Autobiography of Bertha E. Brown

The first seventeen years of the life of Bertha Elizabeth Brown, as told by Bertha on November, 1979

PREFACE

Mother had been promised in several of her blessings throughout her life when she had been very ill and almost at death, that she would live long enough to raise her children.  She had seen all of her children that year and David was almost of legal age.  Her blessings were true.  We were all adults.

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I have written her story word by word from the tapes that she recorded for me.  I have tried to write the Spanish words by sounding them out.  I do not speak or read Spanish.  If you listen to the tapes while reading mothers history it might be clearer for you to understand the Spanish words and phrases. 

I hope you will be able to gain a feeling for life in the Colonies the family struggles as well as the personal struggles and inner feelings of mom.  Maybe we will be able to come to a greater understanding of her life and attitudes.  Maybe through this we will be better able to understand our selves. 

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Mother had been very ill and wanted to make sure she would get to see her namesake before she died.  When mother came she was suffering from chronic pneumonia, she had to wear an oxygen mask for the time she was here.  It was very hard for her to breath.  This altitude was very hard on her (we lived in Sandy Utah).

Mother was here for the two weeks.  She was very weak and stayed in bed most of the time, in Whitney's room.  They really enjoyed each other's company.  Mother always loved babies very much.  Whitney was about six months old and jabbered constantly.  You will be able to here her jabbering in the tapes.  Since mother was so ill, I asked her to record her life history for me.  She was very receptive to this and was grateful for the time and opportunity.  I had a hard time keeping tapes on hand.  It was very hard emotionally for her at times.

Mother left after Thanksgiving weekend to go home to El Paso, Texas.  She seemed to be in good spirits.  We really enjoyed having her with us.  She was a very fun grandmother with her grand children.  She always had big brown boxes with treats and toys and clothing for them.  They loved it.

While mother was with us she seemed to feel that she wouldn't be around much longer.  She told me in detail what color she wanted her coffin to be, what type of coffin, that she wanted a closed casket, (mother had been on cortisone medication that made her face puffy) and many other things concerning her funeral and will.

On December 16, 1979 mother passed away in El Paso, Texas.  She had been in the hospital and was going to be released that day to go home.  Minutes later she took a deep breathe and died.  We were all very surprised.  Mother was only 57 years old.

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The year mother passed away she had seen all five of her children which was very unusual.  Lucy and I live in Utah and didn't visit her very often.  Lucy and Mike had visited her in El Paso with their children in March or April 1979.  Mother had come to Utah to visit in November 1979.  George was living in an apt. close by her and saw mother often.  Jeffery had returned from his mission to Washington State in March 1979.  David still lived at home; he was seventeen and a half years old.

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Bertha begins:

I will start the recollections of my life way back, long before I was 5 years old.  I guess I wouldn't remember that tragic thing, tragic event that made me remember these things.  The first thing as far as I go back into my life and I try to remember, the first thing I can remember is peaking out from under my mothers black veil and looking up to see the other people who were sitting around there with veils on their heads. We were all sitting around a big room an this girl about 19-20 years old Rosita Unteverro was her name, had died and we were at the Vellatha as they call it, and since we were Mormons they weren't saying all the Padre Newest the avthey (avey) Marias.  Rosary type of prayers, everybody was in silent prayer and speaking about the events that brought her to her death.

I was very, very young and I couldn't understand why they had fixed her hair so pretty and she was all dressed up so pretty and she had flowers and everyone that would come in would bring many, many flowers and put them around her coffin.  They would cry and scream; it was a very tense thing.  I couldn't understand why they seemed to be happy and bring flowers and yet they would cry so much and the tears and the crying would stop, until the next neighbor or relative would come in, then it would start all over again.  Everybody crying and screaming hollering and praying and then they would calm down.

My mother at that time still carried many of the Catholic believes.  She dressed accordingly as they did in her home town, dressed in black and covered with a black veil from the top of her head down.  Since I was her only little girl she used to take me to socials and visiting with neighbors, and things like that since the others were boys.  Seldom we'd take my brother Aaron since he was just a little boy along with us.  The next day we all went in a 2 horse carriages and my father drove our little buggy, one horse buggy with my mother, my baby brother and my self.  We went to the graveyard it seemed like we were going to a picnic, because there were several carriages and wagons going up to the graveyard.  My mother thought I was a little to excited and left me tending my baby brother Aaron in the buggy that my father had tied very carefully to a pole but I could see from where I was that they lowered the coffin where Rosita was, into the ground.  Then they all started shoveling the dirt until it was all covered with dirt.  They made like a little hill like tomb.  Everybody brought down flowers they had taken there and covered her grave with flowers.  A prayer was said my father was the Bishop or the President of the Mexican ward.  They blessed the grave and she was left there.  This was something that brought many question to my parents because I couldn't understand it.  They loved her so much, why then had they put her in that hole and why they were leaving her there.  My father and mother tried to explain it to me.  I was to young to understand but I told them I never wanted them to put me in a hole and leave me there regardless of what happened.  This was in Colonia Juarez, chih. Where we were raised.  We were not born there but brought there, by my fathers mining, and farming business and he was made the President of the Mexican Branch there, the Colonies.  This was one of the 5 Colonies, Mormon colonies.  Ninety percent of the people there were anglos or Americans, 5 % were mixed anglo or Mexican or Spanish, the other 5% were Mexican people who would ride along with the Saints.  The majority of them were Mormons L.D. S. people and we lived very near by Nva Casas Grandes and Old Cases Grandes.  Where there were many Mexican people who lived there.  They were catholic and other beliefs and they were most of them work hands for the farms of the Mormons.  We had maids at all times.  Mother had a maid that would do the washing and the ironing of the clothes and the cleaning of the house.  There would be another one that would take care of cleaning of the house and feeding the chickens.  We had animals of all kinds horses and cows when it came to milking, it was very, very interesting because there were 3 or 4 of the farm hands that would milk the cows they would bring buckets full of real hot rich milk and pour it into big milk cans that would then go to the dairy to be made into cheese butter or sold as milk to those that didn't have it.  We had many horses beautiful horses.  One thing that I remember is my mothers' horse, it was always shiny and brightly brushed.

My Mother was a 5' 4" woman.  She had very light brown hair.  In her earlier years it had been dishwater blonde hair but now her hair was very goldish, golden brown hair.  Her hazel eyes, big hazel eyes, and very, very fair. Many people tried to speak of her as a Mexican, which she wasn't.  She was born in Jiménez, Chih. She was of the Spanish and French origin but she was born a Mexican citizen.  She was not a Mexican in race.  She was very fair and very lovely and she was well educated.  She had read a lot and her education had been mostly in reading.

My father met her in Texas when she was studying to be a nurse and working at a drug store.  At this time my father had finished with the exodus where he had no wives.  His polygamy and his wives were all gone and he had been, all alone for a couple of years.  He was looking for a wife and found a very lovely young girl who was my mother Angelita Gabaldon Angela was her name. Everybody called her Angelita her nickname.  He formed his home with her in Susthad Juarez.  Then took her to Namethkeps, also in Chih.  There later on he took her and took us there where four of us, Gustovo, myself, Pauly and Aaron into the colonies we had a little black ford.  An old ford, which we soon traded in for a house, which was the house that we lived in for the rest of our lives, that we lived in the colonies.  My father was a very good tradesman.  He had something and would trade it for something he wanted and in those days that's about how you did your business.

You traded a cow for a horse or you traded a car for a house.  And he had to leave mother alone quite a bit because he still had business in Namakitha village in Chih. City, in the mines.  Where he had his other sons from his polygamy wives.  He would go back and forth leaving a young beautiful woman with four children but it was a good secure place because it was all good Mormon people and my mother was starting to learn the religion.

Mary Williams befriended my mother and she was also married to a very good anglo man.  Mary spoke both languages and started working with my mother, teaching her the gospel and my mother accepted the gospel very soon and she was able to translate the Pearl of Great Price along with Sister Williams and they would do a lot of work together like this translating the Book of Mormon and many of the church work's, they would sit for many hours in the afternoons and translate from English to Spanish, mainly news that would come from S.L.C.  My mother was made President of Relief Society very soon after her baptismal.  She carried through with the job of being President of Relief Society for many, many years, for as long as I can remember until her health gave up.  She was director of Drama and Acts, plays she was in charge of every youth activity that there was in the ward.  There was not an operetta in the colonies they had never heard of an opera or an operetta until mother came along.  She would have the highest models in place that were available in Mexico City.  She would bring the youth of the church and she would untiringly work with them in our living room, every nite, practicing their parts and showing them how to act.  They would put on some very, very well acted plays, operettas.  My mother won the respect and love of the people in the colonies by her much activity earned her respect for the church and she tried to get the talent out of who ever it was.  If it was an old man an old woman a mature woman a young lady a young girl or a young boy.  She would have them in the different plays.  She would work and work hard, until that play was ready to be set. 

People would come from the near by towns of Casas Grandes, Olanatheas, Vejay Cases Grandes to watch those plays and many times they took them to Cases Grandes to show them there.  My mother was what they would call a French Writer.

The thing I love most to remember about my mother is when I would see her riding sideways on a horse.  She had such a royal way she would get up on those horses on the side and sit there real straight.  My father had brought her some riding garb from El Paso and New Mexico.  It was some type of leather clothing that she had the riding pants and boots and she had the riding skirts and hat.  She would wear a riding jacket over her blouses and she would ride so straight.  She'd go to Cases Grandes she'd go to Romney store to get groceries and things on her horse.  She would look majestic.  I always wanted to look dignified and majestic on a horse but I never did.  It was just natural of her to do so.

I had my own horse that daddy gave me later on.  I was a very good horseback rider.  But I had to sit with both legs one on each side to hang on to the horse and I remember many times when the horse got away with me and would ride, but he never knocked me down but I remember one time when Mary decided one time she'd go riding with me and the horse jumped the ditch by Delfinas ditch and sat her there in the water.  I was a good 20 minutes before I could go get her because the horse had gotten out of control and would not stop.  There were many other things that I would like to mention about my mother.  My Father used to say, there's not a better cook a better baker in the whole world.  She learned the Mormon ways of baking bread, plus she had her own ways of making different foods and things she had brought back from home in El Paso, New Mexico, Jiménez Chih. Where she had lived with her mother.  But she learned to make cakes and cookies, pies and hot breads and she would make bread twice a week.

I'll never forget how many piggy back rides I got from Ashton and from the Longhursts, Preston Longhursts mainly, I'll give you a piggy back ride if I can have a nice big thick slice of your mothers homemade bread.  When we were coming from school we could smell that delicious bread that mother had just baked.  Then he would give me a piggyback ride all the way from his home to ours.  He'd get a big slice of hot bread with fresh churned butter and oh that was heaven to eat.  Those boys had lost their mother when they were younger and they knew to appreciate my mothers bread.  I used to go and get out yeast from Sister Blueth.  She lived about 4-5 blocks from where we lived.  My mother would give me a jar to go and get the yeast.  It was 10 cents in the beginning, later o it was 25 cents to go get it.  A quart of yeast was 25 cents.  This would keep my mother going till the following week.  She'd add potatoes and a little sugar some more water to it, flour to it a whole lot of it.  And she'd always have some left over for the next time. I remember many times taking a little sip of that yeast while I was skip scotching, coming home.  My mother was a very, very active woman, a hard workingwoman there wasn't a thing Mormons knew how to make that she didn't learn how to make them.  She would can all the strawberries, raspberries, mulberries to make pies, grapes, peaches, apricots, pears, apples you name it and we had it in our orchard.  Mother would put it up in jars she learned how to make jams and jellies and cajetas.  She would take the quince and make cajeta that would last the year that we could slice with hot bread and butter and eat.  There was always cookies in her cookie jar when we came home from school.

There was also many chores for us to do.  When the milkman would milk the cows in the morning, they would take the milk directly to the dairy. But the milk that was milked at nite we'd spread it out in big pans, big tubs and in the morning we'd take out with a big spoon or ladle.  We'd take out the cream from the top and later we would churn it into butter.  Every nite we were to pump the water that was in the little porch near the kitchen and we were to bring 4-5 bucket fulls of cold fresh water.  We were also to bring the wood in; the wood was cut by the peons the farm hands.  Our obligation was to bring the wood inside the house in the box next to the wood stove.  Mother had a big wooden box where we would put enough wood to warm the house up and to cook the meals.

