Weekly journal-miner., 1922-05-17

ing legal battles in the history oi Mohave county was fought out today in the Oatman court of domestic re- latious when John Oatman, wealthy MOhave Indian, was sued for divorce by his wife, Estelle Oatman. Both plaintiff and defendant live near the Oatman gold camp in which the Mohave chief is heavily interested.
 John Oatman claims to be the grandson of Ola Oatman, famous in Arizona history. In, 1851 the Oat- man family while on its way from Illinois to California was massacred by Indians. One daughter, Ola, was spared and forced to marry a Mo- have brave. She became such thorough Indian woman that years later, when her brother insisted that she leave her husband and children, she went insane.
 In bringing her suit for divorce, Mrs. Oatman swore, both legally and literally, that her husband had revert, ed to dog dinners" that he fright ened her on several occasions by put ing phosphorus on his body and do- ing the old tribal ghost dances, and that he had had many conferences with bootleg peddlers of coffin var nish, "forty-rod' and "sheepherder's delight
 Moreover, besides naming an AL bino girl of the Yavapai tribe, Mrs. Oatman stated that her husband had built covered pit and filled it with gila monsters, lizards, vinagrones, scorpions, tarantulas and rattlesnakes, that he had pushed her into said pit when she objected to the Yavapai Indian girl swimming the Colorado river to visit her husband, and that he had displayed other evidences ot failing marital affection.
 Through her attorney, V. P. Lucas of Oatman, Mrs. Oatman further al legged that her husband was addicted to eating loco-weed and that during the dementia following this dissipa- ton on one occasion he had tied her into the topmost prickly branches of a candelabra cactus 25 feet high and had left her there during q scorch- ing hot afternoon.
 She further alleged that while in the hogan" or house, Mir Oatman continually scratched matches on his bare foot, that, following an ancient Mohave custom, he had refused 10 look at his mother-in-law since the Oatman marriage in 1903 and that in 1911 he had threatened to feed her youngest son, then eight months old, 10 the Mohave sacred rattlesnake which is fed but once a year.
 While using dynamite ill working a claim in the Oatman gold mining district in 1916, MT. Oatman lost part of his scalp, one eye and also sustained such severe lacerations Of the lower jaw that Dr. R. A. Hoag, a local dentist, who was called as a witness, found it necessary to extract all of Oatman's teeth. Since which time, Mrs. Oatman testified, her hus- band had taken delight in removing his false teeth, taking out his glass eye and "scalping himself" by re- moving his wig in order to frighten both his own children and the boys and girls of the tribe.
 Moreover, Mrs. Oatman continued, her husband spent most of his money buying glass eyes from Los Ange les optical goods house. When ques tioned as to what disposition her hus- band made of the many glass eyes he purchased, Mrs. Oatman stated that he lost most of them at poker and that for some weeks before his appearance in court Oatman had had no artificial eye at all owing to the refusal of the Los Angeles optical goods house to extend him further credit.
 It also was brought out that fol- lowing a recent division Of communal property, Oatman, ill order to get his half of the household furniture, had sawed one table, three chairs and chest of drawers in two and had then removed his half of the furni- ture from the Oatman home Mrs. Oatman complained particularly and bitterly that Oatman, in order to get what he claimed was his half of everything, had sawed in two pastel picture of Mary Bois de Vache, her mother, which crayon likeness she said she had purchased in the town of. Oatman some years before from a travelling Swedish artist. Later ill the hearing, however, Mrs. Oatman admitted that when she and her husband had become recon ciled temporarily, he had gallantly