Coming of Age in New Mexico

Women's voices resonating across time this way, we celebrate the one last. Running a family store was a common way for women to engage in business in the early 20th century. For many years, Guadalupeita, Baca de Gallegos ran a store with her husband in Manuelitas, north of Las Vegas, New Mexico. Later they ran a farm together, and following that, it was a sawmill. When her husband was away from the mill, Guadalupeita ran it all by herself, rising at 430 to prepare breakfast for the workers, and then doing her own housework. After she and her husband sold the sawmill, they owned and ran yet another store. Coming of age in New Mexico for Guadalupeita Gallegos meant growing up in a family of considerable wealth. Born in Las Vegas in 1853, she was the only child of parents who owned several farms, many cattle and sheep, and had much money.

Guadalupeita remembered her Spanish great-grandfather, and his elegant, but gloomy home, cold and uninviting. Whereas children, their husbands and wives and their children lived. Her great-grandfather ruled the family with an iron hand. Women of the family could not be seen on the street on escorted, nor could they be seen in the kitchen, or cleaning. We lived there in his house, shut away from the rest of the world, Guadalupeita recalled. He was virtually the dictator of the family, sewing and playing the piano were the main activities appropriate for these wealthy Hispanic women. For Guadalupeita, growing up also meant being dressed by servants. Some servants were enslaved Navajo women, and one was an enslaved black woman named Lorenza. As a child, Guadalupeita played with toys and received candy from her great-grandfather. She was tutored at home before attending Loretto Academy in Santa Fe. At the academy, she learned to embroider, play the piano, and act like a lady. Her parents were very strict with her, but once in a great while they took her to a dance.

There, she had to keep her eyes downcast until she was asked to dance. At one of these events, when she was only 12, J.M. Gallagos, the son of Los Alamos merchant family, asked her to dance. Gallagos fell in love with Guadalupeita and asked his parents to arrange a marriage. After thinking it over, her parents agreed to the match. Perhaps they felt that no other suitable, wealthy husband would appear. Gallagos was older and seemed well able to provide for their pampered daughter. The marriage was not a happy one, but it lasted for almost 30 years. Guadalupeita's husband was restless. Often he would be gone for long periods of time, and they moved frequently. First they ran the store in Manuelitas, then farmed land in Los Alamos, then they moved back to Manuelitas to operate the Somile, then owned another store in Sanilario, then they lived in Caricisa, El Pajarita, Las Vegas, Los Alamos, and again in Sanilorio. Her husband's restlessness seemed never to end.

Gradually he squandered much of the wealth of both families. When he died in 1893, he left Guadalupeita nothing but six children to support. She moved back to live with her parents, and lived off the modest remains of the once fast family fortune, eventually mortgaging the remaining land in 1917. Guadalupeita was forced to live the end of her life on a small federal pension paid because her husband fought in the Civil War. Through all the hardships, Guadalupeita's granddaughter said that she remained the happiest woman I've ever known. In 1938, at the age of 86, with the help of her granddaughter, Guadalupeita Vaca de Gallegos told her life story to Brightland for the New Mexico Federal Riders project. It was reproduced in New Mexicans and cameo and camera, published in 1985 by Marta Wigel. Coming of age in New Mexico was written by members of the Women's Studies Program at New Mexico

State University, produced by Tammy Shore, with original music composed and performed by Corina and Christina. Narrator for this segment was Monica Torres. Coming of age in New Mexico was made possible by a grant from the New Mexico Endowment for the Humanities. During the 1930s, a number of bilingual, Hispanic women, like Cleofas Martinez-Harameo, began to write down the stories they had heard about life in early New Mexico.

Most of these stories looked back to days when Hispanos were relatively unaffected by the culture of the Anglo-immigrants. There were the stories of the rise and fall of a unique frontier culture. Coming of age in New Mexico for Cleofas Martinez met growing up among aunts and grandparents, with friends and acquaintances stopping by to exchange news and visits. Cleofas was born in 1877 in Arroyo Ondo, just south of Santa Fe, and grew up close to many relatives. A maternal grandmother who was born in Mexico, and a paternal grandfather who was a landowner and a sheep farmer in an old New Mexican family. Cleofas remembered the many family rituals, baptisms, marriages, funerals. She loved the busy harvest, the goats trampling the wheat and oats, family members winnowing and storing the grain and mud dorjas or grinding it at El Molino. She watched, as families turned sugarcane into cane syrup, boiling it in pots on outside of dobi stoves.

