The Land Bridge

When my mother brought me home from the hospital, my uncles teased her that she had brought home the wrong baby -- she had the Chinese baby and some poor Chinese family had a Mexican baby.


I used this as the basis for questioning whether or not I was adopted during my teenage angst. But these samephysical features - high cheek bones, small dark almond shaped eyes and small nose -- were said to resemble my grandmother, the one who called herself Katie.


We met up with Emilio -- the "adopted" son of my parent's cousin Romelia's sister -- in Mesilla last Sunday. When he met me he said "como se parece a Katie" (she looks so much like Katie) to my mom. He had met my grandmother when she visited El Paso and when they made their trips to California.


["adopted" because since Elvira (Romelia's sister) was single, she was not allowed to officially adopt Emilio even though she did raise him from his childhood.]


As I was growing up and people remarked on my physical features -- that I seemed Asian and not Mexican -- I had to explain a few things --

1) most Mexicans are mixed white and native

2) there used to be this thing called the land bridge between Asia and Alaska at one time...


My father has always wondered whether or not my grandmother was Indian and if so what kind. It has remained a speculation because we know so little about her mother and father. All we know for sure is that her father (Ysidoro) was a land owner and merchant. We can assume he was mostly white, though we don't really know. But we know next to nothing about her mother, Tomasa -- which is why she has been the focus of most of my research while in Texas and New Mexico.


Somehow in the back of my mind this has been a quest for information about that branch of the famly. But since El Paso was such a bust in terms of finding anything definitive or even filling out more of the family tree, I am still searching for her genealogy and her story.


At the archive and state library I used their ancestry.com accout to plow through all the names that I got from Romelia.


For the past few days, I have been wrestling with the pieces of information that I think I know... and trying to put it together if it is possible to do that with what I think I found at the archive.


Here's what I "know" -- they are really just threads, tidbits...

>Ysidoro (Isidoro?) never made it to El Paso

>His land was left in care of a family member -- relationship unclear but probably related to Ysidoro

>Children and mother (mother piece still doubtful) left in care of famly in El Paso but not set up in their own home -- theoretically to wait for Ysidoro to join them

>Romelia's family is maybe related to me on both sides (Tomasa and Ysidoro) though we can only find a direct line to Ysidoro


Thinking through these bits and what I know about patriarchal Mexico at the turn of the century -- it makes sense that the land would be left in care of the father's family and that the children would be left in the care of the mother's family.

Add in the info I found at the archive on ancestry.com -- most of which I cannot prove are people who are really my relatives --- just people who have the same names as people who Romelia told me about...


What I found on ancestry.com and at the archive:

>A baptismal record for an Ysidoro who could be my great grandfather but not for Tomasa

>A woman with the same name as the woman with whom my grandmother and siblings were left -- she also had a brother on this census record with the same name as the brother this woman had in my family. On the census record she and her mother and siblings are listed as Indian.

>There is a tribe of Pueblo indians, the Ysleta of El Paso, that was cut off from the New Mexico Ysleta back in the 1600s -- they are not federally recognized however they have created a list of people in the tribe; the archivist on duty on my last day at the archives just happens to be the one who is helping the Ysleta of El Paso to research their genealogy -- and he confirmed the family I found on ancestry is an inscribed member of the Ysleta tribe.


So, the wheels are turning -- what if Tomasa was related to those folks who were Ysleta then she might have been Ysleta as well, but from the other side -- from Chihuahua. It would make sense that her baptism was not recorded at the Cathedral like my great-grandfather's was -- because the natives would not have rated that kind of treatment. It would explain why I can't find records for Tomasa anywhere.


Assuming all my assumptions are correct or even plausible and those people are really related, it could the missing link between me and the land bridge.


Of course the connection between that family and my family is not established because I don't know they dates of birth. Boy, it sure would be great to have the history detectives on my side on this one.

-- I wish I had the energy to add photos to this post... but it has been sitting in the drafts folder for weeks, and it is just time to let it see light.... pictures may come, but they won't have anything to do with the post.

St. Cate's

Not unlike El Paso, Santa Fe presents more questions than answers. This morning I spent an hour trying to find information on Saint Catherine's Indian School. Somewhat difficult to find, if we were only a few months late to see the old buildings at the Santa Fe Indian School, we are ten years late for St. Catherine's -- it closed in 1998. I am guessing they are having a hard time selling it.
Next stop: call to Sister Patrick Marie -- and continuing the search for the needle in the haystack.
I called and left a message for Sr. Patrick Marie -- and decided that on my way to drop off my parents in the plaza so I could go to the archives and do some research that we should stop by the site of St. Catherine's Indian School to take some pictures. JUST IN CASE they decide to sell the site and raze all the buildings before we get confirmation one way or another. It is another long shot, but like everything else on this trip, shooting in the dark is what we do.

