culture was in strong competition with the needs of the miners and cowboys who lived within reach of the town. Prescott even had a railroad going through it and it also had regular stagecoach service. The only problem with the stage was that it was prone to getting robbed. Bandits would swoop down on the unsuspecting passengers, strip them of their valuables and then vanish into the surrounding mountain wilderness.

  Occasionally, the sheriff would catch one of these desperadoes. Then there was always a hanging. Hangings inevitably took place on Saturday. The Weekly Arizona Miner , one of the local newspapers, consistently featured an article in Monday’s paper full of all the details of the hanging. Over the years, Sharlot, who had a knack of noticing all sorts of things, began to realize that the articles always ended in the same way, with many compliments to the sheriff for having made the occasion such a pleasant one for everybody. The harsh realities of frontier life were often tempered by her humorous view of the world as she saw it.

  James Hall finally located a piece of land for a ranch some fifteen miles from Prescott, in an area called Lonesome Valley. It suited her father admirably for it was indeed an isolated place. Ranching was wonderful that first summer. There was plenty of rain so the grass was abundant and the streams held rushing water. Cattle prices were high. Sharlot’s father made money that year and invested the money in even more cattle.

  About that time, when Sharlot was twelve years old and her brother was nine, they were allowed to attend school for the first time. The little school was about four miles from the ranch. The brother and sister rode their horses there every day. They wrote their lessons on slates that were trimmed in red felt. Sharlot was fascinated by everything about school. By this time she had decided that she was seriously going to try to be a poet and a writer. But where to find the time? After school, every spare minute was taken up with chores on the ranch. Instead of doing her geography lesson, Sharlot would often write verses in her little notebook. Of course she tried to make her poems about geography and history. She wrote poems about Florida and Christopher Columbus. She could not help herself, she just had to write.

  One day, after Sharlot had been at school only a term, Miss Johnson, her teacher, summoned her father for a parent conference. Sharlot sat in the corner of the schoolroom trembling, reviewing in her mind all the sins and omissions of her days at the school.

  “Mr. Hall,” her teacher began, “Sharlot has been with me for a term now and she has learned everything that I know to teach her. She is ready to go to the big school in Prescott. Judge Howard’s wife is looking for a girl to help around the house and is willing to give Sharlot her room and board and allow her to attend school. Sharlot can go home on weekends to help on the ranch.”

  Sharlot could not believe what she had heard. But she did not dare to hope that such a thing would happen, for she knew her father. He did not like educated people and their high-toned ways. He would never let her go. But she had not reckoned with pretty Miss Johnson’s persuasive ability. After a brief thoughtful silence, James Hall agreed to allow Sharlot to go to school in Prescott.

  Living at the Howards, and attending school, Sharlot experienced some of the happiest moments of her life. She stayed at school in Prescott for eight months. Never before had she had friends, children her own age, to talk to or sometimes simply to listen to. Then her mother became very ill and Sharlot had to return to the ranch to take on her chores. That was all the formal education that Sharlot ever had.

  If her mother’s illness was not problem enough, even greater tragedy struck. A drought descended on the area that was to last for four years. The streams dried up. The grass dried up and blew away. The cattle were pitiful. Many of them died. Each day Sharlot had to learn to do hard things to keep the family from starving. Years later, Sharlot wrote a poem about those days of the drought. Many people from all over the country wrote her telling her how much that poem explained how they felt.

  And then it began to rain. It rained for over a month. Much of the ranch was flooded. By this time Sharlot’s father decided that ranching was no way to make a living. He decided to join his brothers-in-law and do some hydraulic mining of gold flecks found in the bluffs of creeks and streams. They staked out some mining claims in the Lynx Creek area. For the next few years Sharlot, her father and uncles mined the creek. Sharlot’s mother was too ill to join them.

  It was hard, hard work in cold weather. Sharlot was chief cook and keeper of the gold bullion. Not a door in their cabin would lock, so she always slept with a big revolver under her pillow and tried to keep an eye open at all times looking out for bandits. From her youthful perspective, it was an exciting life always having to be on the lookout for a possible raid, especially after a clean-up when there was plenty of gold stored.

  Sharlot’s father eventually amassed enough money to build a good-size house on the ranch in Lonesome Valley. It was the largest house around and well-built. Her family decided not to go back to ranching but instead planned to plant fruit trees—apples, pears, peaches. Fresh fruit was a scarce commodity in those days and would fetch a good price among the miners and townspeople.

  Lots of the old-timers laughed at the family when they heard that they were planting fruit trees. No one believed that such a type of tree could grow in that altitude and, if that were not problem enough, there was not sufficient water available to nurture them. The old-timers were right about the water. The trees on their newly-named Orchard Ranch grew small, but they eventually did bear their precious fruit.

  Sharlot continued to live on the ranch to help out her constantly ill mother. It was a hard life for a young girl blossoming into womanhood. There were rarely any visitors. While other young girls of her age in towns like Prescott were often caught up in the social whirl of church activities, dances and visiting, Sharlot’s life was that of a busy ranch woman. It was up to her to keep up with the orchard, garden, chickens and the housework.

  Sometimes she keenly felt the total isolation of ranch life. These were the bad times when her loneliness brought on such feelings of despair. It was then that she started to write letters to the authors she was reading, particularly to those authors who wrote about their own experiences dealing with loneliness. She treasured the few letters that authors would write back to he
r.

  One of her most precious was from Rudyard Kipling. He wrote something that Sharlot committed to memory to help during the times when she needed consoling the most.

  I used to know a little about loneliness in the heat and dust of India and I know what a comfort it is to be taken out of real things for awhile by reading a book. 1

  About that time Sharlot discovered that people would actually pay her to write. She sold her first article to a children’s magazine. She received a payment of four dollars. That was a lot of money in those days when people often worked for ten cents an hour. The story was a description of a Moqui (Hopi) folk tale. Sharlot began to realize that writing might be a way for her to earn money to help out with the ranch. Apparently people in the eastern sections of the country were fascinated with everything about western ranch life and the Indians. There was a market for articles about these things. She took to visiting local Indian ruins so that she could write knowledgeably about them. She enjoyed the sense of freedom that even a small excursion offered her.

  Sharlot Hall as a young woman seated at the Blickensderfer typewriter (Courtesy of Sharlot Hall Museum, Prescott)

  Sharlot also began to enter every writing contest that she could find hoping that if she could win, not only would she receive a gift or money, but it would enhance her status in submitting her work for financial remuneration. She won a dozen prizes in a three-year time. She won one hundred dollars from the Aeromotor Company in Chicago. The family bought more fruit trees with that money. She also won a Blickensderfer typewriter. Now she began to feel that she had a profession as a writer. Her life on the ranch now had fewer moments of lonely despair. Perhaps writing would be her pathway to freedom.