In fall, the harvest included pumpkins, corn huskins and later pinion nuts, wild hops, berries and choke cherries. The women of the family made their own cosmetics, spiced wine, hard soap, and even tallow candles. They embroidered bed covers called golchas, headguss or floor coverings, and did chakita, beadwork. These days, the women cleaned rugs, white washed walls, and replastered walls and floors. There were dances with waltzes, quadrilis, fondangos and cuiritas, where ballads extolling brave heroes and charming senoritas. The Martinez family was industrious. Cleofas father ran a combined dry goods and grocery store and directed work on the family farms. Her mother helped in the store, raised five boys and two girls. She also managed to busy household with the help of servants. For relaxation, the family simply changed the type of work they performed. Recreation was working in the garden, picking vegetables. Later, Cleofas wrote, to bury a dry seed in the ground and see it burst through the

earth as a green sprout, to watch it grow, spread its branches and be covered with exquisite flowers, is a magic wand. At nine, Cleofas began private school. She boarded at a Convent School in Touse, where she began to speak English and learned to paint, embroider and play the piano. Daughters of wealthy French, German Jewish, and Anglo families also studied at the Convent School. After five years in Touse, she transferred to Loretto Academy in Santa Fe, where her studies were all English, except when she specifically requested Spanish grammar lessons. She stayed there three years, enjoying the modern conveniences of electric lights and running water. One summer, on the way to a wedding in the village of Abicue, with her mother, Cleofas met a cousin, Venceslao Hadamio, the son of a wealthy land-owning family near El Rito. In 1898, she married Venceslao and moved to his home. When he became a member of the state legislature, she enjoyed the social life of Santa Fe.

After he died, however, she discovered that he had heavily mortgage their property and little money was left. For nine years, Cleofas struggled to save the ranch and clear the family debts. Finally, she lost the ranch and moved to Santa Fe where she supported herself and her daughter on Helena by running a small business. In her 50s, Cleofas began to write about New Mexico. She believed that Hispanic culture had declined after the Anglos arrived, so Cleofas, Martinez Hadamio, wrote about the lost world of her youth in her best-known books, Shadows of the Past, published in 1941, and Romance of a Little Village Girl, her autobiography, published in 1950. Coming of Age in New Mexico was written by members of the Women's Studies Program at New Mexico State University, produced by Tammy Shore, with original music composed and performed by Corina and Christina. The narrator for this segment was Monaco Torres, coming of age in New Mexico, was made

possible by a grant from the New Mexico Endowment for the Humanities. In the 1880s, both Hispanic and Anglo families streamed across Eastern New Mexico, looking for land to homestead. Settlers usually crossed the border from Texas, while Hispanics often came from Northern New Mexico.

It was a time when pioneer settlers pushed into areas still contested by Apache warriors, United States soldiers, as well as by Anglo and Mexican outlaws. Settlers helped each other build homes and schools, learned each other's languages, and worked hard to establish farms. Coming of age for Nelly Henley meant living first in a dugout called a chosa, then in a one-room log cabin, and finally in a small Adobe house in Lincoln County, New Mexico. Lincoln County was first settled by Hispanic and Anglo-Ranching families in the 1850s, but when the Henley's arrived in the 1880s, the county was still sparsely settled. Nelly was born in Texas in 1877, but when she was only three years old, her family arrived in New Mexico. She remembered the journey across the hot and dry plains in a covered wagon, drawn by two mules. Her mother made sourdough bread and baked it in a Dutch oven, the four children gathered buffalo and cow chips and toe sacks for fuel. Her father was a Confederate veteran from Missouri, it was his poor health that prompted the

family decision to follow Nelly's grandparents to Roswell, New Mexico. There, the grandparents had been living in a dugout, a house dug three feet into the ground, with posts rising up out of the ground and mud walls stretching from post to post. There were dirt floors and a mud thatched roof. The six Henley's arrived in November and spent the winter in the dugout with the grandparents. Then Nelly's parents headed for Fort Stanton to find land for a homestead. Five miles west of Fort Stanton, on the Rio Bonito, they found a piece of pine-timbered land and settled there. The family arrived in Lincoln County during a time of lawlessness, and Nelly remembered there was a lot of stealing and killing. Despite the violence of Lincoln County, the hearty, Hispanic, and Anglo women settlers stubbornly put down roots, most women worked with their husbands as partners, but others own cattle and ranches on their own. The Henley women felt right at home among the industrious settlers.

Then the Henley's began the hard work of building their homestead, Nelly's parents and the two oldest children built a one-room log cabin with a fireplace for heating and cooking. It was Nelly's job to watch the baby. In spring, they planted crops, vegetables, and feed for the stock. The next year, Nelly's father got a job at Fort Stanton as a blacksmith. Nelly's mother and older sisters stayed behind to plant the wheat, using a yoke of oxen to plow. They added hogs and cattle to the farm. On weekends, her father returned home and the entire family worked to build an Adobe home. Father gave the children reading and arithmetic lessons until there were enough neighboring homesteaders to start a one-room schoolhouse. He later served as the neighborhood doctor, too. Nelly remembered that he never set a price for his medical services, the settlers paid whatever they could give. Every fall, he would drive north to Las Vegas to buy the year's supplies, callico for dresses, shoes, stockings, coffee, sugar, and salt.

When Nelly was 14, the family sold the farm and moved to Nogau in order for the children to receive better schooling. Three years later, Nelly met and married Lindsay Brannum, a Texas homesteader. They farmed together for over 30 years, first at three rivers, then northwest of white oaks, and finally near Oscuro. In 1917, they moved to Carrizoso, where Nelly remained after her children graduated from high school, and her husband died. In 1939, Nelly Henley Brannum relayed the story of her upbringing in New Mexico as a rancher and homesteader to Edith Crawford for the New Mexico Riders project. Coming of age in New Mexico was written by members of the Women's Studies Program at New Mexico State University, produced by Tammy Shore, with original music composed and performed by Godina and Christina. Nelly for this segment was Lisa Deener. Coming of age in New Mexico was made possible by a grant from the New Mexico Endowment for

the Humanities. Coming of age for Lorraine Morley meant growing up on the Morley Ranch near Magdalena in southern New Mexico. She was born however in 1878 into an old territorial home in Las Vegas, New Mexico. Inside the Adobe walls of their home, the Morleys were surrounded by elegant furnishings, massive rosewood furniture, a Steinway piano, silver, crystal, and fine china.