Both schools, SFIS and St. Cate's, had been built on the edge of Santa Fe back in the 1890's, but now they were both within miles of the historic plaza.

St. Cate's is right next to two cemeteries -- the veteran's cemetery and a city cemetery. I drive down the road that was given as the address winding through what looked like brand new homes and expensive condos and suddenly there is no more road, just dirt -- and not too stable looking either. Then all we could see was cemetery on one side and chain link fence on the other.
There was one very large building -- at least two stories -- rising out of the middle of the property with a bell tower on top. My father kept insisting that it was the original building, but I couldn't imagine a two story adobe building being built by these missionary nuns who barely made it across the country. Later as I quizzed him about it, he said he had seen the building in a picture with his mother in it. Um, what picture??
We wandered around outside snapping photos. I walked into the cemetery to get a better look at the tall building -- even climbing a crypt to get a shot.

Then we walked down to the entrance -- the signs read: no parking and private property. My father countered with "it doesn't say no trespassing." There was a combination lock on the gate, but it was open. Taken all together, my father decided that it meant we should go in.
Seeing it was our only chance to see this place and trying to avoid the it was just torn down problem... we went in. We walked only down the main road.
We could see a house looking structure at the end of the road.
Somewhere down the road a sound like a really loud phone ring (just one) in the back of my mind I imagined it was an alarm, but we continued on.
My mom and dad started collecting things from the road. My mom collected rocks and shiny piece of pottery. My dad found some spent shells. I found a piece of what looked like an old fashioned bulb from the electric wiring. We didn't get off the main road and somehow imagined that it meant that we weren't really trespassing -- we were looking but not esculcando. As we got closer to the house looking structure, dogs from nearby houses started barking. We headed back to the entrance -- the phone rang again.

We made it almost back to the car when someone came out of the cemetery and got into a work truck. My dad decided that this man would have all the information he needed about the property and started chatting. We were headed down the road when a car with two nuns (in full dress) passed us -- clearly on their way to check on the alarm we set off. No doubt. My dad wanted me to stop and ask them questions -- "here's your chance to get all the information you need," he insisted. Um... no way... not going to start our conversation letting them know we had just been trespassing. I will wait for Sr. Patrick Marie to call me back instead.

My mom and I pocketed our finds. My dad decided to leave his at the front gate.

Santa Fe Indian School

After the morning at the hospital, we were all breathing a little easier, so we headed directly to the Santa Fe Indian School to see if we could look around or get a tour or find records.
I had done a little research before the trip, so I knew the school and the grounds were now being administered by the New Mexico Pueblo Indian Council -- a leadership group of the 19 tribes. thought they might have records.
I also discovered that the council had decided to knock down nearly all the old building in August -- and decided not to tell anyone until the dust was rising. There was a fair amount of controversy I read about in the local papers covering the building razing. Teachers and students with whom we spoke at the school expressed surprise and shock at coming back to find the old buildings in rubble.

Well, after a fair amount of bureaucratic backing and forthing, we found our way to the library and I installed my parents with a book on the history of the school; I made my way to the principal's office to see if we could at least tour the new facilities -- and ferret out any information we could about the school.

We had already unsuccessfully attempted to find out if there were any records we could search -- the admissions officer is one of the staff who was still reeling from the buildings being torn down -- he claimed that most of his records were in boxes in a shed and those records did not extend past the 1970s -- when the Albuquerque Indian School became the Santa Fe Indian School. At least three different people gave us clues as to where BIA records on the original school might be -- and none of those places was in the state of New Mexico.

Whenever I explained my grandmother's story to people at SFIS, I got a look of crazy disbelief. Why would a bunch of Mexican orphan kids get sent to an Indian school over 200 miles from their relatives? Why not an orphanage? Exactly.

Our tour guide was fantastic. Though we got the short version of the tour, he filled in with some history about the Pueblo Indians and some personal anecdotes about attending the school from his perspective and from his family members' perspective.

We got to see the new dorms, the classrooms and the recreation hall as well as some of the grounds.

In the course of this talk and meeting the school secretary -- we learned about the other Indian school -- St. Cate's they kept calling it. This was their rival and it was for Indians too and it had closed. The secretary gave me the contact information for the last principal.

We ended our visit with picture taking of the rubble.

I wondered about the spirits that might have been released with the tearing down of the walls. One of the girls who showed us around before we had our tour guide told us until this year, she had lived in the old buildings. When I asked her what it was like to live there, she said spooky. Apparently there was a fair amount of haunting going on in the old buildings.