There were many chickens and ducks and goats and lambs and dogs and cats and everything else to feed.  Mother would never permit a dog or a cat to come inside the house, but we had them all outside and when we went outside I remember mother having a big bucket with cracked corn or wheat to feed the chickens and how they recognized her an how they surrounded her.  I used to love to go outside with her to help her because all those chickens would come right to us.  We had another chore we'd get a basket and we'd pick those great big eggs from over all the many nests, sometimes we'd have 2-3 big baskets full of eggs we'd bring in every afternoon.  And we' take these to Casas Grandes or to the store, the Romney store and sell them.  Many people by themselves would come to our home to buy milk, eggs and fruit in the time when we had fruit in the time when we had fruit of all kinds.  We had people coming in to buy fruit from us all the time.  We sold peanuts we raised many, many peanuts that we' have ready for sale, we raised lard hogs and these hogs would come to a certain weight and be killed and they'd make lard.  We'd have several pans of lard that would be ready to be sold to different stores.  We'd also sell pig skins and of course my father was real good at curing hams he had big barrels, wooden barrels with ties around them and he'd fix those barrels with vinegar and oil and spices of different kinds that I can't remember.  He'd put the pork legs in there and different parts of the pork and make ham and make bacon so we were never short of food when we were in the colonies.  Any little male bull that was born, those little calves were left to take the milk from their mothers 1-2 weeks or less and killed real young that was our veal we had plenty of meat.  Sometimes we'd kill a bigger bull for meat, we had turkeys we either had a big turkey dinner or pork dinner or a chicken dinner every Sunday.  Vegetables we had of all kinds.  Mother took care of the vegetables she always saw to it we always had plenty of carrots and peas, green beans, potatoes were brought from the other farm, we had fresh turnips, beets you name it, if there was something to eat we had it.  We never lacked for food we always had the bread and milk butter and cheese and everything else you wanted. 

My father was an older man, my mother made up for his age.  My father never gave up he was a hard workingman.  He'd get up early in the mornings have breakfast and was gone with the work hands into the farms to work and he never learned the language, but he made himself understood and he would go out there and work just as hard as they would until in the later years when he would just tell them how to do it.  He was a hard workingman.  He would get on his horse and he'd go up there and supervise all the work and he had alfalfa and wheat.

Of my younger recollections I can also remember something that's very strong in my mind.  That I'll never forget.  We used to hop and skip to school to primary and to everything that we went to nothing was paved.  We'd run on the sidewalk and then there was a ditch of water and then the street where the wagons and horses would go and then another ditch with running water to the farms and then a sidewalk and I took 6-7 blocks from my house to school.  We used to go to primary Sunday school and church to the tithing building which was right in the corner of the main schoolhouse, which later on was sold to the Trareen family.  As I was arriving primary this afternoon I saw this huge fire and the blazes seemed to go all the way to heaven.  It was scary; it was interesting if it hadn't been for the Primary teachers to keep us away maybe great harm could have become us.

There was only one hotel in the colonies and this was Mary Spenser's Hotel, she was also a midwife that delivered most of the babies in the colonies.  Something happened and her hotel that was 3 or 4 stories high went into fire and you could see around the window the curtains going into fire and going up high and the walls coming down and when they would come down with all the fire and smoke and the blazes seemed to go higher and higher.  There were men from the L.D.S. people and others that came around but all they could do was throw water with buckets.  No fire dept. or anything else not even running water from hoses.  The only thing we could do would be to get the water from the pumps, pump the water and then some of the running water from the ditches and that was about all.  That was worthless the efforts were worthless and it was almost criminal to get by it because the blazes were so high it looked beautiful it looked powerful it looked scary and it almost looked diabolic, destruction.  I remember in my very early years the comment of the primary teachers and all other members of the colonies who came near by and would speak about it.  It burned and burned the whole day the whole afternoon and the whole nite until it was just shattered, ashes, broken bricks burnt wood.  It was a very sad time for the colonies.  Many of the trees that grew around the hotel also burnt down.

We used to meet at this tithing house and that's where the bishops, their counselors, Pres. Of the branch would get together and count the tithes and the food donation coming in and everybody in the colonies came to be very well taken care of.  You never knew if there were any people there among the saints because they all seemed to have enough to eat and were all well dressed and kept.  My parents would send us later on to kindergarten to the main school and this was the American school with teachers who would come graduated from the B.Y.U.  And we did have always a Spanish teacher who would teach us Spanish which was not very much we had to pick up the Spanish from the maids and the farm hands but my parents in their intelligence and not letting us want to be idle at any time.  When school was out for vacation the Mexican school would start and there, my mother went to register us for Mexican school.  We had to take Mexican history, Mexican geography and Mexican grammar.  This was right after school so we always put in a very full day because after our regular classes we would go to the Mexican school and this was not something other children had to do and it was very few like the Alverases, sometimes the Gonzales and Spenser Thames and us the Browns.  We were all of a Spanish, French or Mexican mother that were interested that we learned the Spanish traditions and the Spanish language so we had to do this.  Oh now the summer time came and we thought oh boy now is the resting time and its picnic time and we can go have ourselves a good time.  Oh no mother already had us registered for sewing lessons embroidery lessons, criss cross lessons you name it we went to sister Mary Williams house and for 2-3 hours in the morning, we took lessons from her then we took our lunches with us.  We ate at noon and went right next door to Mrs. Ila Deloros who was a retired Spanish grammar teacher that had from someplace in the south and had come to live in the Mormon Colonies she was a very refined woman at the time of Porfideo.  This very well lectured very educated and this was what mother wanted us to learn she didn't want us speaking our Spanish half way or the way they taught it in the American schools or even at the Mexican school she wanted us to learn about all the heros of Mexico, about the history, geography, arts, and crafts.  They taught us how to make the box spring for a dolls bed a baby's bed a mattress hand made and tied, embroidered all sheets all the linens all the pillowcases, make the pillows, everything.  We learned to make the clothing for babies or dolls from the first diaper to the last little dress and bonnet and this was our summers.

That doesn't mean we didn't go hunt picnics because mother took care that on Saturdays she would take us in the buggy and we would go to a real nice picnic to the river.  She had chicken in different ways all the time she had all kinds of goodies for us to eat in the picnics.  She always had a lot of good bread, pastries, fruit and vegetables; we would have a good time.  She always loved the mountains very much.  In the summer time the time of the beyotas we would go to the mountains with the Pontiverdos family, would also take there great big wagon and we would all ride together and they'd go deer hunting, they'd bring wild turkeys, and all of us kids would pick beyotas now is the word in English nuts anyway we'd have great big bag fulls that we'd bring home and we'd have them for the winter and we'd have so much fun because we'd cook and barbeque everything out there in the mountains.  We'd bring deer to have fresh deer for a while and then dry deer.  Daddy has special ways that he'd cut deer and slice it and hang it up and mother had made some covers out of screen and the screen would cover it so the flies didn't get to it.  The meat would dry right in the sun and when it was nice and dry and hard they would pack it into our large hardware plus food storage room.  They would do the same thing with turkey and we'd have so much turkey and wild duck that it was just wonderful to live in those days when we could go up there in the mountains and feel so free and we'd sing, we'd sing so many beautiful songs.  There is where my mothers stories came in, never in my life have I heard of a better storyteller.  Everybody seemed to hurry up and do their chores at home, eat their dinner and come over to our house in the wintertime.

We didn't have a fancy living room it was a small living room we had large bedrooms because my 3 brothers took one bedroom and Grandma Mary, mothers mother, and then later on Mary and I had the other bedroom.  Daddy had his own bedroom.  The kitchen was very, very large with a real big black stove, a wood stove with a big crate of wood with a long, long table.  You could sit 12 people on each side of the table with benches instead of chairs just a chair at the foot and head of the table.  Daddy sat at the head and I sat on the bench right next to him.  That was my favorite place, right next to daddy.  I was daddy's little girl.  I was a very happy girl.  He never did spank me.  That wasn't because I wasn't a naughty girl, because I could get into so much trouble.

I was a tomboy.  I had no sister.  It was Gus, Pauly, Aaron and all their boyfriends, Hector, Spenser, Elmo Robinson, Mc Lown Boy Laudro, Benito, Fletcher Memmot, Marion Robinson, Bud Taylor and all those boys that used to hang around my brothers.  Father used to say, "You're not going if you don't take your sister".  So you must know my brother especially Gus didn't like me very much, he hated having Bertha tagging along after him and his friends wherever they went.  If they went swimming I went swimming.  If they went up the trees, I went up the trees with them.  They were fishing I was fishing with them.  They were horseback riding there I was.  Hop scotch there I was.  Playing marbles my hands were just as crusty and as cracked as theirs.  Because I played marbles with them, Jacks, anything kick the ball, stilts, we'd walk to school in stilts and Bertha never said no to anything and Bertha was right along with all the boys doing all the things the boys were doing.  My brother Gus resented me all the time.  Pauly was 2 years younger than I and he was always patient and good and he felt sorry for Bertha and Bertha was a meany.  I didn't let anybody run over me.  If they did I took care of telling daddy about it.  It didn't happen again but if I was left behind, Pauly would always hang loose behind and kind of wait around for me.  When we went to the movies that was very interesting.  There was no movies in the colonies.  We had to go to Neueva Casas Grandes to go to the movies and that took going on the railroad tracks.  So we jumped and laughed, told jokes counted posts and jumped all the way on the railroad tracks form Dublan to Cases Grandes to go to the movies if they didn't take Bertha along they couldn't go.  So Bertha was always there.  I was a little older than Pauly a little stronger and Pauly and I grew up pretty close together.  He was not a bully like the rest of the boys and Gus was always bossy and a bully.  He always tried to tell us what to do whether we liked it or not.  Aaron began to go to the movies with us also.  He'd kind of stay behind and cry and whine and cry and whine and Pauly and I would have to wait for him and then come back and tell daddy on Gus that he would leave us behind and run around with his friends so if he did it again he was punished not to go again.  So then we couldn't go either so most of the time he got away with murder because we wouldn't tell daddy so he wouldn't punish him so we could go again.  The movies were sometimes in English and sometimes in Spanish.  But it sometimes took a long time, like an hour to get there an hour to get back so we didn't go to them very often but often enough so that we didn't miss the good movies.  Gus was my oldest brother and he always wanted things done his way and therefore he and I had a lot of opposition, because I had my way of thinking and Aaron and Pauly would more less go along with what Gus said but not me.  I always had to argue with him.  I always seemed to see things a little different and we'd argue.  I was a girl and he didn't like me I  remember one time how he stole me out of the toilet, we had an outhouse.  In those days where wasn't anything like a bathroom inside the house.  When we took a bath on Saturday nite we filled the tub with hot water, we heated up on the wood stove.  Put some cold water in it and we'd circle chairs around the tub with sheets and towels so no one could see us and we'd take our bath.  This was our Saturday bath.  But to go to the john we had to go behind the chicken coop, behind the warehouse where we had an out house with 2 holes and there we sat down and did our business and I had come to an age that I could read a lot and the boys would bring true stories and love stories some times they were just in the beginning funnies, comic things.  I would sit there and forget what I had gone for and I'd sit there and read and read and read.  Gus would shout to me "get out of there Bertha" and I wouldn't come out and so then he starts throwing stones at the outhouse where as if I wanted to come out or not I couldn't because I had stones being thrown at that outhouse from the side, front, and back from all over so there I was screaming and shouting until one of the farmhands would run over to my mother or father and say they've got Bertha, stoning her in the toilet and she can't come out, because they're throwing rocks at her.  Then another thing would happen they'd (my parents) would go and get me out and the boys would be punished.  So there was another reason not to like Bertha.