When Lorraine was five, her rancher father died. It was three years later when Lorraine's Iowa-born mother, Ada, took her three young children to an isolated ranch, 40 miles from the small southern New Mexico town of Magdalena. Her Ada built a large ranch house to which she brought wagonloads of books and many of the elegant furnishings they had owned in Las Vegas. Together Ada and her children learned to love riding the ranch. Lorraine Morley and her siblings grew up with a unique combination of their maternal, midwestern heritage, and the late 19th century western ranch culture that surrounded them. Unlike her sister Agnes, whom their mother had sent back east to get a proper education, Lorraine's life was deeply connected to the ranch. She remembers riding to her sister, of sitting on the porch, watching a group of skunks dancing the moonlight. When the neighbors gathered for dances, as they often did, Lorraine could be depended upon to make her harmonica sing, even though she was too shy to enjoy dancing.

Ada also sent Lorraine away for schooling to Stanford University in California, but ill health brought Lorraine back to the ranch before she could graduate. Soon after a wealthy young Yale student, Perry Warren, came to a ranch neighboring the Morley's to recover from overwork. That gentile culture could survive on the isolated Morley ranch, charmed a convalescing easterner, and so too did Lorraine. Against the wishes of Perry's aristocratic parents, Lorraine and Perry married. They moved east and had a child, though the marriage eventually ended in divorce, before leaving New Jersey, Lorraine worked as a supervisor of public education. She then moved back to Northern California with her son Billy. Ada Morley often visited with both of her daughters in California, but refused to give up living on the ranch, even when her health began to fail. Lorraine moved back to Southern New Mexico in 1916 to care for her mother. When she arrived, the Women's Suffrage Campaign was just beginning to heat up.

Despite her health problems, Lorraine's 64-year-old mother was now in the thick of a campaign to rally New Mexico women to the cause. Ada Morley, an ardent supporter of Susan B. Anthony and Women's Suffrage, wanted votes for women in New Mexico, the only far-western state that had not yet granted women the vote. With an independent mother like Ada, it seemed natural for Lorraine to manage her own affairs and to manage community affairs as well. On that Southern New Mexican ranch, Lorraine Morley Warren began her career as town builder. She bought the stock of a general merchandise store, leased a ranch of her own, homesteaded at 160 acres, and built the first schoolhouse in the region. Soon she was also running the post office, a cafe, a gas station, and a five-room motor court. To top it all off, she helped the neighbor finance a bakery. This small cluster of businesses became what is now the town of Dadal. In 1918, Lorraine married Tom Reynolds, general manager of the Morley Ranches, but she went

right on building Dadal through the 1920s. One who builds a village, she told an interviewer later, leaves a monument and needs none of stone to keep his or her memory green. The story of Lorraine Morley Reynolds' life as a rancher and town builder was told in part to an interviewer for the Federal Writers Project in the 1930s. Her older sister, Agnes Morley Cleveland, also wrote of her life in No Life for a Lady in 1941, as did her nephew Norman Cleveland in the Morley's Young Upstarts on the Southwest Frontier in 1971. Coming of age in New Mexico was written by members of the Women's Studies Program at New Mexico State University, produced by Tammy Shore, with a original music composed and performed by Kodina and Christina. Narrator for this segment was Lisa Deener. Coming of age in New Mexico was made possible by a grant from the New Mexico Endowment for the Humanities.

So her spiritual and universal energies, women's voices resonating across, tying this image, we celebrate the one name. Favio La Covesa de Vacas, known throughout the country for her classic account of New Mexico, we fed them cactus, published in 1954. As an extension agent in northern New Mexico, she also helped many women learn to can food for their families, a common task for women during the hard times of the 1930s. Coming of age for Favio La, meant growing up on the ranch of her paternal grandparents, 18 miles southeast of Las Vegas, in the village of La Leandra, near the great northern New Mexico

plateau known as Deiano. Favio La's mother died when she was five, and her father was busy raising cattle on the family ranch. As a child, Favio La accompanied her grandmother to sheep camps, camping out and exploring the grazing lands by horseback. She also listened to many stories told by the viejas and viejos, the elders of the community. Before Favio La was ten, she had heard every story about the area. She grew up knowing the old Guranderas and Parteras, the healers and midwives, who still gathered herbs and practiced medicine in the villages. She remembered her grandmother, who had been educated at a Midwestern convent, and had secured vaccine to protect the villagers from smallpox. Her grandmother had also taken a keen interest in education, as well as the health care of neighbors. Favio La grew up knowing about the female networks maintained by the wealthy families to look after the health, education, and general welfare of the women of theiano.

