non-update update

There are about a million posts that need to be written and placed here, but there is no time right now.

I am right in the middle of my second year of graduate school, and I am writing no less than three papers about St. Catherine's Indian School this semester.

In fact, I have a special fellowship from the NM State Historian's Office to research the school in state archives. One or a combination of these papers will become a presentation I give at the State Historical Society's annual meeting next May.

If possible, I will also present at other conferences.

There is so much about the research, now including interviews with former students and teachers, that I want to share here ... all in good time.

All that to say, as I sit here reading about Saint Katharine Drexel and the work she accomplished, I am crying.

When I finished reading the dissertation written about St. Catherine's by a former teacher, I cried then too.

Of course, this is emotion laden for me for so many reasons. Principally, my grandmother's connection and the way that history has linked me to this school and Drexel's mission in ways that I could never have imagined. I can't help but feel a strong connection to my grandmother with every page I read as far away from her experience as all that I read may be. I also can't help that it was my grandmother that led me to this work.

Even though she would not tell me about her time at St. Catherine's there was something that she wanted me to know about it. I guess it is possible that somehow she wouldn't tell me so that I would have the desire to do this research now. Who knows? The tears are rolling, again, maybe it is the lack of sleep.

As a non-practicing Catholic, I started learning about Drexel with a mixture of cynicism and trepidation. I find her faith inspiring even if I don't necessarily share her sentiments about the Catholic church. There is something about her belief in God, Jesus and mercy, and, especially about the action it spurred in her that has me in tears just now. It hasn't gotten me back into the church, but I did spend some money in the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament gift shop (online). It might not be a lot, but I can see how important it is to support the kind of work she envisioned.

I am not saying that she is perfect, sainted or not. She was a product of her time in many, many ways, but she was also a visionary. There is something beautifully imperfect about that. It's like real life, messy and complicated, and totally worth it.

I guess I turned to this forum because it doesn't seem at all appropriate to write it in any of the three papers, though, I am wondering how I get through an academic presentation without bursting into tears... I will definitely have to practice.

I will post some links to some interesting stuff I have found that is available online...

For now, I just want to share Sr. Monica Loughlin's description of Katharine Drexel:
"At a time when women did not have an active voice in society she was not only courageous but also fearless in working for justice. She raised the consciousness of the church and nation. Hers was never a strident voice but she was assertive, respectful and compelling in her arguments. She called her church and her nation to be true to the gospel and to the Bill of Rights. Hers was a voice that could not be stilled."
find the entire remarks given at Xavier University (another institution founded by Drexel) at the October 2007 New Board of Trustees Members Orientation Meeting.

Odd Coincidences

I have not been updating but I have been working in the project.

Last fall the project morphed from a purely personal pursuit to an academic research project with a heavily personal component.

I took a class called the history of native American education and had the chance to choose to do a research paper on the boarding school of my choice. Of course I chose St. Catherine's. I was surprised to learn that there was not much written about the school.

I still was able to get quite a bit from two books about the founder and some info about from old newspaper articles. Luckily for my personal project the bulk of the info was from the first forty years of the school. My grandmother's time there would fall in the first thirty years.

I learned some about what it would have been like for her in a technical sense and started to come to grips with what it must have been like to have no real family just these well-meaning nuns. Nuns who from the looks of it had very little real world experience, certainly no sense of how to mother.

Some time in the near future I will dig inti my notes and share some nuggets.

Now I am following up with a research project in the archives. Trying to ferret out what the student experience was like. And why the school lasted so long.

The coincidence was that this week I have been parking in a lot (because it was free) near enough to walk to the archives.

When I was walking back to my car I noticed that I had parked right across from the original bldg. The one where surely my grandma had either lived or studied or both. Of course there is an entire cemetery between my car and the old grounds. But I could see the huge adobe with the bell tower rising out of the trees.

At times I feel so close to unraveling the history and then again so far away.

The archdiocese won't respond to my request to see their archives. The catholic schools office here in Albuquerque hasn't yet decided if they will let me see their records. And I can't get to Bensalem to see the mother house stuff for at least another year.

LDS

I am going to visit the Mormons today -- to see if they can help me find records on my great-grandfather (Ysidoro Varela Granillos) and my great-grandmother (Tomasa Contreras -- wish I knew her other last name).

A marriage certificate would rock my world!!

Cross your fingers.

As a side note, here's an interesting site that offers "information" about the Temple and the Church.

I will try to remember to take a photo while I am there to add it here.

I have other updates that I have not been remembering to post... more soon.

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.