I remember doing naughty things to mother.  Mother would always turn me over to daddy.  If daddy wasn't around she would chase me.  She would chase my brothers with a whip or with a piece of branch from one of the trees and that was our punishment.  She'd get us, you can be sure your back and your legs were marked for a long time cuz she would give us a good beating.  I tried to stay away from my mothers' beatings because she was a very strong woman and when she would get angry she'd let me know it.  On the other hand my daddy never put a hand on me.  I was his sweetheart and at his saddest with me he'd say "sweetheart come in here we've got to talk".  He'd either be laying on his soft chicken feathered mattress or his rocking chair, but when he's say to me we've got to speak I knew I was in very much trouble.  My mother had all ready come to him and had told him what a bad girl I was.  He would look at me with those deep beautiful blue eyes that he had and he would ask me one question "why sweetheart why" and then and there I'd start crying and making excuses and apologizing and trying to change the story but my father wouldn't contradict me, he would let me talk and talk and say all I wanted to say and then he'd say now you know it was not like that now lets start all over again and you tell me why did you do this and why did you do that and that was worse than if he had taken a whip after me.  My mother would take the whip after me and my brothers and off to bed we'd go or whatever and that was the end of it.  She'd do a lot of screaming and yelling and that was it.  But to sit in judgment of my dear father sitting there not hitting you just giving you a chance to square yourself away was very hard.  You couldn't lie to daddy not with those deep blue eyes of his you couldn't make excuses.  There was no excuses for whatever we had done wrong.  There was only the truth you had to tell him the truth and that was real punishment and then the next morning he would hot have his hand over my hand when we'd say the blessing on the food.  He would not play with me or fuss with my hair when we were eating breakfast.  He would not come by my bed and caress me and he'd give me this kind of punishment for 2 or 3 days. It seemed eternities and that was the worst punishment I could have ever had.  Until daddy would again look at me and hold my hand and call me sweetheart again I was not at ease.  So any time I would prefer to take the punishment from mother.  I remember one time that I had spilled the berries and she went after me with the whip and I was barefooted and came to a patch of slivers, where there was no way if I'd go in there I'd have slivers all over my feet for weeks, so I knew she was coming she was right behind me but I just stood there and folded my arms and when she saw I wasn't gong to go into the slivers she stopped and I'll never forget how she laughed at me.  She laughed and laughed because I was between the sword and the wall no way out.  So she just gave me on little whip.

I'm in my religious part of life.  If you had lived in the colonies you know that most of it is religion, you would go to primary, and learn about Jesus and being good boys and girls.  We'd go to S. S. we'd go to Sacrament mtg. My mother would attend R.S., M.I.A. mtg. My father was at priesthood mtg. or Bishopric mtg. My brothers were at Aronic priesthood mtg. Deacons, Boy Scouts and I was with the Beehives.  We were a very active family and we belonged to everything and to top it off since my father had accepted being the Pres. of the Mexican ward we belonged to both. I went to primary on wed. to the American ward and spoke in primary the next day on Thursday I'd go to the Mexican ward and be a teacher.  So as far as I can remember I was a teacher about 9 years old and would get the lesson in English one day and translate it into Spanish the next day.  Something with S. S. lessons.  There I had a little more difficulty because sometimes It was too close to the hour of one class to the other.  But when it came to M.I.A. I took my 3 years of Beehive lessons from Sister Call.  She was Anthon B. Calls wife.  Still from the polygamy time, she was the sweetest woman, full of the graces of the lord she had so much knowledge and so much love and she always saw to it that I learn my lesson well, and paid special attention to my lario because she knew that as I was 12 years old and I was learning that lesson from her that I was to deliver that some lesson the next day to a group of Mexican speaking girls.  Among these girls was Rowina Gonzalas, Lillia Gonzalas, who was Paulys wife, Mary Brown my own sister, Rose Dondeagoes, Velia Dondeagoes and many other girls who were 3 or 4 years younger than I, yet I must teach them the lessons from the Beehive.  This wise full of knowledge woman would give to me.  So I being a Leo, being a leader and I was not dumb I was never dumb I was a smart girl and I knew the responsibility I had and I had special books, special notes, sheets and Sister Call would always give me her special little notes she had taken in studing her lessons so that I would have it to deliver my lesson.  In my second year of teaching Beehive she was able to get me a handbook which I could study during the week and when she would give us the lesson if there was something I had not quite understood I could ask her.  She would always keep me for cookies and milk or punch after all the girls would leave.  So we could discuss in which way I was going to give my lesson and then I would have a house full of girls the next day and my mother was very patient with me because of course she had the same activities.  She had to teach the women in R.S. she would teach the youth in Arts in M.I.A. so she was very willing to help me to teach the younger girls of our ward.  They were all very nice girls from very nice families.  They were very cooperative and enjoyed taking their lessons.  They didn't mind having such a young teacher.  Because I made myself respected and since I was the Bishops daughter that kind of helped.  The only one that would get out of hand once in a while was my own sister Mary Brown.  Sometimes she'd try to show off but father and mother soon taught her that she must respect me at the time I was teaching the lesson.  Because at that time I was not her sister I was her teacher.  Then she did fall right in with the other girls.  I did teach them for 3 years in a row until they graduated and then they gave me another group that I was able to teach for 2 years, before I left to go on my mission.  But going back in those years when I was just a tomboy and I was with my brothers all the time.  One day one glorious day I came home to find out that mother had delivered a baby girl and that was a very happy time of my life when I was able to go into the big bedroom and kiss mother.  I could see she had a big doll lying right next to her, her name was Mary.  She didn't have any hair you could see, she was very white and she had big brown eyes, she was very, very fair and she was fatso.  She was nice and cuddly and beautiful.  But it was hands off the baby I would have loved to grab her and dance with her played around with her but I didn't know you didn't do that with babies and Grandma Mary let me know very quick, if you want to see the baby you sit near the baby, you wash your hands I had to comb my hair, wash my face, hands, and be at the cleanest.  If I wanted to sit near the bed where my little baby sister lay.  Mother lay there so proud of her baby.  Now I really felt happy because now I had a baby sister, but my problems of identification started getting greater at that time.  My brothers in a way of teasing me and getting best out of me that is Gus my brother would say that I was not their sister that in one if the pilgrimages in which the Mexican soldiers would go right by our house they had dumped this little bundle and mother had picked it up and that was me.  Since I was the only dark one in the family I sometimes wondered if it was true, that I was preintheeado lucindatha like Gus used to call them, he would hurt me so much.  I don't think there is a bother that would ever hurt a sister as much as my brother Gus hurt me because he always made me feel as if I was the odd one, the black duckling in the family that I didn't belong and now there was a baby sister coming into the family and she was as white as white as she could be and I started to wonder could it be true that mother was not my mother and then at that time I started to notice that of course my mother had to double her attention to that little baby sister to my little brother Aaron who was still a baby boy.  The other boys seemed to have so many problems that mother always had to take care of for Grandma. Grandma Mary would always help me to get dressed, get my clothes, help me with my hair the maids usually combed my hair.  Daddy was always helping me to tie my bows, tie my dress and button up my dress. I was daddy's girl, daddy's sweetheart.  But mother always seemed to have more time for all the others than for myself.  This is at a time a very serious time in my life I started wondering how much truth there was to Gustavos stories about me being given away and me being an adopted child.  One day as I sat in my fathers rocking chair and I began to cry and tell him about the things that really bothered me and about what Gus would tease me about he told me, if anyone around here is my daughter that is you, you are the only one that is more of a Brown, you are like me with exception of your eyes.  You notice your face is like mine your hair is like mine, you are built like me and then he showed me some very peculiar birth marks that he had that I had, that my other brothers and sister did not have.  There's a red mark between our eyebrows that I am the only one in my father's family that have it.  I of course have passed it on.  There are certain birthmarks that I have on my body exactly like my father in the same places and he told me if the children are light it is because of your mothers French and Spanish heritage.  Your mother was always a dish water blonde a whetta blondish, and that's why the children are like that.  They are not like that because of me.  I am the Anglo yes, Irish and English and although his skin was very white and his eyes were blue his hair was very black very dark, if you see the children of my other wives you will notice the resemblance you have with my other children and the resemblance you have with my mother and my sisters.  You look very much like my own mother with the exception you have your mothers eyes.  That was all I needed to have the reassurance that mother had not picked me up form the ditch where the army had thrown me away and I began to be closer and closer to my father knowing I belonged to him.  As I look back into my life, I realize I was very independent from the very early years.  I didn't need much help, I would like to get dressed alone, have my hair fixed alone, do my things alone.  I was very much of a leader.  I didn't need all the help my brothers needed and of course my little sister and that is why mother didn't pay all the attention to me that she had to pay to them, but looking back into my life and wondering if mother really loved me like she loved the others.  I carried those resentments through out a big part of my life.  To father I was fathers sweetheart fathers love but mother, where did I belong in mothers life, she was to busy with the others.  Was she really to busy with the others or did she care very much for them and not enough for me.  But in my recollections of life, my mother was a woman that gave names to people she loved if she really loved a maid she would give her a name nobody else would recognize her by, but we in the family knew who she was because this is the name she would give them.  I remember a little boy one of our maid had Manuel and she called him Ramon and the little boy could hardly speak he would repeat that whole name and then he would get a sucker from my mother after he had repeated the name my mother had given him.  She called another boy one of the Ayella boys Coco Fa Demacho and that boy is a grown man now and everyone knows him by that name.  O.K. she gave me the most beautiful name she could ever give anyone because of her French heritage and of how she loved the French people and French customs and the hymn for the French country is La Ma Se Es and she always told us with great pride of how Mexicans and Americans didn't seem to have the pride or the dignity or what is needed when you see the flag from your country and she would tell us many times how the Frenchmen when they would hear La Ma Se Es they would stand up and put their hands up in the air and sing with all their might and with happiness they were free  people they were gay and they were smart and she thought that was the most beautiful hymn there was in the whole world because the people of that country and made it so beautiful, because they would respect it and become so gay and beautiful and full of dignity.  This is what mother thought of me.  They thought I was the most beautiful girl in the colonies.  She thought I was the most beautiful girl in the colonies.  She thought I was the most beautiful girl and she gave me the name of Lama Yesa which I am known through out these years.  Anyone related to the family knows who Lama Yesa is because she thought I was full of arrogance, pride, beauty, self-respect, adorable and any thing else you want to add to that.  She really thought I was a beautiful girl and many times I didn't think she liked me because I was dark and all my other brothers and sister with light complexion and blue or green eyed and many times back in my life it hurt and I wondered if my brother Gus had any reason at all to say I didn't belong and I was very hurt by him throughout these many years.  Even though my daddy made me see later on how mistaken I was and how I should have brought it to his attention long before, but I was afraid he would say well yes you were adopted or we picked you up and I didn't want to hear this so I didn't want to bring it up and I'm sorry now that I didn't because my life would have been a much happier life had I known I was daddies and mother real daughter.  Gus always tried to run away from us he was with the family and he was gone away from the family he didn't want to seem to stick around with Pauly, Aaron, and then Mary but there were times he wouldn't miss being at home for anything in the world and that would be of course eating time and story telling time and game time.  Then Gus was there with the rest of us as I said before mother had many talents and one of her greatest talents was being a good storyteller.  In those days the church had not established a family nite in which the member of the family participated and someone tells a story. But mother invented that all her self like I say we had a very large rustic table in our eatery area, kitchen, dining room whatever and it wasn't just us that would hurry about dinner time and cleaning off that table but there was the Unteverous and Moffats and Ayalas and maybe others that would come to listen to mothers stories.  Hector Spenser, Alberto Thayne, would come and sit around and that big table and there wasn't one story of the thousand and one night that mother didn't tell us she could almost see those Arabians dressed up in their gallant outfits and their big horses.  The open- says a me- we could see that door opening that big rock we could see in our imagination mother would carry us into those far away lands that we had never heard about and she would tell us about stories about Greece the great anka da Turkey the Arabian nights in Arabian countries the Jordanians, the Indians, Africans the French and she had such great knowledge of stories of literature of different countries, different poets that she would go one nite from a faraway country back up there in Turkey the Great Constantinople  that belonged to Greece and was taken away by the Turkish she would let us know about these faraway countries these far away people that we had never heard about and we just sat there with open mouths amazed at the beautiful stories that she would bring to life and enrich our simple lives in the colonies.  The next nite it would be a story from the Old Testament.  An she in her very young experience in the Mormon church was tickled to death to be able to read the Bible, to be able to look into books that had been forbidden to her all her life. A Catholic does not