When Favio La was old enough for high school, she moved to Las Vegas where she studied with the sisters of Loretto. She then attended the normal school in Las Vegas. Meanwhile, she watched the old way of life die. She boners gradually lost their flocks as Anglo-Home Steaders moved in and fence after fence went up on theiano. First came the farmers from Iowa, and then tenant farmers and sharecroppers from Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas. Favio La attended the prayer meeting, stances, and picnics given by the homesteaders. These were still happy days. Then came the droughts. These went into dent to merchants and sold their land at low prices. Ranchers also went into dent and lost their lands. The merchants in the railroad towns became the new cattle kings. During the drought of 1918, when even the Mesquite died, Favio La and her two sisters took over the housekeeping at the family ranch to help save money.

They washed, iron, baked, made cheese and butter, household tasks they had not performed during better times. Eventually, Favio La's father had to sell the old family ranch by a smaller piece of land and start over. Favio La left college during these lean years to teach at a small school near her grandparents ranch. There, she taught Hispanic, Indian, and Anglo children. She remembered using bilingual readers even after the school said she should only use English. The students learned each other's languages quickly. Later, Favio La moved to southern New Mexico to complete her education at the Agricultural College in Los Cruces. In 1929, Favio La became an Agricultural Extension Homemaker agent, returning to northern New Mexico to show women how to preserve food. She taught hundreds of Hispanic women in Rio, Riba, and Santa Fe counties, and was the first demonstration agent to work with Pueblo women. Favio La helped rural women by pressure cookers cooperatively and to can enough to survive

the depression and a drought that lasted from 1932 to 1935. She organized women in Extension Homemaker Clubs. They may not have accomplished very much materially she wrote of these women, but they have gained much spiritually. After retiring from her work, Favio La Cavesa de Baca wrote, we fed them cactus, a book that allowed her to tell to thousands of eager readers, the old stories that she had heard as a child. Coming of age in New Mexico was written by members of the Women's Studies Program at New Mexico State University, produced by Tammy Shore, with original music composed and performed by Corina and Christina. Narrator for this segment was Monica Torres. Coming of age in New Mexico was made possible by a grant from the New Mexico Endowment for the Humanities. Many New Mexico women came north from Mexico.

Some became seasonal workers. Others were able to acquire a piece of land of their own and settle down with their families. Even though it was rewarding to live off the land, it was difficult to farm in New Mexico. The land and the life on that land deeply affected the women coming of age in New Mexico. Maria de Rana Pudaca was the daughter of Mexican immigrants. Her parents came to New Mexico in the early 1880s following some relatives who had settled there already. Maria described the way her father got his farm, located near San Migo. You would cross over from Wadis and where you wanted to live they would tell you, okay, from here to there it is yours and they would stake it out. It did not cost my father anything. Maria was born on the farm in 1887, one of seven children.

From early on all the children had to help on the farm in the garden and in the house. The family planted wheat, corn, chili, and beans. Everything had to be done a mano by hand with a hoe and an axe because the family did not have the money to buy a horse. What was grown was mostly consumed by the family. Maria took pride in growing food. She pitted people who ate everything from cans and did not know where their food came from. Some of the crops the family traded for goods and services. The Miller and Los Cruces got one third of the flower for grinding the dudons wheat. The family bought coffee from a traveling vendor. Maria was 10 years old when the first store in the area opened and she recalled buying lard with her father. Maria worked outside on the farm but was also responsible for sewing shirts for the entire family, for washing clothes, and sometimes for preparing the meals. The dudons lived in what Maria called a hacaito, a two-room hut made out of wooden sticks.

The only furniture was a table, a wood stove, and one bed with goat skins. Winters were almost unbearable and Maria remembered the craziness of December and January when everybody prayed for the cold weather to end. This remained Maria's first language all her life. Her mother taught the children how to read, and later Maria learned writing from one of her brothers. The first school opened when Maria was 11 and she was too old to attend. All her life, Maria regretted that she had not been able to attend school and she made sure that all of her children attended. Sometimes the family went to Wattest to visit friends and relatives. This meant a long journey in a four-wheeled cart. They left her end midnight, traveled all day, stayed somewhere overnight, and crossed the border the next morning. When Maria's father died, he left the land in equal parts to his wife and three daughters. The women stayed together for a long time farming the land.

At 19, Maria married, but continued to farm her inherited land. In addition, the couple hired out, picking cotton and harvesting alfalfa. After the family bought a house on the main street in San Miguel, Maria always was proud to own land in a house. She was able to keep the house, even though eventually she had to sell the land. By the end of her life, Maria, Thuron, up with Akka, was one of the most respected village elders in San Miguel. Coming of age in New Mexico was written by members of the Women's Studies Program at New Mexico State University. Produced by Tammy Shore, with original music composed and performed by Corina and Cristina. Narrator for this segment was Monica Torres. Coming of age in New Mexico was made possible by a grant from the New Mexico Endowment for Humanities. In

the source of ritual and universal energy. Women's voices resonating across, tying this wage with celebrated one man. Even though southern New Mexico is a hot and dry land, some families who homesteaded were able to make a comfortable living. Still, there was a lot of hard work to be done. Vergie Nunn was born in 1897.