I comforted myself with the knowledge that nothing could really look like it had when my grandmother would have been here -- the school would have only been about 20 years old. It had been built on the outskirts of town and now it was surrounded by city and only about a mile from the historic plaza.

There is one building from the original structures that is still in use -- they call it the U Shaped Building. It now houses the indigenous language institute -- somewhat ironically the institute that strives to save indigenous languages in housed in one of the buildings that was built to strip students of their culture and language. It's a tangled web.
We left emotionally and physically exhausted -- and hungry -- in our crazy day we had forgotten to eat lunch between the hospital and visiting the school. So we headed out in search of food -- and I full of doubts about whether my grandmother had really been at this school... and whether or not we would ever be sure.

Sunrise in Santa Fe

We had quite an eventful first 24 hours in Santa Fe.


My dad woke up not feeling well the morning after we had arrived in Santa Fe. Apparently he had not felt well all night, but didn't think he should wake us. He wondered if we should cut the trip short. My mom found his nitroglycerin tabs in the bathroom. He admitted he had a hard time catching his breath and thought he might be having a heart attack.

He felt bad but didn't have chest pains or shortness of breath so I knew that he wasn't having a heart attack as we were talking to him -- and that it was possible that he was just having a bad reaction to the elevation. I did some research online about local hospitals and altitude sickness -- then I spent an hour on the phone with a lovely nurse. She was pretty sure that it was a bad reaction to the change in altitude but we both agreed everyone would be happier if we got him checked out at the hospital.


I waited another hour for the insurance company to open so that I could find out if there was a particular hospital that was covered. Since we were out of area, she said any would do. So far I was two for two on nice, helpful people on the phone. Given our semi-panicked state, it was great fortune to happen on such wonderful people via phone.


We trekked over to the hospital, happily only three miles away from our hotel, where the emergency room sat on the top of a little hill -- with valet parking. Needing a little air, I declined the valet, dropped off my parents and walked back from the parking. I needed a little reassurance from someone who I actually know, so I called a friend, who was willing to lend a supportive ear and verbal reassurance. It was like getting a long distance hug.


The emergency room was EMPTY. I was ready to settle down and read Harry Potter for a few hours, I got to the emergency room as my dad was being called back -- my mother was wondering when they would ask for her insurance card. After a short history, a check of blood pressure and oxygen level, my dad was in a room and very shortly we were chatting with a doctor.


The doctor also thought this was a case of bad reaction to change in altitude but we all agreed (my father more reluctantly than the rest of us) to go through with all the tests just to be sure.


There was virtually no waiting -- and within another hour, we got the all clear. I have never met so many helpful, attentive medical professionals all in one place. There must have been seven or eight people who came in to help.


My father swiped a specimen jar as his recuerdo -- my mom and I just shook our heads and laughed -- relieved that it was all going to be ok.

Needle in a Hay Stack

We arrived at Concordia Cemetery after 3pm today -- full of expectation. Hoping there was an office where we could search for my great-grandmother's grave, but there was only a phone number. I called and it said leave a message... since we were scheduled to leave the next day, it didn't seem like it would be useful. I took down the information so I could mail in a request for info in the future if needed. My father refused to look at the Buffalo Soldier memorial because "they" were against "us" in the Revolution (he spent the entire car ride from California to El Paso reading a book about the Mexican Revolution/Pancho Villa/Teresita Urrea -- and we haven't been able to move him from the topic of Astral Projection since) this despite the fact that his grandparents (one of whom we were in the cemetery to search for her grave) certainly died as a direct result of the revolutionarios (the "us" in the above equation). Yeah, I don't get it either. Let's just say if we had said "Don't look at the Buffalo Soldier Monument" he would have insisted on seeing it.

We perused the map to see if we could figure out how to search for Tomasa. It was just another time when we kicked ourselves for not planning ahead. Ah well, we were there and had several hours before it would close, so what the hell. We staked out that she would have to be in one of the plots listed as "Catholic" -- there were four of these on the map.

Off we went in search of the first section to search ... it seemed simple enough until we were driving around and none of the "street name" signs were where they were supposed to be. Then we saw two men in a minivan hanging out. I pulled in next to them and pretty quickly one of them came over to chat -- in Spanish. He told us that his "boss" would help us find the grave -- all we had to do was go to the office and he had the number and address.

I called the number he gave me and made plans to go over to the office where they had records we could search -- a break! Even though we hadn't planned ahead, we could get help locating her grave. All I wanted to know -- what year did she die? What year did my grandmother become an orphan? What year would she have landed in the Indian School? I wanted this info so that it would be easier to search for records once we reach Santa Fe.