Read the bible not in those days but now mother had the bible in her own hands and she could sit there and read and read and at nite she would tell us from the beginning of the world, how the lord formed the earth how he formed men and Adam and Eve how we all came to this world and every night it would be a different chapter a different story.  We learned to love and appreciate the Bible because of mothers stories the stories maybe would've been told to us by school teachers, S.S. teachers and primary teacher but they could never be told like mother told them.  Seemed like in S. School and primary you had to listen to them.  Sometimes they were interesting and sometimes they weren't.  Sometimes they were confusing and when we would come and ask mother about a story a school teacher or a primary teach told us, she would straighten us up about that story fast.  She would get her bible out and that nite she would tell us that story like it should have been told in the first place by the primary teacher that left a lot out or that just didn't have the time or the talent mother had.  This is the way we learned about how Jesus Christ was born and came to the earth to be our savior.  She didn't leave out any details and as she told it to us little by little nite after nite it grew as part of our lives and we enjoyed this very much.  My mother was a healthy woman the most part of her life until later on which I don't want to remember but as I was growing there was a healthy woman a hard working woman, enthusiastic she would sometimes in the warm nights put a tent Luna outside in our yard we didn't have a pretty lawn or anything like that but we would be there under the stars and even the work men Hank Flores, Has Sanchez and others would come and sit around, stand around and listen to mothers stories of ancient customs and ancient times.  We also were united in our child hood by the same group that would come listen to mothers stories and would enthuse us into going out and playing games like run sheepy run and we had much older girls like Fefya Anteherdos, Estel , Juanita, Vehenia the Moffats, the Longhursts, Hector Spencer, Marion, Elmo Robinson, Fletcher others that would come and true friends at that time of our life we would set up sides and one side was suppose to stay, one group was suppose to stay in the middle of the road where we would play between Yet Everos house and our house and we would all sit in the middle of the road and just council and talk while the others were suppose to run away and hide and they would hide in the ditches behind the trees and house and they were suppose to leave signals at different places where we were suppose to pick up a signal that the captain would come back and would kind of signal where it would say we had turned left we have turned up or something that maybe would confuse us and we'd go left and right and turn as it said but not in the right direction and meanwhile they were running and sneaking out on us.  By the time that they would get back home with out us catching them or finding them we could here them shout run sheepy run.  They were running towards home and we were running to catch them and then we'd take turns doing it.  Then it would be us that would hide and we really grew a comradeship a real close unison in this type of games we would not betray each other we would be faithful to each other and we always wanted our side to win of course so there would be no fights among us.  Mother would always see to it that captains would change in the games and that different ones were picked out every time we'd play the game.  The captains would take turns in picking the players that we wouldn't become enemies like we belonged to one group they belonged to another group and who we were faithful for that nite for that game, to our group.  We used to play many, many games.  Halloween was a lot of fun.  Halloween was nothing like it is now of course it was terrible because in those days we would take in a pail rotten apples rotten squash and people who didn't treat us nice and who didn't give us a treat we'd smear windows and knock down their out house.  We'd turn their little bridges upside down and we'd let the cattle out of their fences and we were just a bunch of terrible, terrible kids.  I remember the shop the Genders had that was way down town in Dublan we had no business running that far out to play tricks on Halloween but we did and they had a fancy one of the very few nice cars in the colonies and we went to knock at their door and we were all looking ugly and crazy and they didn't know what the custom was all about an so they threw us out of their house with not very pleasant words but we made up for it, because their car was all washed up with pumpkin, rotten pumpkin and apples and tomatoes.  The next day when they went to complain about what happened to the car, they found out it had been Halloween nite and that nobody was to be punished for that because this was the custom.  Many people the next day had to put their outhouses back up and many had to go look for heir cows to milk, because they had been let out, of course we the ones who were the craziest ones we were not going to do it to our own and who was going to dare expose or harm the big group.  We were a large group and so our out houses were not turned over our bridges our cattle was not let out because they feared us.  We were a nice little gang and we used to have a lot of fun but we wouldn't do bad things on other days.  We did plenty on Halloween nite so that everybody would remember us for the whole year, feared us to come back at next year but then we'd turn good and we were all nice and the same bad group that would do this at Halloween would get together and bring fruit and nuts and peanuts and different things from our homes and put them together and make baskets out of grocery cartons and take them out to the poor laborers, an old woman an old man an old family, poor family that lived on the other side of the track and so we were also known for being gentle and good around thanksgiving not to speak about Christmas. Christmas in the colonies was like Halloween here something similar here to Halloween the kids dress up and they go from door to door and ask trick or treat an you come out and give them candy, candy and apples, cookies all kinds of goodies.  Well the Mexican people from the surrounding out skirts of the colonies and people from Casas Grandes would come on Christmas morning and say Meys Christmas that meant they wanted their Christmas and maybe that was all they were going to get but father was ready for them, father was always ready for them.  Weeks and weeks before Christmas came along he had us and other work hands and the maids helping to sack for the families that worked for us on the farms and in the house special bags of you name it, potatoes, carrots, peanuts, apples, pears, and other kind of fruit in season and daddy would often throw in some oranges that he would go to El Paso to take for the Holidays and he would always take hard tack candy he would always make us make two bags of hard tack candy to give to the families and to the children and his people came first early in the morning the and the mother with all their children would come.  Daddy was sitting early bright and early like a Santa Claus and he'd sit in the front porch with these bucket and tubs, big tubs filled with bags and bags.  He had names on these great big gunnysack bags.  Where it said for the Laya family, for the Gusievlo family for the Flores family or whatever and with some of this Christmas stuff many times he gave a little calf a male calf that could be killed and they could have a big festivity for Christmas and the New Year season to another family he would give them a duck a couple of rooster fryers.  There was so much food in abundance and if we had killed and this was the custom to kill 3,4,5 pigs to sell the lard and we had many pork skins and who in the colonies didn't like pork skins.  Daddy would have us bag this up in small bags to give out to everybody so daddy was really the real Santa Claus of the colonies.  This is what made him happy he never even had time to go inside and have breakfast we'd bring him out some hot porridge, hot cereal, hot choc, something that he could drink outside on the porch because he was not going to miss the smile of one of those children that would come and he didn't want anyone to come by on Christmas day and see that daddy was not on that front porch giving out giving out and giving out father gave so much that, was why he was never a rich man.  He was always giving of himself and of every thing else he had.  He not only was the Bishop of the ward, the President, their ulto verde as he called it, no he was not only that he was a Dr. Who had a pain, who had an ache that didn't come for father to take care of it.  Not only that but the medication included he was also the Dentist.  How people would come to him with out a penny in their pocket and have daddy pull out their teeth.  Oh those molars, how some of them were so rotted, how some of them would leave it to the last moment when it was critical for daddy to have to take their molars out and he would include the medication.  Not a penny, there was never a charge and daddy was always going to Casas Grandes to get medicines.  He was always coming to El Paso to get different types of medicines to kill the pain and to help how many times they came to daddy to ask him because somebody was having a lot of trouble, might have a baby an daddy was not home, Mother would get in that one horse buggy and their she goes with out any experience with out any thing only to help to be available to boil water to have clean sheets an she would say to the maids don't worry about it when the time comes (yo departo) I'll deliver your baby and they'd say oh no, no and she'd say it as a joke but how many times it turned out true and scared her to death because she had to do it.  Like I say when my father met her she was taking nursing lessons and she was going to nursing school and also working at a pharmacist in El Paso, she was a very young girl and she never learned anything about delivering babies or midwife or anything of the sort, but then she was to help the poor to help the needy many times both of my parents were called blessed because of what they would do. 

Among all this beauty and this goodness the colonies in those days, not so much now but yes there was a lot of discrimination in the colonies it was bad very bad and either you were or you weren't, and if you tried to be in between you had a fight all your life.  There were the Thaynes, Oliver Thayne, Elmer Thayne and his wife that had Lillian, Lupe, Beatrice and Albert, Doris.  I don't remember if I am leaving someone out.  They did have a couple of twins.  That also she was anglo and he was Spanish.  Then of course there was us, father but us worse that all the others.  Father had been related by polygamy to the majority of the families in the colonies and that way wasn't taken easy.  That was something that discriminated him because he used to be their relative and now he was not their relative and how dare he come back into the colonies with a young beautiful woman fair young, strong, intelligent and say this is my wife when the polygamy was over.  His wives were old his wives were gone back to the states their was a Skousen and he was also married to a Blueth and there families formed if not the most important, close to the most important families of the colonies.  When the exodus came about and my father had to divide his goodies among all his wives, his children and there at another part of my story I'll mention something more about his excommunication from the church with didn't last long and he came back into the church. His wives were already gone to the states, they were taken care of by what he had left them.  He had many children.  There were 32 of us and he took care of his duties with his wives and with his families.  Now after so many years he comes back into the colonies as a Bishop in the church with a young beautiful wife.  Intelligent well read well educated.  They wanted to call her a Mexican and she would say yes I am Mexican because she was born in Chih. Mexico and Jiménez Chih.  She was a Mexican citizen and she did descend from Mexican people that called them selves this for less explanation as to how there origin really came about and how they were descended of French and Spanish but it never faced mother to say I am Mexican and if they want her to be Mexican it's all right with her that didn't bother her one bit, Mexican, French, Spanish, American, Anglo one was just as good as the other to her and there were so many that were just white trash that she would not want to be numbered among them so mother took people as they were and not because of the nationality or the blood that ran in their veins and she taught us to have love for everyone, and she sent us to school so that we would learn to respect and appreciate Mexico and the Mexicans, where we were born raised and where we were being educated that we would learn about the good Mexicans about the good Spaniards about the good French about the good Anglo about the good Americans, and to learn to distinguish the difference between one and the other. That we were all sons and daughters of Christ, of God.  Brothers and sisters of Christ and that there was no difference between one and the other unless our education our actions our deeds made us different.  That is where we differed one from another.  But the discrimination was something very hard to fight against, very hard. In among the families that had been daddies top relatives because of his wives looked at this new family with envy with jealousy hoping they could just erase us our of their minds and some of their understanding of us, our problems later on loving us through mothers example through knowing mother and what a hard Relief Society worker she was and how many years she served the church as president of the Relief Society.  She set her example to all the them; if you need help I am going to give you help.  I'm going to give the best I can regardless of what color, what nationality you come from an she lived by this and people knew they could come to her and trust her and father was very proud, very humble to see that his wife had become such a heroin in the colonies, a hard worker and set an example to those who would have liked to cut her down.  The discrimination was worse off since my father was named President of the Mexican ward because mothers English was not that good although like I said before she and sister Williams translated the Pearl of Great Price, worked a lot in Doctrine and Covenants and other books that later on Bro Valedares verifies and published but it was mother and Sis. Williams work.  But because father was the President there and we would go there and our acquaintances from church our ties were much stronger with the Mexican-speaking people than it was with the American-speaking people although our schooling was all in the American schools.  Our church ties were with the Mexican people.  Many people didn't know how to take us, didn't know how to consider our origin and for this we had many fights of which I will tell you of, a couple of them just to let you know how we fought for our identity.  There were many times when girls would come up to me, these girls who were paying their tuition.  They were not Mormons but they came in from Nuevo Casas Grandes and from old Cases Grandes and they say " Bertha what are you Mexican or American, in the beginning I would say American of course later on I leaned to say (quatarona) which is half and half.  So that we wouldn't get into big fights of pulling hair and kicking and everything else.  These girls were big and were big fighters especially if we were in a school team say a baseball, basket ball and we would play against the schools from Cases Grandes and I would understand everything perfectly what they were saying because my mother had seen to it that we learned both languages.  We were well versed in the Spanish language.  They didn't like the idea of me understanding everything they said.  They were confused as to what I was, are you a Mexican or are you an American no say quatarono.  I'm half and half this was very difficult for many people to understand because like I say the Thaynes and the Spencers and us were the quatarones and so this was not very popular with either, you were American or Mexican.  You couldn't be half and half.  If you'd start to explain my mother is not really Mexican but you could consider her Mexican but she isn't, she's really Spanish, French and then it would be worse so we'd say quatarones and leave it at that.  One day while we were having lunch, we'd have lunch under the trees.  I heard a big yelp a cry of horror a cry of pain, Bertha, Bertha help me Bertha, help me, help me and I dropped my lunch kit and I ran towards the area where I could hear the screaming of pain.  There near the school pump where they had the garbage cans these big barrels where all the scratch paper was thrown into, this had been lit and you could see the fire coming out of the scratch papers.  There was six Mexican boys two from the colonies in Dublan and the others from Nueva Cases Grandes and Beahoe Cases Grandes that had taken my brothers pants down, Pauly my brother Pauly next to me.  They had pulled his pants down and they were running him back and forth, three holding his arms, and the other three holding his legs and running him over the flame of this fire, what was his crime:  They asked him if he was Mexican or American.  He said quatarone.  They asked him what his mothers name was and he said his name was Pauly Brown and he couldn't remember, he was just a young boy.  He couldn't remember mothers last name and because he didn't say it, they thought he was ashamed of the Spanish name.  They had his butt good and hot, and blistered.  I will never as long as I live forget the pain the anger that came over me and I grabbed one of the boys by the hair and pulled him back and there was a big piece of wood for warming up the school house and I hit the other guy with that one, right on his back then he let go of my brother.  I was making sure that I hit the ones that had his legs first so they wouldn't drop his head and then with two bucket, fulls of water that was there how the strength came over me.  I was worse than a panther worse than a lion, but I took care of all six of them everyone of them had been injured by me.  I had hit them, I had bled them, I had kicked them but I had put my brother Paulys' pants back on and I had him close to me.  I was screaming to everybody, call the principle, call the teachers, and get them over here.  How that place was filled with kids and none of them dared face those big Mexican boys.  They didn't dare face them because they were the bullies they were the animals for Cases Grandes. Everybody feared them.  I never stopped to think who they were I only knew it was my brother they were burning and that was all.  I asked the Lord to give me strength to kill those animals.  When the principle and the teachers came and they saw the disaster that was there, I told them where are you at lunch time hiding in your offices eating your lunch playing games saying jokes while these animals burned my brother up.  I pulled down his pants so they could see how they had blistered his little butt. I said of course I did, you hit the head of this one, his head was bleeding, yes I did, you hit this one his lame foot here, yes I did.  I said there were six against by brother and I hit each one of them they were punished not to come to school for a couple of weeks.  My brother of course couldn't come to school either for several days because his blisters on his butt were so bad he couldn't sit.  There was no way any of the teachers could punish me for being a beast, because I had defended my brother and I didn't lie.  I beat them and if I had, had more strength I would have killed them.  This brought my brother Pauly and I together closer and closer, from that time on I knew I was my brothers' keeper.  If Gus was out there someplace running and playing top, spin the top marbles or having a good time with his friends he was an eighth grader by then.  That didn't matter to me one bit I knew then I was to protect my brother and my little sister and they knew it.  They all knew it and they knew this brownie, stood for anything they wanted to call me.  They knew this quatarona meant it.  That I had blood of all kinds and that they had better stay away from me because I would fight them and I didn't care who I hit.  They respected me, they were all punched and they were all to stay away from me and away from my brothers.  When we'd go in these teams there were girls who would pull at my blouse where they would leave me in great pain because they'd say gringa, gringa bestosa (stinking American).  I'd say amucha hombre (very honored to be so).  I wouldn't let them run me down for anything.  I'd keep up the game and we'd play and I was never scared to be sent to one of these outside games where we were going to play with the Mexicans.  I knew to hold my own I was a strong girl and this being a tomboy and being used to running around with my brothers and there friends for the earlier years had taught me to be strong and to fight and I knew how to fight.  There was one time later on about a year after when Osadra Yorosko, she was a good six years older than I.  A well-formed girl from one of the higher dignified families had moved from Mathida Chih.  She was a fighter and there had been a program a talent show in which the teachers Velda Festista that was the Spanish talent teacher, Spanish teacher dance teacher and showed me how to dance a Spanish dance and how to sing a Spanish song and this song said you so puda mexicana natha tengo espanole.  The song said in its words I am pure Mexican there is no Spanish blood running in me.  I never took the song at heart it was a beautiful song.  A beautiful dance that went with it and it was my first castonet dance in this talent show and I won an award for singing and dancing but I never stopped to think that this was going to bother the real Mexican people or the Spanish people from the colonies.  As I was going down it was not a stairway it was kind of a sliding way to go into the schoolhouse, cement like.  After we had saluted the Mexican flag because this was a must we saluted the Mexican flag very morning before we went into school and then we marched into our rooms and it was kind of in the basement like.  As I was going down Rosada Oroscho, which was much older than I a well formed.  She grabbed me by the hair she said not tenus esponole eh (so you have no Spanish blood in you huh) and I'll tell you I felt she had all my hair in her hands.  I turned and twisted as I could and I held on to her bosom and I twisted on her until she let go of me by then we had teacher and many others around, that came around to see what had happened.  She had grown to a beautiful seniorita a well taken care of girl and she didn't know who she had gotten a hold of because I had been raised as a tomboy.  When she pulled my hair I pulled on her and I scratched her and I kicked her and she was much worse off when we finished than I was.  We were both reprimanded and taken to the principle and I had witnesses of what had happened.  She grabbed me by the back and she resented me not accepting I was a Mexican.  They wanted me to be on there side.  I was either suppose to be American and be with the Anglos or the Mexican, and be with the Mexicans.  I couldn't be either one.