She was one of 10 children on her family's ranch about 15 miles east of Deming. The Nunn family raised cattle, milk cows, horses, pigs, and chicken. But some of the land was used for growing cane, alfalfa, hay, and vegetables. Water for irrigation came from the members' river. Vergie's father and her brothers, along with some hired male hands, took care of the cattle on the prairie and did the heavy farming, while she and her mother and sisters took care of the house on the garden. The women tried to produce and grow as much as possible. But when extra supplies were needed, the family made the 15 mile trip to the nearest grocery store in Deming. Thanks to her mother, baked goods and breads were plentiful. Vergie couldn't remember ever doing any canning, but she and her sisters were in charge of preserving vegetables and fruits and even pork to get through the winter. It was the women, too, who churned milk into butter and made their own cottage cheese. They even made the soap used for bathing in the laundry.

With the help of a singer-trendle-song machine, the women made most of the clothes worn by the family. The only exceptions were the work-levis bought in town for the men. As Vergie remembered, everything was either consumed and used by the people on the ranch, or it was given away. Nothing was sold in town. The nearest grade school was two miles from the ranch and Vergie always walked to school. In order to go to high school, Vergie boarded with a family in Deming and paid them a monthly rate. After one year in high school, at the age of 16, Vergie went to work. For the next six years, she worked in a dry goods store as a clerk. There, she sold ready-made clothes, shoes, boots, notions, and what she called peace goods. For working often more than 40 hours a week, six days a week with no days off, Vergie earned $18 and the privilege of buying items for personal need at 10% above cost. Vergie recalled that the male clerks were paid $25 for the same work.

When Vergie was 22, she moved to El Paso to take another position as store clerk. Here, she met the mechanic who was to become her husband. After one year in El Paso, the two married. Their two daughters were born at home in 1924 and 1928. After Vergie divorced her first husband around 1930, she earned a living as a seamstress using the skills she had picked up from her mother. She sold almost everything, men's suits, evening gowns, drapes, chair covers. She also did alterations. Once in a while, she made the costumes for plays performed at the local school. People brought work to her house and furnished the material. Vergie said that she tried to make about $40 a week steadily. It helped that she could sell an evening dress for as much as $10. She had all the work she could have wanted. Aside from sewing, she occasionally worked as a store clerk. With the money she earned, Vergie put her daughters through school and paid for a house.

She even employed another woman to help with a house work. In 1942, Vergie took a second husband, and the family moved to live on a ranch. Vergie said that when she returned to ranching, she realized how much she loved to live and work on the land, and how much she had missed it all the years she had lived in town. She was a New Mexico homesteader at heart, yet Vergie none had managed to live comfortably and raise a family with and without a husband. The coming of age in New Mexico was written by members of the Women's Studies program at New Mexico State University, produced by Tammy Shore, with original music composed and performed by Godina and Christina. Narrator for this segment was Lisa Deener. The coming of age in New Mexico was made possible by a grant from the New Mexico Endowment for the Humanities. The coming of age in New Mexico was made possible by a grant from the New Mexico Endowment for the Humanities.

Ada Damon worked as a cook. She cooked for government boarding schools and hospitals. It was good in the 1930s, she remembered. I never paid attention to the depression. I didn't notice it at all. The coming of age in New Mexico for Ada Damon meant growing up in the Navajo Nation where she was born in 1900. Her grandmother, a medicine woman, taught Ada to pray every morning when she awoke, and in the evening to use corn pollen and cornmeal with her prayers. People hired Ada's grandmother to sing for them when they needed a medicine woman. There were no hospitals in the rural areas, so people got a medicine person to sing and use herbal remedies when someone was very sick.

Although Ada's mother did not sing as much as her grandmother, she knew the old songs too. Like many other New Mexico mothers, Ada's mother sowed clothes for her children. She used flour sacks to make her daughter skirts, and she used wild rhubarb to dye the skirts a beautiful light golden color. Ada's mother also herded sheep and dyed wool for rugs, red and white, black and gold. She worked designs out in her mind and then she wove the rugs. It took about a month to make a good sized one. After Ada's mother finished weaving, Ada's father took the rug to the store and got the groceries that her mother wanted. He always brought back Cairo syrup as a special treat, the children dipped their bread in it. Ada also remembered that her mother cooked squash by the fireplace, waking up and turning it during the night so that it would be nicely done for breakfast. It was good, said Ada.

There were 12 children in the family and they all survived into adulthood. Both parents worked hard. Ada's mother lived to be 94. Ada remembered her mother and her old age still spinning wool and designing rugs. When she could no longer weave, she would hire others to weave on her loom with her yarn and split the profits 50-50. Ada went away to boarding school in Shiprock when she was seven. The government forced every family to send at least one child to school. Her father chose Ada. In the winter, boarding students went to school but in the summer they had to work in the field to pick and then can peaches. Ada said, that's how it was in those days. We didn't have much time at home. We worked. We just used to go to school half a day. In the afternoon, girls would darn stockings and socks, work in the laundry, do the sewing. They made clothes for the whole school. Ada was able to return home only for 10 days each summer. Many times I wanted to run away, she remembered. Half later, Ada went to Sherman Institute for Indians and then she got a job as a cook in Dulce in the Hikariya Apache country. From that time on, she always worked as a cook and was proud of her financial independence.

