The Mohaves and Cocopahs were tribes living in the desert country of Southern California and Arizona. During the Nineteeth Century, the Oatman family, headed for California, was attacked by the Mohaves; most were killed but two sisters were taken captive and lived as slaves to the Mohaves for several years. The following is from the account written by Olivia Oatman after her ransom; virtually everything here except the dialogue is taken from that account.
The Cocopah captive was a tall, beautiful woman of about twenty five; her hair was especially striking, thick and black, falling well past her hips. Like all the Cocopah women, her costume was limited to a short bark apron in front and another behind; the body it revealed was quite lovely, her legs strong but shapely, her breasts high and firm, her waist very small. In her eyes, I saw the traces of an awful grief. The rest of the captives appeared quite indifferent about themselves and their fate; but not this woman, who called herself Nowereha. The other captives were girls from twelve to sixteen, and while they usually wore a "don't care" expression, Nowereha seemed perfectly bowed down with grief, moaning and crying much of the time.
After a week of wandering about the village, Nowereha suddenly disappeared. The village and surrounding area was searched, but when nothing was found, it was assumed that the grieving woman had killed herself. But several days later a Yuma came into camp driving the disheveled Nowereha ahead of him. She had managed to travel 130 miles upriver before being caught.
The next morning, the Mohaves planted a post firmly in the ground and attached a heavy crossbeam to it. One of the Mohave men was then sent to bring the unlucky Nowereha from the hut where she'd been kept tied since her return. When she saw the cross she must've known what her captors had in mind; her eyes went very wide and she stopped, planted her feet, and began shaking her head. We could not hear what was being said, put she looked as if she was pleading with the warrior. This availed her nothing, and eventually she nodded--if a little reluctantly--and allowed herself to be led to the base of the cross.
As they arrived, another Mohave was rolling a thick chunk of log up against the base of it. While this was being done, she and her escort stood holding hands, almost as if they were lovers. Once the log was in place he gestured toward it. Then he assisted her as she stepped up onto it, resting her back against the upright member of the cross.
Another warrior came up then; in his hand he carried a stone mallet and a rude wooden peg, sharp at one end, like a nail. Nowereha's escort lifted her right arm and extended it along the horizontal member of the cross, holding it by the wrist and pushing the back of her hand flat against it. Once it was in place, the other man set the sharp end of the peg against the center of her palm. She looked away; the man struck the peg hard with his hammer. Blood squirted out immediately.
She gasped and her face went tight, but she did not cry out and she didn't try to fight or get away. The man hammered the peg on through her hand and deep into the wood; after it was in place her escort moved to her other side and pulled her other hand into position, and it too was pierced through by one of the pegs. Her courage was faultless, she stared blankly into the distance and made no sound at all.
She was left hanging then, her hands dripping blood, while they removed the log. Her escort mow pulled her feet down, bending her knees a little so that her soles her pressed against the post, and the other man started driving a peg into one of them. Her chest heaved, but she still suffered in silence as her feet were nailed to the upright of the cross.
They left her then, hanging on the cross bleeding, and we were told to keep our eyes on her, as an example of what would happen to us if we tried to escape. Then, the warriors started running around their crucified captive, shouting and stamping their feet, taunting her, telling her that she was going to die and telling her that her death was not going to be an easy one.
At first the warriors were empty-handed, and for quite a while they remained this way, just running around her and yelling at her. Eventually, however, the warrior who'd escorted her to the cross began handing out bows and arrows to the warriors. None of them made any attempt to use them, not then; they kept dancing as they had been, kept taunting her.
One of them ran up and snatched off her bark skirt from the front, breaking the string and leaving her naked; the other cheered. As before, she said nothing, she merely watched them, her face calm, blood dripping from her pierced hands and feet.
The dancing had gone on for at least an hour before one of the warriors, standing well off to one side and a little in front of her, finally put an arrow on his bowstring and aimed it at her. The string twanged, the arrow whistled forward and struck the inner part of her upper thigh, a couple of inches below her crotch.
Nowereha hadn't seen it coming; she gasped and stiffened as a trail of blood started running down her smooth leg. A great yell went up from all the Mohaves; she looked for and found the man who'd shot her. "Can you do no better than that?" she asked scornfully, looking down at her leg. "My breast is much higher! The Mohaves must be poor warriors indeed!"
He laughed at her. "We will not kill you at once," he taunted. "You will suffer our arrows for a long time, slave!"
"You have not made me suffer yet!" she retorted. "Your arrows are as nothing to me!"
As she was speaking to this man, another drew his bow and fired at her, sinking an arrow into her hip on the opposite side. She looked around at it; she and the warrior exchanged taunts. More arrows flew, piercing her calves and thighs, biting into her upper arms. Though her blood was flowing steadily, she kept insisting that they were causing her no pain, and she kept pointing out that the vital areas of her body were as yet uninjured.
Finally, the warrior who'd escorted her to the cross paused in front of her and took aim at her. Their eyes met; he released his arrow, and it thudded into her belly an inch or so below her navel.
Nowereha grunted and closed her eyes tightly for a second. When she looked down, a trail of blood was already wending its way down across her belly. "Ah, yes," she murmured. "Yes! It is inside me, my dying has begun! Shoot me again, again! Give me your arrows, I desire them, you are not hurting me!" Watching her eyes, a young warrior came up close to her. She looked down at him as he drew his bow. "Do it!" she demanded. "Shoot me again, kill me!"
He laughed and let his arrow go. It whizzed forward, burying itself in her right breast, just inside the nipple, and fresh blood started running freely down the shaft. Her body jerked, she banged her head back against the post and closed her eyes for a moment, but seconds later she opened them again and started to say something else. Before she could, another warrior surprised her by shooting an arrow into her left side. It passed between her ribs, and blood foamy with air forced its way out around it.
She could not suppress a moan, but then she looked around at him. "Again!" she cried. "Again, shoot me again! Your arrows are a pleasure to me, a pleasure! I want to have more of them piercing me, shoot me again, again!"
While she was talking to this man another paused in front of her, drew his bow, and shot an arrow directly into her pubic hair, piercing her genitals. At this she screamed; blood began flowing freely down through the crevice between her legs, dripping onto the dusty earth with a steady rhythm.
For several seconds she seemed unable to speak; she just hung her head, gasping and moaning. Then another warrior shot an arrow into the right side of her chest, just under her breast, and a moment later, she began spitting up frothy blood.
She lifted her head; she seemed to be having trouble keeping her eyes open. "More," she muttered, her voice thick now. "More, more arrows. Shoot, shoot, pierce my body, make me suffer, do not hold them back!"
Another arrow flew; this one too entered her chest, high on the left side, near her collarbone, and another struck the middle of her belly, almost precisely into her navel. She went stiff and cried out softly once again, but still she continued to encourage them, and two more arrows thudded into her body, one piercing her breast again, the other burying itself in her left side. Some of the warriors shot at her from the back, sending their arrows into her upper back and buttocks, alongside the wooden post. Soon her whole body was covered with blood and sprouting with arrows, but still she lived on, and she continued, in a weak voice, to demand more.
Finally, after another warrior shot yet another arrow into her belly, they stopped firing at her and left her to die slowly. She was too weak to plead; we were told to stay and never take our eyes off her, and we did. It took several hours before all movement of her breast was stilled; then, they took the corpse down and burned it. None of the rest of us tried to escape after that.