My education my bringing up my respect for my mother that was a Mexican citizen, Spanish, French decent and my father being a full blooded English, Irish part Dutch.  How could I say I was Mexican?  I was not going to say I was Mexican to nobody.  I was going to be what I was and that was all.  If they didn't like it then we went to a fight.  Many instances like these came about for one time I was even in a group of the higher distinguished Spanish people from the colonies that had gone to an American dance.  It wasn't that they didn't let them in because they were Spanish but because it was a Beehive, Boy Scout party. Other people were not permitted to come in they didn't accept it as such and they thought they were being thrown out of the dance because they were not Americans.  At the time I was playing games near my home outside.  So were my brothers and the Untiveros and we were caught in this brush where they said, the Americans threw us out and these were the Mormons they went to school with we couldn't understand it and they all decided we'd all be soldiers and we'd just play around and I remember going right up to the chapel right up to the school house and we all had a bucket or a pot and pan and something to hit it with and we were soldiers and we were singing a little song that went like this – (listen on tape).  It was a little song we made up along the way, here we were the song said, we are the little Mexicans we are coming to fight with the little Americans for not letting us in.  I bet you think you're so great, I bet you think it is so, I bet you think yes, I bet you think so, but we've the little Mexican army coming to fight so that you will let us come in.  We didn't go into the church house or anything but we just marched through the streets and when it was time to get near our home we all went into our homes.  From then on we were all kind of recognized, somewhat with this group of inrequis iglesias, balaveras, senores people the richer families that had stores and businesses that had moved in the later years and moved in the colonies that were the influentional people.  We had kind of a closeness association with them because of the silly little song that we had gone out together.  It kind of let them understand that we were with them and that we didn't like the idea that they weren't permitted to go in.  That we understood their madness, and we went along with them.  But the discrimination went on and on and on.  You could see how in the different families where we were crossed.  We didn't think the Mexican was good enough for us.  In turn the Anglo didn't think we were good enough for them so we were in between and as it turns out in the majority of the cases, these families did not marry the American L.D.S. members from the colonies.  Emma and Amanda Spencer, which were the most beautiful girls of the colonies regardless.

The Lord said let the little ones come unto me and they shall inherit the kingdom of God. This is so true, when you are young and you are innocent and your thoughts are pure, the Lord can really listen to your prayers.  It was an early morning, just in time to go to school.  My parents had gone to El Paso.  They seemed to make, this trip every Sept., or in early Oct., and at this time they would bring clothing for us for school, blankets, quilts, they would go by Chih. City of Juarez and they would bring sugar and rice and other things that we didn't have, or that we didn't raise in the colonies.  In one of those trips and in the last one that they made mother had brought me a striped red and white hooded cape.  It was a cute little cape, it went all the way from my head to my knees, and it tied with two cute little knobs at the neckline.  I was skipping and hopping on my way to first grade, because we didn't have kindergarten at that time.  There were teachers and others walking on the other sidewalk, but it seemed like I was the only one walking on the left sidewalk, which is the one that was direct from my house to our school.  I had just passed Grandma Bluthes house, that's where we used to get the yeast for the bread.  Kitty corner from it was coming sister Pratt she was the old Sister Pratt that some meanies use to call her "turkey" because she had a lot of hang over skins on her neck.  She had a very, very long neck, she was one of the school teachers, my school teacher who was um, her name was Lucille Taylor and she lived in the Robinson's house, just a couple blocks up from where we lived. 

There were other children that I don't remember; there were many that were walking on that sidewalk, while I was alone on this side.  All of a sudden, this bull turned loose from Harvey Taylor's barnyard, and he was coming directly towards the alfalfa field which gate was near the pathway that I was going by.  That bull he jumped the ditch and knocked me right over.  After he knocked me over he twirled me around in my little red riding hood, they had to tie him down before and cut his horns down to where his horns were not long and sharp like they used to be, but he still had defensive horns, and they used to call him the killer because he had killed three or four horses.  And had injured workmen very bad.  He had, had big fights with other bulls.  It seemed to be the king of the bulls and he was rented out as a stud for good Herefords.  But he was a killer, he was mean.  I didn't see him coming toward me, in fact, I was so happy singing along skipping and going to school, that when he was over me that was the first time I noticed that he was coming at me.  But witnesses say that he rolled me over and rolled me over, he stepped on me and with his nose he sniffed and scuffed at me, and really had me going round and round in a little ball there right next to the water ditch.  Everybody saw that he was coming at me and saw what happened.  Because of the alarm screams of the workmen and brother Harvery calling that had realized that the bull had gotten out a they had brassles and big ropes to take him.  They were hollering screaming.  They knew this was a time that kids were going to school, and they wanted him out of danger, out of where he could cause any danger.  It was too late he had gotten to me.  It was the prayers of all these good people that saw what happened that saved me.

I remember very well as I used to sit on the front porch with my daddy, Brother Longhurst, Brother Carden, Brother Thayne, Brother Robinson and others that used to come there and sit in that front porch with my daddy. They would talk and discuss every thing there was to talk about.  I had heard in on of their conversations that if you are suddenly attacked, by a beast, if you stay still, if you don't move or you don't scream, they'd leave you alone.  I remembered that right there and then, and all I could think of was the Lord is with me I will pray silently to the Lord and will deliver this beast away from me.  I just cuddled up like a stone and I didn't move.  I remember very well having my knees and my head almost together and I was all cuddled up together and the bull would move me from one side to the other, but I prayed and prayed that he would not harm me.  I did not move, there were many workmen, many cowboys and many of the good brethren that came running to aid me, to get the bull away from me.  They finally did this and no sooner had they taken the bull away that sister Pratt and Sister Taylor, school teachers came running with sheets to wrap me up in sheets and Dr. Stell came and they took me into Grandma Blueths house which was the closest and laid me there on her kitchen table and started washing me off because I was full of mud, washing off the mud from me so the Dr. could treat me and I remember Brother Call and one of the other brothers Barbie Call and some of Brother Calls sons giving me a blessing while I was still on top of Grandma Blueths table.  All they could find out was that I was all muddy just muddy but I didn't have a scratch on me.  They stood me up to see if my little legs or arms were broken if my back was broken.  Then they took me home to mother who was frightened to death when she saw they were taking me back wrapped up in sheets and didn't know what had happened to me.  I didn't go to school that morning but I did return in the afternoon.  Everybody in the colonies knew what had happened, that bull was restrained in deepened corrals so he would not again get loose and this time maybe kill someone.

The power of prayer to me became very important at that early age.  I was about six years old and I know how important it was and how close you could be to Heavenly Father by just praying to him.  I had understood the prayer was a close relationship.  Something that had brought me very close to our Heavenly Father and that he would not leave me alone if I spoke to him.  The next Sunday I gave my testimony in church and there were many people crying to hear my testimony.  It was like Sister Pratt said, "This little girl was saved for something great, she will be a great missionary, a great leader", and so it was.