After she married, she continued her work as a cook. It worked out well that way, according to Ada, with no arguments. I spent my money the way I wanted, Ada said, and my husband spent his money the way he wanted. We didn't fuss over the checking account. We had our own separate checking accounts. Together, Ada and her husband worked and traveled and then in the late 1930s they adopted two children. When we took these kids in, we started thinking about settling down and building a home. And that's what we did. Ada continued to live in Shiprock. In 1976, on a cold winter day over coffee in Indian cake, Ada Damon told her niece, Yvonne Ashley, these stories about growing up in the Navajo Nation in the early 20th century. Coming of age in New Mexico was written by members of the Women's Studies Program at New Mexico State University, produced by Tammy Shore, with original music composed and performed by Corina and Christina.

Narrative for this segment was Monica Torres. Coming of age in New Mexico was made possible by a grant from the New Mexico Endowment for the Humanities. Music Music In the 20s, women teachers in New Mexico were rarely able to obtain high administrative positions. Most in fact, gave up teaching by the time they got married.

Bina Gardner was one of the few who persisted. Though she was born in Texas at the turn of the century, the Gardner family picked up and moved to Silver City, New Mexico when she was only four months old. They spent the first four years there living and working on her uncle's ranch before her father opened his own business. He owned a hardware store. Bina was one of the few fortunate girls who was able to get a complete education, beginning with grade school, through high school, and even onto the university. She studied home economics at the University of Kansas, choosing that field for practical reasons. Home economics was something that came naturally to her. She had a strong background in it, and she felt she could put it to good use later. Moreover, she had admired her home economics teacher in school. When she returned to her parents' home in 1922, she taught home economics in the seventh and ninth grades at the local normal school.

She instructed students in what she called doing things and using things, which included cooking, sewing, and their respective tools, but she also provided counsel to her students for working through relationships. Generally, her classes were attended only by girls. Once in a while, the school-tried little experiments where the boys worked on their cooking and sewing skills, while the girls took shop. Bina recalled that most of the teachers at the time were women, and only a few specific subjects were taught by men. On the other hand, most of the students in the higher grades were male. She continued in this job for two years. In 1924, Bina moved to Santa Fe to take a position as state supervisor of home economics. At the time, home economics was a new field, and she felt terribly inexperienced. Bina always felt she got the job because the state's superintendent for public instruction was from Silver City, and had once observed her teaching. As part of her job, Bina was in charge of all program duties, visiting the schools to make sure they were following regulations.

Bina was always proud of her high position, and regretted that most administrators were men. Women she remembered often did not aspire to these positions as much. Bina also recalled that she was paid somewhat generously for a young rural teacher. Between 1922 and 1924, her salary as an instructor was $150 each month. Later in Santa Fe, she earned $2000 plus advances. During her stay in Santa Fe, Bina lived in the house of the Secretary of State Supervision of Schools until she got married in 1926. Then the couple built a home, and Bina continued to work another six years after her marriage. Eventually, she gave birth to a son and a daughter, and she quit her job. When Bina's daughter entered school, the Gardener family moved to Los Cruces. Around 1941, Bina went back into teaching, and at this new school even began supervising student teachers from NMSU.

After 1956, Bina again worked in an administrative position, this time as the administrator of the State School Lunch Program. There were six co-workers in her office, all under her supervision. Again, she visited the schools and ran workshops for school lunch managers. In the early years of the school lunch programs, these managers were mostly women. Later, as the field became more lucrative, Bina observed that more and more men moved in. Just short of her 65th birthday, Bina Gardener retired, a pioneer of New Mexico women in education. Coming of age in New Mexico was written by members of the Women's Studies Program at New Mexico State University, produced by Tammy Shore, with original music composed and performed by Godina and Christina. Narrator for this segment was Lisa Deener.

Coming of age in New Mexico was made possible by a grant from the New Mexico Endowment for the Humanities. A source of ritual and universal energy. Women's voices resonating across time this way, we celebrate the one last. Often women came to New Mexico to find land more suitable for farming and to better provide for their families. Sometimes, however, it was not possible to get good land, so families explored other alternatives, such as starting a business of their own, or taking on various jobs like working in the mines.

Lenny Nicoli was born in 1902 in Oklahoma, and came in that year with her family to Tukum Carey, east of Albuquerque, where they planned to file for land. Lenny was only six weeks old at the time, but when they found no land, the family had to return to Oklahoma and continue farming there. Finally, in 1913, the family was able to return to and settle permanently in New Mexico. Lenny described the move in a covered wagon as a long, hard journey. Her father had gotten a job at the hunt copper mine near high rolls, while her mother planned to earn money by washing clothes and doing housekeeping for other people. Lenny's father had to take jobs where he could find them, and as a result, the family moved around a lot. Consequently, Lenny's education was often interrupted. She started school in Alamogordo, but soon the family moved to Tukum Carey, where her father worked for the railroad. She could not re-enter school until 5th grade, and then had to leave again after 8th grade, as her family needed her to contribute to their income. This meant that Lenny was very young when she entered the workforce.

