Doctor John De Conte had arrived at…
March 1851 CE
In the letter, Royce described how much of his livestock had been stolen by hostile natives and he was nearly out of food and stranded with his family west of the Pima Villages.
Heintzelman had sent two soldiers with two mules packed with supplies to rescue the Oatman Party, but when they arrived after a one hundred and twenty-mile-journey, all they found were two graves and an abandoned wagon.
Captain Heintzelman will later discover that six people of the Oatman Party had been massacred, and two young females named Olive Oatman and Mary Ann Oatman had been abducted.
Their fourteen-year-old brother Lorenzo Oatman, clubbed and left for dead, had been thrown over a cliff but will survive to help rescue his remaining sister years later.
At the time, the Americans believed Maricopas are responsible for the murders but later accounts suggest that it was either the Mohave or Yavapai to blame.
The two young girls are taken as slaves and later sold to the Mohave tribe,.
Mary Ann will die of starvation in captivity and Olive will be ransomed five years later.
Heintzelman blames Doctor De Conte for not coming to the aid of the Oatman party and De Conte blames Heintzelman for not sending an expedition, which would have been a violation of the captain's specific orders.
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