School was a happy time for me and my brothers and sisters.  I developed very strongly in the church.  Like I said before, taking the lessons in the American language, and then teaching and translating it into Spanish for the Spanish speaking children in the Mexican ward. I developed with the same exercises or responsibilities my mother had with the Relief Society and MIA.  I had there with the Primary and the Pres. of the Primary was Avellena Garcia, and she had all the confidence in me, and let me handle all the programs like Mothers' day, Father's Day, Christmas, Easter, New Years, you name it.  We didn't have any literature or any little books that showed us what the program was going to be about.  It was up to composer Bertha Brown to compose the program.  I never let them down I had the different groups, one developing a play that I'd make up.  I remember many a night when I would sit up in the middle of the night writing something down that I had thought about while I was sleeping, and I would get up again and write something else down the next day.  I would put it together, and it would turn out to be a cute little play.  Then I would teach, from where I don't know because I didn't have at that time a dancing lesson or singing lesson, yet I would teach the different groups in primary how to sing different little songs, and with the help of the organist, I would lead them in singing and have little singing and dancing groups.  I would figure out how their outfits were supposed to be, if they were supposed to look like a butterfly or a little piggly wiggly, a big bad wolf or whatever.  I then would make up a drawing of how the outfit was supposed to look.  I sure appreciate the help of the mothers because they all seemed to be so co-operative.  If Bertha Brown the dance teacher singing teacher, play director if that's what she said, they were going to wear.  They would do their best to dress their little boys and girls the way I said it was going to be.  We turned out some very, very good plays, songs, and poems.  Many people didn't know that I had composed them that I had made them up. They thought it was out of manuals.  Until in later years when they found out that I never had any manuals, and that this was all out of my own imagination, they started to appreciate the work I had put in to our church.  Since I was young, I was very active in the organization of the church. 

My mother was a great help with her story telling, and her teaching, because from the things she would teach us, I would place them in my imagination, and make plays, dances and songs.  Although I had no experience about what foreign dance looked like, just from what mother used to say in her stories.  I would have the little girls dress up like this and that, and their mother's would make them outfits.  Little parties would come out real cute, and everyone seemed to enjoy them.

 There were also some hardship times, times I don't like to remember because they were sad.  One day as my daddy was going in his little one – horse buggy to make a run to our farm, the cowboys had opened the gates where all the horses would come out to be watched and taken to pasture, and just as daddy was arriving that little area between McNeill's house and our land was just a small alley.  My father tried to enter it, and there was no way to go back. The horses were coming desperately, there were about 50-75 horses, but they trampled my daddy's buggy right over.  My daddy fell on the bobbed wire fence of McNeill's.  Trying to help himself the best he could to go under the fence, part of his body laid way inside of their property, and his legs and this part of his body were out in the alley when all of those horses were coming through.  As the McNeill's saw what had happened, there was nothing they could do.  The horse was badly hurt because he was heading the wrong way.  The buggy was all broken up; their main concern was daddy.  They could see that one of his eyes was hanging down by his mouth, and that he could not be moved.  Dr. Still, in no way was a doctor that could help him although he had been called and they called us, and I happened to be home at the time.  It was only a block away from our house, and I remember running so fast, and I ran under the barbed wire fence and tore my dress in the back to reach my daddy.  It was a terrifying horrible thing to see that my daddy's eye was hanging by just some bloody little strings.  It was hanging out close to his mouth by his mustache.  I didn't know what to do with it.  He was bleeding from different parts of his body.  His arms were broken, his legs were broken, and there was a train that was going to be in El Paso in 2-3 hours.  The different men made some kind of bed with 2x4's and covered them with canvas putting a mattress over it and putting daddy on it.  They tried to deep his legs and arms in a way he couldn't hurt them anymore.  Dr. Still was a very old doctor, and he could see that the condition of my father was far, to far for him to care for.  My mother had Gus and Pauly and Aaron and Little Mary to take care of, and I offered to go with daddy, and daddy said, "Yes you let my little nurse come with me", and I was the only person taking care of my daddy.  From Cases Grandes to Ceiro Juarez, where a telegram had been sent to brother Pierce and brother T. Pauly to receive us at the train stop and there was an ambulance ready waiting for us.  But you can never imagine how my heart was and how I prayed all the way from Casas Grandas to Ceiro Juarez to El Paso.  His eye had been wrapped like in a piece of cheesecloth and just left wrapped then tied around his head and only the mud had been washed off of him.  He was bandaged with pieces of sheet old sheets and pieces of plywood or thin wood to leave his arms and legs in place and his neck was badly wrapped and his back so he was in a lot of pain.  Although this was about all the Dr. had given him were some painkillers and I was to continue giving him these painkillers on the way to El Paso.  If you know what I am talking about the railroad in those days was very, very slow and it makes stops in every little town and every little corner and I wondered many times if it wouldn't help if I'd get off and push.  We finally got to El Paso and Brother Pierce and Brother Pauly were there with an ambulance and we were taken directly to Providence Hospital where he was admitted to and I was given special permission not to be taken from his room so they put a little cot there. I could lie beside him and as they took him into the operating room the nurses and Brother Pauly would tell me about his strength.  He was telling them don't worry don't cry, he would say to me don't cry sweetheart I am not going to die.

My father had such strong feeling and such strong faith.  A revelation he had, had from his mother when he broke his neck many years before when his mother told him to praise the lord and to never complain because he would live to be eighty three years old.  He had so much faith in this revelation that he gave strength to the Drs. and the nurses.  Letting them know even though he was all broken up he was not going to die on them and all he needed was to taken care of and doctored well and that he had his little nurse that would take good care of him, that was me.  I was permitted to stay with him through the worst part of his illness of course the most painful for me to see was that he had no eye left, that eye had been cut off as it came off its orbit and he would now in time be fitted with a glass eye, which would never permit him to see.  Now the important thing was to save the other eye so that he may see the rest of his life.  I don't remember how long we stayed but after many weeks we were moved to a small apartment near Brother Paulys home and it consisted of a bedroom and a bathroom and a kitchen and it was near by a shopping center.  I was about thirteen or fourteen years old.  I remember going to the little store in the corner and buying milk and bread and fruit, cereal and feeding daddy the best I could and we'd eat there in the little room and then he was to wait for his casts to be removed and again replaced and removed again and this is what took so long, his neck had been injured so bad before that this time he had a very hard time moving his neck, moving his head from one side to the other but my daddy had very good friends which was Orville Pierce and Brother Pauly and other brethren would come in and visit with him and some time permitting their daughters to take me to a movie while they talked to give me a break it was the first time I saw Gone with the Wind and I saw it with Mary Beth Pierce.  President Pierces daughter, she took me out to see the movie and it was a very long movie and daddy worried but he did have company when I came home and I was excited telling him all about the movie.  He was happy to see that I could get out once in a while with some of the brethrens daughters to go see something like this.  It was or had been one of my first trips to El Paso since I had been a child.  I can't remember how many weeks or how long it took for my daddies casts to be taken out and for my daddies artificial eye to be put back in and that we could again make the journey back to Dublan.  But it was a time of closeness a time of prayer and time in which I knew daddy and I belonged together and that I was in deed his daughter his sweetheart his favorite his little nurse like he called me and I endeared myself very much to him in those days when we reached home their were many visitors many people asking about all of these things that had happened and it was a crucial time but with prayers and the brethren giving my father blessings pretty soon daddy was able to walk again and move around.

At this time I am about to record the most horrible the most petrifying time of the history of our life in the colonies.  I'm about to tell you of a night of terror a nite of tears and many prayers and I think that just thinking about it through the nite, to record today, It has made me so nervous it has made me so sick that I am really sick with nerves just remembering the horrible nite we spent as a family and now that I have decided that it is part of the life of the colonies and that I must record it if I want to sleep tonight.  I must tell the story so that I can be at ease and rest again and be able to think of something else about the story of the history of the colonies.  We all knew each other in the colonies we were all friends and neighbors and it was very seldom that anyone would come into the colonies to live there sometime would be people moving into Casas Grandes in and out but not into the colonies and here it was a family coming in from the United States, foreigners a man his man was Don Pablo Begga, seemed to be a man of money a man of education of knowledge in his fifties with his wife about the same age she looked much older because she had quite a few ailments, paralytic ailments.  They had a son about twenty four-twenty six years old.  Pablo jr. and Suzanna a beautiful girl in her early twenties, little Maria a skinny blond little girl that was all smiles and thankful they moved into the McNeil's home which they rented.  The McNeil's home was one block away from our home right in the corner and facing our house it was also the house that made the corner to go into that main road, dirt road that began the first street of the colonies and started its way up to the river.  This was the farming area right behind the McNeil's was the farm area that belonged to the Memmetts across the dirt road was our farm starting right there from the McNeil's going all the way to the river and this was the Browns the Orson P. Browns farm.  My daddy's farm and right next to that was the Robinson's and all these farms and the Spencer's and all these farms started at that road and went right to the river.  This Mc Neal corner that was right by our farm was where daddy had been damaged and half killed by the horses as he was entering this alley or dirt road. Well this family moved in there, rented this house and it was a mystery we never knew what kind of job they were employed in or anything and really it was none of our business.  The lady had a maid that took care of her and they seemed to mind their business very much.  The two young people seemed to mix with the people in our community especially in the Spanish ward and they would go to the dances and parties with us.  Their stay in the colonies were not that long to know then that well but they brought a lot of joy into the colonies because they brought the first and only pianola that we had ever had heard in the colonies.  Little Maria would start playing it from early in the afternoon and she would just set there and peddle along and they had the most beautiful rolls of music and Suzanne would play it, Pablo would play it.  They all seemed to enjoy to play the pianola. They would leave their windows and doors open and we could here concerts, operettas the best kind of religious music, western music, pop music, modern music it was so beautiful many, many families would come along and sit in the ditch banks and by the trees and mostly teenagers young people in love had made that their favorite place in the evenings to just sit around the trees sit around the trees sit around the river and listen to that beautiful music that would come from that house.  But then something very tragic happened this is a night that has caused me so much pain through the day though the nite remembering the details of it and wanting to forget it and wanting to disappear wondering now why did it happen, why to us, why did it have to happen.  We were all sound asleep one nite when all of a sudden we heard the dogs barking and many horses right in front of our house and around my fathers window and in his bedroom door, almost knocking the door down and my father got up to open the door an they immediately arrested him and it was the Corthatha, the Corthatha is known as what would you call it here, the Rangers, it was a group that has been signed not by the army not by the government.  I don't know exactly what it was, but they were the ones that would take justice into their hands and then when there was a criminal they would take them to the Sierra Pahawdito the Pahawdito mountains and they were well know to take a person there and whip them to death to get the truth out of them and this was the way this Corthatha took care of criminals.  That came any place near the colonies and Casas Grandes; one of them was ex general Gonzales, Pancho Villa Jr., not related to the well-known Pancho Villa.  His father that belonged to the Corthatha and they were all killers and they were all armed.  They didn't give our father a chance to get into his pants to get into his clothing but they took him in his bedding clothes and put him up on a horse and they accused him of a murder of a Mexican man that had been found in our farm land about two blocks in the beginning of our farm.

