A pioneer is a trailblazer-one who pushes into unknown country and marks a path for others to follow. He selects a spot where both water and land are available and begins a settlement. While doing so, he scouts the country to discover hazards to his selected spot, such as Indians, wild animals, or other menaces; then he removes them or prepares for protection against them. He starts to clear ground and erect permanent buildings. Favorable aspects like good neighbors, good hunting, and means of expansion are cultivated.

The western United States was settled by such intrepid pioneers. Not only did they open new territory and become instrumental in building communities that grew into cities, but they founded industries and facilities for communication and transportation and built schools and churches.

Although the Mormon pioneers in Mexico had these same objectives, their situation was unusual in many ways. They were in a foreign land, where they had to meet immigration restrictions, learn the customs and language of the people, and adjust to new laws governing the country in which they had chosen to live. Full credit for the scouting and original settlement belongs to those on the vanguard. Yet part of the glory rightfully belongs to those who followed the trail already partly blazed. My father, Alma Platte Spilsbury, was one of the followers.

THE STRAWBERRY RANCH

He entered Mexico in 1891. Colonia Juarez wasa settlement five years old, and the lot assigned to him had all the elements of pioneering. He was to care for the Church cattle, on shares, on the Strawberry Ranch, 25 miles south-west of Colonia Juarez in the heart of the Sierra Madre Mountains. To get his family, wagons, household necessities, and livestock there, he had to find a way through the San Diego Canyon, which posed a formidable barrier. After weeks of work, a dugway road was buttressed against the solid cliffs. A great rock hump near the top had to be blasted again and again to level it enough for passage. On a previous trip Father had spent his strength on it, and it had been made passable enough for a sawmill to haul out lumber. Over this precarious dugway and "camel's hump" Father took the family during November 1891, and settled us on the Strawberry Ranch. For eight years this was our home.

A log cabin, a cheese-house, and a cellar were already built; but all else needed for making a livelihood Father had to build by himself. The cattle were scattered over a 25-mile range, with no fences to control their wandering. It took constant riding to get them used to the range boundaries. It was a lark for us children, from age one to 11 years, to romp over the valley, discover the beautiful spring of pure mountain water, and find snail shells in the low cliffs. It was exciting to climb the cliffs and find the "white rock forest" that terrified us with its ghostly formations of animals and monsters.

But to Mother (Mary Jane Redd Spilsbury) it was a lonely and potentially dangerous spot. The Apache Kid and his renegade offshoots of Geronimo's band of Indians were in the hills. They had raided a few isolated camps, killed a prospector or two, stolen horses, and had so terrified the Mexicans that they would not go into the mountains for any purpose.

I was four years old when we moved to the ranch and 12 when we were forced to leave because of a deluge that washed away the ranch holdings. Being so young I did not realize at the time the serious nature of my mother's worries, but it is all strongly impressed on my mind. To wake in the night and see her sitting up in bed, straining ears and eyes into the darkness, may have meant little to me then; but now mature understanding gives me an awareness of what she suffered.

Father went about his work cheerfully, breaking a couple of steers into oxen to drag poles down from the sloping hillside for corrals, barns, and out buildings, with no other help than my seven-year-old brother. There were two sisters older than I and two younger. It seemed that all Father's boys were girls, so we were pressed into doing the work of the boys. "We have to be ready for milking when the rainy season brings grass to fatten the cows," Father would inform us. He made periodic trips to the valley for supplies, leaving us alone several days and nights at a time. All that first spring and summer we were preparing for that milking season. We planted corn and potatoes and made cheese to sell.

The planting, hoeing, and harvesting of the potatoes was a job for the entire family. Mother carefully cut the seed potatoes so there would be an eye in each piece to be dropped into the arrow-straight furrows Father plowed. Later, weeding seemed to be an endless job. When harvest time came we again followed Father down each row as the plow turned up the white potatoes for us to put into piles, later to be carried into the cellar. My sister voiced the sentiment of all when she said she wished the potatoes had legs instead of eyes so they could walk to the cellar by themselves.

One day as Father was preparing the land to plant potatoes, he flooded it with canal water carried from the dam he had built on the creek. As the water flooded over the land we screamed, for with it came a wriggling water snake. "Don't be afraid of that little fellow," Father said comfortingly. "Here, I'll get him out of the way." Getting the snake coiled onto his shovel, Father threw it over the fence where it slithered into the water."Little fellows like that won't hurt you," he said, "but keep your eyes open for a rattler. His strike is quick and deadly. Keep your ears open, too, for he'll never strike without warning. He's one fellow I've promised never to kill."And then he told us how in his early married life he had seen a rattler coiled by the side of his little boy asleep in the field. He had watched, afraid to snatch the child to safety or to try killing the snake for fear of increasing the danger to his son. Finally, he said, "Old fellow, if you leave that child unharmed, I'll never harm you nor any of your kind." He watched breathlessly as the snake uncoiled and crawled away. He never allowed us to kill snakes.

