PARSO.NS] TALES OF PERSONAL EXPERIEXCE 453 



47. How My Father Went After the Apache 



The White Mountain Apache had made a raid on Isleta and carried 

 off 30 head of cattle. Oiu- war chief called out. Our men were to 

 go after them on foot. It was easier to go on foot, says my father, 

 than on horseback. You could liide better, and you did not have 

 to stop to feed horses. You took your own lunch of corn meal tied 

 around your waist. You were not let smoke or make a fire. They 

 could smeU the smoke and see the hght. You could not drink 

 water. . . . 



The Isletans went to the Eio Puerco. They sent three men on 

 ahead to creep up on the Apache. They found them asleep, tired 

 from not having slept for tliree nights. One of the three scouts 

 wanted to steal their gims, but the other two were afraid. They 

 returned to their party that now made a circle and closed in on the 

 Apache. They killed lots of them. . . . 



One of them was not killed because he was sleeping at a little dis- 

 tance. He was a captive from Isleta who had been caught as a boy 

 herding cattle. They took him away blindfold. Later — after the 

 counter raid — he came to Isleta. He said he had got used to the 

 Apache and he called them his brothers. 



48. How the Railway Came Through Isleta 



Vicente Hiron "' was governor when the railway was to come 

 through Isleta. "\'icente had been a fighter against encroacliing 

 Mexicans, and he was also against the railway coming into the reser- 

 vation. He said, "I am a man. I am in charge of this village." 

 And he sent out word to the men to get ready to fight. Three wliite 

 sheriffs came out from Albuquerque to arrest the governor. The 

 war chief told the people not to let the sheriffs take out the governor. 

 So they put the sheriffs in stocks m the jaU. The white judge and rail- 

 way representatives came to Isleta. The railway men agreed to pay 

 for right of way, and to give the Indians free passes on the road. So 

 they set the sheriffs free from the stocks. 



The people would go on the trains to sell fruit, peaches, apples, 

 and grapes, at El Paso.^" Also they would haid wood a distance of 

 30 miles in the car the brakeman would give them. Finally, the 

 women and girls took to these free train rides. The governor's wife 

 went to El Paso, and he did not know where she had gone. He 

 sent two or three men to get her. She returned after a month dressed 

 as an .American, in shoes and fur boa. People laughed at her. How- 

 ever, until she died in 1924, an old woman, she used to talk of how she 

 had gone to dance halls and of the rest of it at El Paso. But the 



" See picture in Bull. 30, Bur. Amer. Ethn., pt. 1, p. 623. 



" Where, no d«ubl, tbey visited their l^isdred at Isleta del Sur. 