This was a horrible night our two farm hands Juan Flures and Has Sanchez of course were awakened by all their noise of the horses and had hidden in the shadows wondering what was to happen to their master to their Bishop to our dear daddy.  Daddy didn't have a chance with them he asked them what have I done and they just told him, you have murdered a man.  They didn't tell him what the mans' name was or how or when or anything they just took him.  They took off immediately with him and we notified brother Untiveros who notified his son Nephy and word was taken to the stake president, president Claudius Bowman and Hanson P. Call and all the other High councilmen and priesthood holders of the church the other bishops the other councilors were all notified an they agreed in a place to meet as soon as possible to get their guns, get whatever trailers or truck or car they had to meet at a certain place and they were going to follow the Corthatha into the mountains.  This had happened in the middle of the night and the whole colony was aroused by what had happened and many of the sisters and brothers came to our home to console us and wondering and asking questions as to what had happened we didn't know what it was all about.  Juan Flores who had been working for us for many years he followed in the shadows he followed on horse to see where they were taking father and of course he followed from far behind so that he would not be caught and Has Sanchez ran around in a horse notifying everybody to what had happened and we had the stronger men and representatives of every farm of every business in the colonies had joined like good brothers and they had followed daddy that had been taken by the Corthatha, accused of being a murderer and they the brethren took their guns and pistols and also their prayers and they prayed all the way up there, that there had to be a mistake and they didn't know what all was going on when day light came along it was discovered by many of the other brothers and sisters that had stayed along to guard the families that during the night or earlier in the night somebody had discovered by many of the other brothers and sisters that had stayed along to guard the families that during the night or earlier in the night somebody had  discovered a human limb, I don't remember if it was an arm or a leg with part of clothing  and it had been pulled out by the dogs and it had been dragged right out by the dirt road of course this was turned into the Corthatha and the Corthatha immediately went to our farm where it seemed it had been pulled from.  In the morning it was discovered other parts of the body were found in the Memmotts farm which was right across the land right across our farm right across the dirt road and in there discovery they found our farm hands had been plowing during the day in that area and the body was buried there and not to deep and not to careful, because just the deepness of the plow had uncovered the bodies to the point the dogs had gotten to the body and pulled it out.  The person the man had not been dead to long and was still undeniable but it was no one any one knew, even some of the merchants from Cases Grandes who believed in justice and knew what had happened to father and that he could not be a murderer in no way had also followed up to the Pawhidito with the president of Casas Grandes the mayor of Cases Grandes to see that justice would be done and our prayers and our fasting were that they would not whip daddy.  He was an old man and the way he was taken in his bed clothing, that would be enough to give him pneumonia.  If they would whip him they would kill him.  He was such an old man and they did tie him to a tree and I don't know many more of the details because we were not told about it.  This was a council the priesthood held and the authorities and the Corthatha held out there, my father being accused of being a murderer.  He didn't know who he had murdered.  But out here in the colonies in the farms there were many investigations made.  Drs., Lawmen, politicians, army men they checked the man.  Nobody seemed to know who the man was although his face was complete.  But they couldn't find out who he was.  He was not one of the farm hands of anyone.  We knew all the people around no one seemed to know him there were many people that were offered a recompense to say who the dead man was and nobody seemed to recognize him.  One maid that worked for the McNeil's is remembered to have said that she was not sure but she had thought she'd seen that man cutting wood at the McNeal home.  Where the Begges lived but she wasn't sure, but she thought she had seen him to or three times when she had come to do the washing.  This was a very terrifying time of our lives.  We did a lot of fasting and a lot of praying and they wouldn't return and it was way past midnight when finally they brought daddy home.  They had held a prayer meeting in the prayer house an all the councilors and all the Priesthood holders had decided that father had nothing to do with this assassination and that it was the authorities to prove who the man was and who had killed him.  We don't know I don't even want to remember the details but father was sick for three or four weeks and he had diarriah that almost ended him from fright from nerves.  These false accusations from everything else that had happened and one morning the Beggas were gone the pianola did not play any longer so we thought maybe Mrs. Beggus is sick.  Pablo and Suzanna were not seen around, Maria had not been seen around and after a few days of not seeing any of them Mr. And Mrs. McNeal decided to go and see what had happened to them when did they move?  How did they move or who murdered them.  The house was empty they had left of course many things behind but not the pianola and they had disappeared like one happy day they had appeared with their music and then they were gone.  I don't know if anyone in the colonies or in Cases Grandes know where they came from or where they went too.

Pablo Beggas being an assassin from New Mexico the United States who was running away from justice and the man found dead on our farm was his accomplice and they had come to the colonies running away from justice and staying away for a while and they had hidden in the Mormon Colonies.  We don't know for sure what happened but it was believed that this dead man was his accomplice and that this man had come with him from New Mexico into the colonies.  The important part about the whole matter was that the authorities the Corthatha and the church had all agreed that my father had nothing to do with this assassination.  He was cleared in everyway and it was heard that Beggas was being followed and we don't know what ever happened to them but it was very terrifying nite that we cried our hearts to God to help our daddy because we know he was innocent and he was the Bishop the President of the second ward.  He was Dr. of no charge, a dentist that didn't charge he was a good man everyone was his friend.  He loved everyone he showed respect for everyone and he was such a kind man that even to us his own children if he felt in anyway he miss judged us he would apologize to us, who were we that our daddy, that a great man like Orson Pratt Brown would apologize to his own children, but he would.  How many times he said to me honey I'm sorry I miss judged you I'm sorry I didn't understand what you said will you forgive me.  Are we friends again.

Many times my brother Gus who had a big strong determination who was a leader and he was bossy and he thought he knew what he was doing.  When my father decided to start turning the farm work over to him I can remember many hard arguments that they had because my brother had modern ideas and he thought if he'd bring in new motors and tractors and new well diggers our farm would progress and my father was an older man and a very wise man and he knew we couldn't afford those big expenses and he'd try to reason with Gus.  That those things couldn't be done but Gus in his youth and inexperience he wanted to do it in his own way.  I can remember many times when they would end up in harsh words and daddy would send him away and then later on instead of Gus going and apologizing to daddy, daddy would say to him, I'm sorry son we must talk about this again discuss it over.  I remember many times when I hated Gus for calling daddy an old man.  He thought he was ignorant an old and senile and he didn't know much about anything anymore and I didn't like this about my brother Gus although I'm sure many times he repented from speaking of daddy in this way. I want you to understand that Gus Gustovo our oldest brother was an intelligent young man and was very ferocious and he had many wild modern ideas about how to get rich quick and he didn't have much or any experience on the farms but he sure wanted to try it out and let everybody know that he was going to pick up daddy's farm that had been declining with years as mother was sick and daddy was sick and all these accidents that daddy had had and the farm was going down hill.

Gus had good attendance in school, he had a good voice, and he won a couple times in contests singing.  I remember him singing Oh Sol A Me Oh an Italian song.  And Vora Chita a Mexican song that brought him much applause and first prizes, just like one of his friends Hector Spencer that I have spoken about before he got a first prize in Writers in the Sky he had a beautiful voice.

I just want to speak about better things to forget the tragic things that did happen so I must speak about as time went by we all graduated from the Mormon colonies school in Colonia Dublan and on we went to high school in Colonia Juarez.

I haven't spoken too much and that is because she was my little sister and in the beginning as I told you before it was hands off.  I was a tomboy I was a ruffy and mother didn't want me roughing the baby around and I was able to play with her a lot when they had her in mothers bed and I was supervised by mother or grandmother later on I could play with her in the crib and as time went by I could walk with her and go pick little flowers in the garden and take little walks together and help her walk and as she was steadier on her feet.  Mary was a very pretty child she was a fatso very big for her age. She was very blond and her hair was cut like mine with bangs and squared off at the ears to the back.  She had big brown eyes and she liked to be told things that would make her laugh.  The difference in our ages made a difference in our getting to know each other because most places I went she couldn't go because she was little and as I ran around with my brothers she was to little to take along and mother would've never, never permitted this, so I didn't really get to know my sister until later years when she became a little tag and she would tag along every place I'd go.  Follow me around sometimes get in the way and sometimes very pleasantly and I should tell you about some little things that happened to her.  She was always getting into some kind of trouble.  One day she decided that she and Rosita Wandineros wanted to go horseback riding and there were no horses around but there was a big mule so the farm hand put them in the saddle and let them go riding around the block.  Well the mule was stubborn and she didn't want to go out into the street and she wanted to keep eating the hedge from the fence and it got so close to the fence that it knocked Rosita and Mary over the fence cutting Mary's throat where to this day she has scars where she was left hanging from the neck on the bob wire fence, this was a very sad experience for her and for all of us to find out that the two girls were out there in the ditch and bleeding from the bob wire cuts. Another time as I say we used to have very nice picnics from Primary or the whole church would go on a picnic.  This time it was a Primary picnic an we had gone out to the riverbank right across the way from our farm.  When we had these picnics we always had plenty to eat, many watermelons and cantaloupes, daddy used to raise squash, pumpkins of all kinds and everybody enjoyed eating our fruit and every time there was a picnic, daddy would come with a big bucket, cartful of melons, for all of us to enjoy. We would buy ice from the ice truck that would come and bring a big cube of ice and we'd have ice picks, which we'd cut along it and place the watermelons and cantaloupes along it and the melons would be very, very nice.  Many times we would just put it down by the side of the O-heato a little spring of water that had very, very cold water and when it was lunchtime the melons were very nice and cold and delicious to eat.  We had played many games and had just finished lunch.  Many of the men, the older boys that did not belong to primary anymore but worked in the nearby farms would come there to eat with all of us at the picnic. They brought their horses of course.  Well, Mary wanted to go horse back riding and my brother Gus let her get on a horse and go horse back riding and how she got around to the other side of the river I don't know but she must have followed some of the others doing the same thing because there were several children on horse back riding on the other side of the river and as accidents happen this was about to happen.  Mary's horse stepped in the wrong place falling into the deep waters of the O-heato this was the stream.  This was the deepest part of the river nobody went swimming in that area because it was dangerous and very deep but the horse fell into the O-heato with Mary on him.  Mary screamed and everybody behind her and in front of her saw what happened screamed, we were all on the other side of the river watching this sitting down playing, gathering up things from the picnic when it happened.  The men were quite scared as to what to do as to get the horse out because he was kicking desperately for life and Mary would go under and come up again and before anybody knew Gus my brother had thrown himself into that dangerous deep o-heato, that whirled around like a whirlpool. That would take her down and bring her up again and she was fighting for life and my brother Gus knew what he was doing and he was a boy scout and an explorer, and this that and the other and he was a great swimmer and moved her arms away from him grabbed her by her hair.  Her beautiful blond hair and pulled her out half dead.  He put her upside down as he had her to the riverside.  He started doing some exercises and pounding on her lungs and raising her head and lowering it until he hot her to breathe again and that was a big scare we all had. I don't even remember what happened to the horse.  I know my brother Gus saved Mary on this occasion.

It seemed that this occasion brought me closer to my sister Mary because I could see how much she was worth and how much it hurt to see her go up and down again.  The suffering and desperation of wondering if my brother Gus could save her.  There were many other men who could have thrown themselves into that whirlpool o-heat that didn't do it but it was that blood it was this brother that said this is my sister and saved her and brought her out and from then on I can remember many other things about Mary.  She seemed to be mothers pet of course she was the baby and got to sleep with mother in her bed I slept alone in my little bed and Grandma Mary, this is Waleta and God must have her on his side because she never did join the Mormon religion she had her own religion.  She lived the Catholic religion.  She lived it like no one could live any ones religion.  She was a God fearing woman.  She was a loving Grandma she was just a little younger than daddy and lived with us on many, many occasions.  For many, many years and she was always mothers' helper and mothers advice.  She kept us in line and she was loveable so loveable she always had candy, cookies and she would call us there and give us little goodies and surprises that she had there for us.  When she was making Quesathero which is a special Mexican cheese.  I remember her very well saying no banga Bertha.  That means don't come here Bertha.  Don' you dare come here and that of course meant come here I've got something good for you and this meant that I was right there next to her with both my hands ready for that good hot cheese that would spread out and make threads and she would enjoy that so much that we'd just come and grab it away from her.  She would be praying her mass her different prayers that she would read from her prayer books and then she'd make a little signal to me now don't come now but I'd go and sit right next to her and hold on to her beads.  When she saw I'd hold onto her rosary beads she'd reach out her hand in the back of her bed where she had a shoe bag where you would put many shoes and she had it tied to the back of her bed with many little bags.  She knew just where she had peanuts, candy, cookies and different little goodies that she had to give us.  She always had a sweet disposition.  I never saw grandmother waleta angry.  She did suffer from a constipation illness from youth where she would have to take different types of medicine and mostly herbs to get her bowels to move.  She would suffer so much and hemorrhoids would bleed terrible for lack of her being able to go normally.  But she was a blessing to have in our home.  She was a lot of help to mother and daddy and to each one of us.  She was a councilor.  Many times I went to her for counseling before I dared talked to mother about things.  Of course since I always felt so much closer to daddy than to mother because daddy had time for me and mother just had to many chores and too many children to take care of and I remember in my most important subjects of life I went to him instead of to mother and asked him about problems of growing up. 

I remember very well that mother was so shy when it came to explaining to a young girl that there is going to be a change in her life.  That we must speak and mother didn't know how to go about it and in those days it was not like now where you hear it from all your girlfriends and you hear it at school and there's even classes where they tell you about how you're going to change into a young woman and the things that are going to happen to your body and how you must take care of yourself.  I didn't know anything about this and one day I was jumping rope coming home from school at noon I was already fourteen years old and I was jumping rope on the way home when Laudo Gonzales one of Gus's friends honked, who had a pickup truck and he was on the way to Spencer's dairy to pick up some cheese, butter and what ever.  He hollered to me," Miss Brown come I will give you a lift," I still had about three or four blocks to go home.  He was one of our buddies.  I had played with many times as a tomboy.  He was one of my brother Gus's favorite friends.  So I knew him very well and got in the truck with him and he dropped me off at home and as I got off the truck he said," good luck Miss Brown" this was very strange, Laudo never called me anything more than Brownie or Bertha.  Why all of a sudden should he call me Miss Brown?  As I got off the truck and gathered my rope together, I realized that I had cut my self somewhere because I had blood running down my legs and I got home and daddy was sitting on the front porch and said what happened honey.  I said," I don't know daddy I guess I cut my self with the rope". I'm full of blood and mother wouldn't have any thing to do with it.  She just said go in the bathroom, a room we had in the corner and wash up and cleanup in big white basin we had and I did and I sat down to eat.  When I got through I had some more blood but I couldn't find the cut, the place where I had cut myself.  So I went and told my daddy about it so he asked me if I had had my period before and I didn't know what he was talking about I didn't know anything about it.  He asked me if I had little cramps in my stomach, I told him yes and he told me about what happens to a young girl at this time.  He was quite displeased with mother because she had not explained it to me and it had come to me as a big surprise, but mother tried to tell me several times.  She just could not get herself together to tell me and so this is the way I found out.  Later on I found out Laudo knew more than I did about things like this and that's why he called me Miss Brown.