The family opened a cafe and she helped to run it. Then at the age of 13, she got a job in a laundry, and worked 10 hours a day for 10 cents an hour. She gave all she earned to her parents. When she was 14, Lenny was hired as an operator with a telephone company. While helping to run the family business, Lenny had met a man who ran a shoe repair shop in the same building. They were married in 1918 when Lenny was 16. Her husband was 15 years older. Lenny remembered that year well since it was an extremely cold winter and many cattle froze to death, standing up. Their first child was born the next year, gradually all three of her children would be born at home. Providing medical care for the children would prove very difficult. One son died from an infection that spread from his broken arm because the doctor was too busy treating an epidemic of meningitis. Lenny continued to work while she raised her family.

She and her husband attended a photography school briefly in Arkansas, and later opened an engraving shop in Tukum Carey. After a few years, they sold the engraving shop and Mr. Nicoli returned to the shoe repair business, also making new shoes from scratch. Lenny used the upstairs rooms to run her own photography studio. She did everything herself from taking the picture to tinting the finished print. She even did her own bookkeeping. For a long time, Lenny's studio was the only one in town, and she documented many of the important events of the town's people, photographing their weddings and newborn babies, and also taking school and family portraits. For the first time in her life, Lenny was able to keep her earnings, in her own words, by taking all the money and spending. At the same time, Lenny was responsible for the household and was granted only a short reprieve when her younger sister moved in with them so she could attend school. In the 1940s, Lenny and her husband sold the shoe business to their daughter and son-in-law, and in 1946, they also sold the photography studio.

The Nicoli's bought 40 acres of land south of Tukum Carey. On the farm, Lenny raised dairy cows and sold them to the government. She worked in the garden, in the field, and frequently even changed the tires on their model T. They hired no help for the farm. After 17 years, she and her husband traded the land for a restaurant, and eventually traded yet again for land at Elephant Buke Lake. Here they lived until the 1970s. Ultimately, they settled in Tukum Carey, the town to which Lenny Nicoli had first come almost 70 years before, as the daughter of New Mexico homesteaders. Coming of age in New Mexico was written by members of the Women's Studies Program at New Mexico State University, produced by Tammy Shore, with original music composed and performed by Corina and Christina. The narrator for this segment was Lisa Deener. Coming of age in New Mexico was made possible by a grant from the New Mexico Endowment for the Humanities. Many women who were coming of age in New Mexico made a living by farming the land or being a teacher. Others had to find more unusual means of support, such as entertaining and school bus driving.

Edna Goulson was born in 1903 on a farm in New Mexico. All the Goulson children had to work hard on the farm from early on. Edna never had much schooling because her father would not let her go until the crops were all harvested and the next planted. And that was usually not until January. It was Edna's duty to help in the fields and to milk the cows in addition to completing her chores in the house. On the land, they grew feed crops and cotton. Edna recalled, who used to lay the hoe down at the end of one row and right away grab the cotton sack and start picking. One time during the harvest, Edna inadvertently bundled a rattlesnake with the feed. As soon as she saw the tail hanging out of the bundle, she dropped it. She was surprised to find out that nobody ever got a snake bite while working on the farm.

Aside from running the farm, the family found several ways to get some extra income. Someone in the neighborhood usually held a dance. Edna's father played the violin while she accompanied him on the organ or the mandolin. Often Edna worked in the field all day, played at a dance until late at night and then had to get up early to go back to the field. Edna and her father also delivered wood for the town. It took a day to cut and load the wood and then it took two more days to get it into town and unloaded. They each drove a wagon earning $7 a load. In 1922, when Edna was 19 she got married. She and her husband bought some land and tried to run a farm. The couple lost the farm a few years later, unable to pay their bills. Edna became practically the sole provider for her family. As her husband proved inept at almost anything he undertook. Edna was very creative in the way she found to make a living. She grew most of their food, raised chickens, hogs and cows and she sold cream, butter and eggs. She grew vegetables and fruit and then canned them, producing around 700 cans each year.

One summer she can't 100 bottles of ketchup. After failing with the farm, Edna's husband hired out as a wheat harvester to support the family, which now included two sons. In order to supplement his minimal income, Edna became the local school bus driver. She drove her own Chevrolet, took her children and picked up the six other kids from the neighborhood and drove them all to school. For Edna, this was the perfect job because she could work without leaving her kids alone and make sure that they went to school every day. In the 30, she also gave Saturday night dances in her house. She made about $70 a night, gave half to the musicians and then had enough to live on for the next week. In 1938, Edna divorced her husband and got custody of the children by proving that she could support them better than he could. Edna and the two boys now moved on to the school grounds. While she continued to drive the school route for two years and it took in borders, the men who were building highway 18. One room in the school was turned into a kitchen and another into a dining room.

Even though arrangements were pretty primitive, Edna managed perfectly. She fed the first shift at three in the morning and the last at 11 at night. At this time, she was also giving dances twice a week at the post office. Everybody thought she was an amazing woman because often after a dance, she would get back just in time to fix the 3 a.m. breakfast. Later in her life, she even became a real estate agent. All her life, Edna Goldson found ways to make money and support her family. She was truly a woman of her own means. Coming of age in New Mexico was written by members of the Women's Studies Program at New Mexico State University, produced by Tammy Shore, with original music composed and performed by Kodina and Christina. Narrator for this segment was Lisa Deener. Coming of age in New Mexico was made possible by a grant from the New Mexico Endowment for the Humanities. The Women's Voice is resonating across time, this wage, we celebrate the one man.