We headed to the office -- where the woman who answered the phone had already been looking through the books for Tomasa's grave. No dice. She checked from 1910-1916 and no Tomasa. But, she did give us the information that the public library had death records we could search -- and off we went.

Several hours later, my dad had the name of two more books he could read on Teresita and I had nothing.

Nothing... no Tomasa died in Texas between 1905-1930. Umm... when you search for a needle in the haystack, sometimes all you find is hay.

Back to the drawing board on everything.

El Paso

The impetus for the trip was to get connected to what's left of my grandmother's family in El Paso del Norte and Ciudad Juarez.


My mom had warned me that my Tia Romelia (note unspecific "tia" designation for me and "cousin" designation for my dad) would not want us to cross into Juarez -- she has never wanted to go over there with my parents on their previous visits. I was game to do it - although it would have been better to have a guide. I asked my dad to write a letter to the cousin he remembered in Juarez in the hopes that they would at least offer to meet with us somewhere -- maybe even in El Paso. But he didn't get around to writing the letter -- even though we have been planning the trip since August.


As if to warn us, the day before we left, the State Department issued a travel advisory asking that Americans not pass over into Juarez. Apparently the violence had escalated to daytime shootings at the mall and a proliferation of carjackings.

So, I put the plans for visiting Juarez on the back burner -- I didn't want Romelia to be worried or anything to happen to my parents on my watch -- I wasn't sure how to go about researching genealogy in Juarez anyway. But, I would have loved to see the land/house my great-grandfather had owned and hear the recollections of my parents as they both had visited with my grandparents in the 60's and 70's -- before my time. Being in the place sparks memories for them that they don't otherwise share.

I thought we might be able to get some information from my Tia Romelia in any case. My parents had dug out several typed sheets of paper with Romelia's family tree. I scanned them, but there was no connection I could see to my father's mother. When I asked Romelia, she said, my mother and your grandmother were cousins. Great, but how?? After lots of complicated explanations that meant nothing or simply shrugging her shoulders, she tells me, we were related on both sides. Um... both sides? My grandmother and grandfather? My great grandmother and great grandfather?

After many tries asking the question in different ways, I finally decided to just build trees for anyone that she remembered. In that way, I might have another piece of the puzzle that I could use at some later date or compare to other people's recollections. I wasn't sure who else might have information, but there wasn't anything else for me in El Paso.

Next stop, the cemetery -- maybe I will find the date of my great grandmother's death and therefore help me find records on my grandmother in Santa Fe.

The Treasures

This necklace has a pouch.

Another necklace.

A third necklace.

Someday, maybe I will learn how to flip the pictures... maybe.

This is the detail on the belt and the belt. Also, the belt buckle below.

Phoenix to El Paso

At the Wilcox Rest Stop -- mom took these pictures, too. I am still working on downloading my pictures... I will add them in soon.

We're driving along and watching the black lava rocks all over the ground -- looking like someone has come through with a blow torch and blackened these little rocks. My mom suggested we could collect some really cool rocks if we pulled over, but that wasn't going to happen -- even though I really do like to collect cool rocks.

This reminds me of the stretch between Northridge and Chatsworth on the train when you travel from LA to Oxnard. (Yes, that would be the one where the crash was a month or so ago.)

As we were passing these fantastic rock formations that looked like some giant had been walking around making stacks, I noticed a police car with all lights flashing and then smoke. On the median there was a little fire. Then we saw three more little fires as if someone had been coming through and dropping lit cigarettes out the window. Luckily it didn't look like it would turn into a raging fires.

So, when we came upon a rest stop in this landscape, we pulled over and took a ton of pictures. As fantastic as all this was -- there was more. First there were the signs warning of scorpions and snakes. Then there was the busload of tourists (from I am not sure where) who excitedly ran towards a semi to snap pictures of it. At first I thought they were just taking pictures of the rocks behind the semi, when I realized that it was the semi that they were snapping, I thought it was just one crazy tourist. Then they all started posing in front of the semi. To each his own.

Mom taking the sunset from the car...

The sun was setting and the colors were beautiful. You kind of have to imagine this 10 times better than it came out on the photo.

The Road to Phoenix

My mother took some great pictures from the car on our way to Phoenix. The ride was fairly uneventful... we took a little detour through Indio because my parents remembered a little restaurant where they wanted to eat, but it was closed. We couldn't find anything until we stopped at a gas station where we could smell some tacos being made. There was a tiny little "restaurant" where they were making tacos of carne asada and barbacoa. The best thing about this place was the "bar" of fixings for the tacos. They had freshly cooked beans (de la olla), cucumber, radishes, limones, onion and another "salsa bar" that included guacamole, sauteed red onions and four or five kinds of salsas.

These photos courtesy of Rose C's handiwork.