These are experiences that we had that our girls don't go through because they know all about it when mothers go to talk to them about it they'll tell you about it.  When I went to talk to my girls about it they had heard it at school, they helped me to tell them about it and they knew more than I did.  At this time my father and my mother got together and told me that I could not be  amatchatona anymore.  This meant I could not be a tomboy anymore.  I must stay away from the boys I could not go swimming with them anymore.  I could not climb trees.  I had to be careful when I rode horses, I was not to hop scotch all the way to school not jump rope all the time.  There were so many things that were being taken away from me Bertha.  What it was that it seemed like my life had changed but not for the better and that my childhood was gone and now I must act like a young lady. 

In those days I thought I was being deprived of all the joys of being a child but I soon found out that there were many more joys and activities that I could join now that I was not a child, my mother sent me to the best seamstress in the colonies, Jesusita Hegavara and she taught me the acme method of cutting and sewing and I began to make all my own dresses and dresses for my sister Mary and my mother and shirts for my brothers and I became a good little seamstress and this let up to years later when I was able to sew and cut for a big store in Casas Grandes, La Casa Hawdeymio in Aurora Hawdeymio made wedding dresses and brides maids dresses and evening gowns, dresses for all kinds of occasions and she had a big cutting room where she would bring me the materials and the patterns or the idea of how she wanted the brides maids dresses made and she'd bring me all the material and she'd say here it is make me six brides maids or make dresses for twelve bridesmaids and I had several seamstresses, that would sew and I would keep them sewing all the time.  I would cut and cut and sew and sew.  I many times when one of the seamstresses would miss I would pitch in and offer to sew and try to not get behind on my cutting because I had many bridle dresses, to make and she would display them in her big store in Cases Grandes.  There's where all the brides would go to get there bridle dress and their bridesmaid dresses and wedding anniversaries, birthday party, the graduation dresses an I made myself some good earning by sewing the only thing I disliked was that it was in Casas Grandes and that is, I can't remember how many miles it was from my home and I would walk all the way to Chavlis Chovises place by the railroad tracks and pick her up and then I wouldn't be so lonely because we would walk together.  Chavelis was a good seamstress and she also worked for Yarrora Yamedo and we would walk there in the mornings together and I would go to sewing and she would go to cutting.  I would go to cutting and she would go to sewing and in the afternoon we would walk home together and make each other good company.  But I guess we had good legs at that time because it was a long ways to walk and we did this on a daily basis.  I soon found out there was more to just working when growing up it was going to high school and when school began I would get up early in the morning and run after my brother Gus that would always beat me to the bus on the first street which was right in front of the McNeil's house and we would board the school bus that went to colonial Juarez to the J.S.A. and we would ride about an hour ride because in those days we didn't have paved highway it was all rocky and many times it took us much longer than that if we had a flat tire, or we had any difficulty with the bus an it would take us much longer to get to school but we would sing our way there we knew many western songs and cute songs funny songs and roll away songs an as we picked every body up on that main street and off to the highway an off to go to Juarez we'd be singing and we'd take our lunches with us an we'd eat lunch over there at school and after school we'd board the bus again and come home and this was a daily thing that we would do.  I did this for two years in a row on the third year it was getting pretty expensive for daddy to pay all that money for the bus and the Antiveros, that was my fathers first counselor he had two daughters that wanted to go to school he could not afford to send them on the bus and there was a decision made between our parents that we all board together, there two daughters Ester and Phoebe and my self so we rented a room at Brother Jackson's place which was just a couple of blocks from the J.S.A. and it was just one bedroom with the right to use the bathroom and in the same bedroom we had a little stove where we did our cooking and we had two beds, one for phoebe and Ester and one for myself.  We each took care of our own laundry and we all took turns washing dishes and cooking and we'd go to school come home at noon and eat lunch and go back and we seemed to befriend the same friends or relatives of the same friends because they were very good friend to the Gerard's.  So was I to the Rubies an so was I to the Lavabos and so was I an although they were much older then I they were not in higher grades so we more or less had the same tasks and homework to do and after that we could do what we wanted.  Ester had already had the experience of coming back from her mission.  She had Phoebe and I in order.  Phoebe was a very lovely and romantic and happy girl and I liked to follow her around.  She made very good friends with the Rubios.  In fact she was the girlfriend of one of the Rubios.  I became very good friends with Josephina and Henretta and Sepianyo, which were the three in and around my age.  They had the main store in colonial Juarez and then of course the Gerard's from a French family had the other store in the colonies.  In colonial Juarez, in colonial Juarez I found out how important it was to feel what you were.  That is where I finally found my identity.  I can be what I want to be if all I have to say is my father is English, Irish and Dutch and my mother is French and Spanish so I'm a reveltoda. I'm a mixture.  They would all laugh everybody there was French, Spanish, or English, Dutch there were so many nationalities and then there were people coming to the school from other places and other cities because the J.S.A. was a very famous high school and they came from different roads of life from different nationalities.  What was important at the J.S.A. was who you were yourself and what you made out of your life.  How your grades were how popular you were, who your friends were.  That's what was important not who you came from or how you were brought about.  The Mexican students we came about from Chih.  And Yokey and Monterrey were of course from rich families because it took a lot of money to send a non-member from the church to the J.S.A.  so it had to be a student that came from a family that had ways and means and I don't remember any bad incidents or misbehavior from students who came from other cities, they all seemed to be respectful and American people boarded them in their homes where they paid good money and it was a good exchange they would teach them Spanish and the boys and girls that came for school there were living the American customs and American language easier by living in the American homes and they also seemed to be at there very best.

This is where I met my first boyfriend although I didn't hardly realize he was my boyfriend but I remember opening my locker and finding a milky way, in my locker who knew my combination.  I didn't know who knew my combination but the next day there would be another milky way an those days it was the beginning of milky ways and it was very strange for anyone to have an American candy in the colonies. Yet on a daily basis I had a milky way in my locker and I sure wanted to know who the admirer was, but I sure didn't want to frighten him away and nobody got that close to me that I could imagine it could be this one or that one or the other one although I thought of several. It just didn't turn out, later on in time I found out that he was the brother of two of my best girlfriends the Rubios and this Sipiyano.  At that time when I discovered that he was putting the milky ways in my locker I thought it was very exciting and asked him about it.  He didn't deny it and he just asked me why I would think it was him.  From then on he carried my books home.  We would talk at the gate about so many different things but when he was ready to go home and was to go inside to help with chores he would hold my hand and squeeze it just a little bit and that was it.  We went through this for two years.  He never kissed me.

He did have an incident in our last years of acquaintance just before they moved the whole family sold out and moved to the city or to Wadalahara.  That was that one-day he was rushed and in an emergency trip to Chih.  City and he was taken to the hospital there a dog, a rabies dog had bitten him and he would have caught rabies if they had not reached the Dr. so soon and they kept him for over a month giving him shots in the belly button right in the stomach that was so painful.  When he came back he was almost yellow and skinny, he had gotten well from the rabies, it was a very nice family that he came from.  I think that everybody from the colonies missed them when they went.  I heard about him when I was on my mission later on, one time when he came to bring my companion and me a box of chocolates to the mission home just to say hello.  He married a girl by the name of Blanca and when they had their first child they named her Bertha.  He also in later years ran for governor of the state of Chih. And is at this time a very prominent business and political man in the state of Chih.  I should also tell you something about Lemwell. How can we forget about him, this was very exciting, this was even before Sipianyo because I had not gone to High School yet and Lewwell Flores from our ward had been sent on a mission and well he came back of course he was the golden coin of the colonies especially of our ward he came back with high reports of being a very good missionary and all of us girls climbed all over him like you would know a return missionary and with out realizing it and with out myself realizing that I had become a young lady he could tell the difference.  He started paying many attentions to me.  He would come over to our house and tell us about his mission stories, incidences and he would sing and play the guitar very beautifully.  Something that my father and mother enjoyed very much, until we realized that he was after me. One day he asked me to be his girlfriend.  I laughed right in his face, because I was just a kid.  What was I going to do marry an old man like him.  Well I was fourteen or fifteen years old and he was a return missionary, maybe twenty-one or twenty two years old.  I thought he was an old man.  It was very hard to get rid of Lemwell and my father and mother had to do most of the work by letting him know I was not mature enough to appreciate him.  He should want and look for older girls that would want and appreciate him because I was just coming out of being a tomboy and just starting to look into life and I didn't know much about love or understanding a man and so poor Lemwell, I broke his heart.  He use to come and sing Malagainya ( see tape- what beautiful eyes you have under those eyebrows of yours and if they would make me so happy etc.) anyway on a nightly basis he would come and serenade us.  My father was always very appreciative of these serenades.  He would let him know how much he loved singing in the night, soft music while he was going to bed.  Always pretending the music was to bring him joy and it was so well known every time it was his birthday the children from Sunday school and primary would come early in the morning with their teacher and sing happy birthday to their bishop.  The Las Manyanitas and other songs that my father loved very much.  He loved to sing he loved music.  I had another friend that courted me and he was a friend of Laudo Gonzales, I had in the summer time from summer school had asked for a job from one of the main stores in the colonies and it was Casa Jonice a French owner, French man and they hired me as a salesgirl and in working and talking together day by day, he got in the habit of walking me home after work and he fell in love with me.  I must tell you that I was a very pretty girl, everybody said so.  I am thankful to this but I wasn't so pretty as I was growing up.  But I developed into a beautiful girl a very attractive girl and kind of a flirt.  I guess because my father and my brothers were always kept busy scaring my boyfriends away.  There were so many boys that would like to come and talk to me.  Father would always wee to it that we sit on the front porch and talk and they must all come and talk to him and have a long talk with my father before they would even come talk to me an sit on the front porch or living room, where my brothers would go and let the air out of their tires.  The others that were a little luckier and had cars or a pick-up would also have flat tires.  I had three brothers we were like vigilantes and they would peek through the key holes to see what we were doing.  What could we be possibly be doing?  Knowing I had three brothers and a cousin Yesertho that was living at our house and all four of them would give me the business.  I couldn't go any place unless I went with my brothers and if a boy wanted to walk me home or walk me to a party or to a dance it must be in the company of all my brothers and cousin.  The same thing coming back, especially coming back and we would not do anything else but shake hands as we arrived home and my brothers would stay there about five minutes longer and stay talking to him, making sure that he would leave.  I was already with the lights out in my bedroom and that there was no way we could get to talk to each other anymore that night.  It was very talked about and critized that I was so watched, that I had four vigilantes always watching me as if I were made of gold.  But this is the way daddy taught my brothers.  That is your sister and you are responsible for your sister and you watch your sister and I didn't like the watching.  I didn't like the being watched and especially when a boy wanted to dance with me too many times.  It was always a church dance because that's all we went to, my brothers always had to interfere and go and ask one of their buddies to go and ask me to dance.

THE END 

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Sources:

PAF - Archer Files = Orson Pratt Brown + Angela Gabaldon > Bertha E. Brown Navas Ferrara

The first seventeen years of the life of Bertha Elizabeth Brown as recorded on cassette tapes during November 1979 in Sandy, Utah.  The full text is contained above. Bertha died three weeks later in El Paso, Texas on December 16, 1979 at the age of 57.

Cultural Encystment as a Cause of the 1912 "Exodus" from Mexico, by Blaine Carmen Hardy and Melany Seymour in the Pacific Historical Review - November 1965

Copyright 2001 www.OrsonPrattBrown.org