After the summer rains, many grass-fattened cows with their young calves were rounded into the corral. Calves were locked in their pens, and the wild cows were tamed to stand while a quart or two of milk was squirted into the bucket. Soon mother's No. 3 tub on the kitchen stove was filled with milk each morning. Using milkweed seed for the rennet, the milk was heated until it curdled. Mother cut the curdled milk with a butcher knife, then skilfully worked the curds with her fingers. When the curd was exactly the right firmness, the tub was removed from the heat. Mother continued to stir and mix until the whey was out of the curds. These were then salted and pressed into a cloth-lined metal hoop, with a fitted wooden lid, or press. The hoop was placed on a corrugated board, called a "follower"; and the lid was pressed gently but firmly down against the curds until all the whey was gone. Then the hoop was placed between two planks, the ends of which were secured firmly into the chinks of the rock chimney. A heavy rock was suspended from the top plank at the outer end, and it was moved closer into the chimney as the pressing progressed. When the mixture was dry of whey, it was left to "set" until the next morning, when it was removed and placed on a shelf until dry, then covered with cheese-cloth and set away to cure. This cured cheese bought shoes, school books, and food for the winter.

When the first milking season had ended, my eldest sister was the only one Father could afford to send to school. She had just left with a neighbor for Colonia Juarez when a rider came galloping into the yard to tell us that Indians had killed some of the Thompson family at the Williams Ranch, about six miles north of us. The mother was shot and killed and two boys were shot. One was dead. All ranchers were advised to go to the nearest settlement for safety. My mother's face blanched at this news. She glanced quickly in the direction her eldest daughter had just taken, and we all wondered if the Indians would get her, too. My father's face paled also, but he calmly answered, "The danger was yesterday, not today. If the Indians came from the north and disappeared in the same direction, as you say, they're too far away by now to do us any harm." We children stayed on the ranch alone while Mother and Father attended the funeral.

Ranchers in the mountains faced dangers from other sources, too. Word came one day from Pacheco, six miles to the west, where a few families were beginning a colony, of the killing of Hyrum Naegle on June 24, 1892, a relative of my father's. Two brothers, George and Hyrum Conrad Naegle, tracked a wounded bear which had killed many of their calves and young colts. Hyrum, following the trail of blood the bear left, was onto it before he realized. The wounded animal, taken by surprise, charged before Hyrum could raise his gun to shoot. Before George caught up with him, the bear had severely mangled Hyrum. George administered to him, and he lived to be carried a mile and a half to their ranch house, where his wounds were washed and bandaged. Then he was held on his horse and led fifteen miles to Pacheco; but he died. Again we were left by ourselves while Father and Mother attended this funeral. Hyrum's new 19 year old wife Ellen Viola Scott Naegle, (md. January 1, 1892 in Colonia Pacheco) gave birth to a baby girl a few months later.

Mexicans were afraid to enter the hills because of the Indians, but a few began to pass by the ranch after seeing we were "staying put" in spite of danger. One day while Father was away and Mother was alone with us children, our only male protector being my ten-year-old brother, four ugly fellows rode into the yard asking for the "patron." (boss). They winked at each other when Mother bravely told them Father was away but would soon return. Instead of riding away, they made for the barn, which was well-filled with wild hay and began generously feeding their horses. Mother and Lem courageously marched over to ask them to please leave the hay alone. They laughed at her and led their horses to the shade of the huge cedar tree in our yard, where they proceeded to unsaddle them and make a campfire. Besides warming their coffee and heating beans and tortillas for their evening meal, they began passing around a bottle of "sotol" and became uproariously drunk.

As evening drew near, Mother gathered us around her in the bedroom. Before she could tell us what to do, however, we heard a team and wagon. We ran to the door, then to the gate, to meet our neighbor and ask him to stay the night. But the man was in a hurry to take a wagon wheel to his wife who was stranded on Cedar Flat. We understood and sadly watched him drive away.

"Well, the Lord can help us," Mother said, as she led us again into the bedroom. With us kneeling around her she simply asked the Lord to be merciful and protect us. Before she could say "Amen," we again heard a team and wagon. It was the same neighbor explaining that the canyon above us was filled with campfires and he would have to stay with us after all.

Our neighbor's second appearance was enough to scare the drunken trespassers away. Angrily they saddled their horses and were soon on their way. Mother always said she knew the Lord had magnified the glistening fireflies in the canyon to resemble campfires so that the man would return to protect us.

In between such scares, we had peaceful evenings around the blazing fireplace, and time for Mother to share with us her girlhood life in Utah. From these stories we all came to know her parents and grandparents, her brother and sisters and cousins so well that when I met them later in life, I knew all about them.

The words "Gospel," "joining the Church," and other terms Mother used as she told of her grandparents' conversion, of their "belief in the truth as soon as they heard it," were not meaningful to me then. But the reverent way in which she spoke those words, and her hallowed look when she described the hardships and trials her people had endured for the Gospel's sake, were never to be forgotten. The testimony that shone from her face grew more meaningful as the years passed; and it made me increasingly thankful that while we were proving to the natives of Mexico that the hills and the mountains were safe places in which to live, we were being taught not only what it means to be a pioneer, but what it means to be a Mormon.

Nelle S. Hatch is a daughter of Alma Platte and Mary Jane Redd Spilsbury. She was born in Mesa, Arizona. The family moved to the Mormon colonies in Mexico in 1891, where Sister Hatch grew up, later she was married to Ernest I. Hatch. They have three children. Sister Hatch was a member of the Juarez Ward, Juarez (Mexico) Stake. The article was written with the aid of her daughter, Ernestine Hatch.

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