Some women coming of age in New Mexico, though themselves daughters of farmers, chose to enter more non-traditional professions, professions often made possible by modern technologies. Bernice Caps was born in 1903 on a farm in Azale, Texas, when she was three, her family moved from Texas to Tuchum Carey, New Mexico. Close to Tuchum Carey, the family homesteaded land and used it for farming and ranching. All the children had chores from early on, Bernice helped carry the water and milk the cows. When Bernice entered school, she already knew how to read, write and do arithmetic because her mother had taught her. The school was situated three miles from the farm. Bernice recalled it was a long walk for a small child, especially in the winter when the snow was deep.

The area high school was even further away, so Bernice wrote her horse to school. She attended no matter what the weather and was very proud when she received an award for never missing a single day of school. Bernice remembered that most of her teachers were women. She understood early that teaching was one of the only fields open to women at the time. It was always her plan to have a job and to be independent. She almost automatically chose teaching. In 1922, she graduated from high school and entered the normal school in Las Vegas, New Mexico to get her teaching certificate. She stayed there for only one summer and then returned to Tukum Carey where she had been offered a job in a movie theater that showed silent movies. Theaters in those days had either a piano player to accompany the film or they had a player piano that played music from roles of encoded paper. Bernice learned to feed the player piano according to the movie schedule or the genre of a particular film.

The theater usually held a matinee and an evening show. Bernice recalls the time they showed Frankenstein saying, I had to watch it so often that I was scared for a week afterwards. She worked at this job for two years, earning about $35 a week. In 1924, when the American Agricultural Association was founded, Bernice got a job in the office reading as she called it the plenimeter. This was a device that Bernice used to see how many acres were homesteaded and what was planted judging from aerial photographs. Here she earned $85 a week. After about two years, Bernice changed jobs yet again, working as a debt collector for a collection agency. When Bernice married Herman Moncus in 1926, she began to work for her husband full-time. Herman was the local pharmacist and had just purchased the drugstore from his employer who wanted to retire. Bernice worked every day from the time the store opened at 8.30 in the morning until it closed at nine in the evening.

Bernice did all the bookkeeping, kept track of the orders in the stock, and served as a clerk. At the time, Bernice did not realize that, like many other women employed in family businesses, for all her work, she did not earn any social security or retirement benefits. For a long time, Bernice and Herman had been collecting artifacts of early Americana and had founded the Tuchum Care Historical Society in 1958. The Society was then housed in the drugstore. When they sold the store in 1968, the Moncus couple moved the collections into an old schoolhouse, which they had converted into a museum. They managed the museum for seven years and finally retired in 1975. Bernice caps Moncus, who had been a vital force for the town of Tuchum Care in New Mexico, planned to spend the rest of her life working as a housewife, which she says is a career in its own right. The coming of age in New Mexico was written by members of the Women's Studies Program at New Mexico State University, produced by Tammy Shore, with original music composed and performed by Godina and Christina.

Nareater for this segment was Lisa Deener, coming of age in New Mexico was made possible by a grant from the New Mexico Endowment for the Humanities. The New Mexico Endowment for the Humanities was made possible by a grant from the New Mexico Endowment for the Humanities. The New Mexico Endowment for the Humanities was made possible by a grant from the New Mexico Endowment for the Humanities. The New Mexico Endowment for the Humanities was made possible by a grant from the New Mexico Endowment for the Humanities. Many families were attracted to New Mexico because of the booming mining industry. In the latter part of the 18th century, New Mexico was renowned for its metals and mines sprung up almost everywhere.

Most of the miners joined big companies, but some men preferred working on their own. Around the mines, small often remote towns evolved, forming a support and supply structure for the miners and their families. Her father was an independent miner who would lease a mine and employ three or four other men. I'm a recall that he was more successful than others and that the family was never poor. I never knew what it was to go without anything, she recalls. We always had what the other children had. Like I always said, we had food on our table and I had shoes on my feet. Even though it was only a small town, there were many kids around to play with IMA, her brother, and her sister. Most of the time, IMA played with boys because her best girlfriend lived several blocks away and IMA's mother would not let her visit very often.

Usually IMA and the boys played mining games in her backyard. Since IMA was the only girl and girls did not work in mines, the boys did not know how else to include her in the games other than by making her their cook. IMA did not mind because it was the only way to be included in their games. As she got older, she joined the Girl Scouts and she remembered the highlight of her membership being a camping trip into Arizona. The fairly family spent most of their evenings together. After supper and homework, the children and their father played games while IMA's mother sowed or mended. Every Saturday, the entire family went to the movies. IMA was supposed to learn to play the piano and her mother bought her one when she was about 11 years old. IMA gave up on it because she felt she did not have any talent. Later, as she was older, IMA went to many parties that were given in the neighborhood, where the young people played bingo with dice and also did a lot of dancing. When IMA was 15, her mother died. She took over her mother's duties, not least of which being raising her sister who was seven years younger than she.

From now on, she got up at quarter to five to prepare the breakfast and to get her father off to work. She kept house with the help of a maid but did all the cooking and gardening herself. IMA said one had to have a garden because if you wanted fresh vegetables in Lord's Burg, you had to raise them. One of the things she hated to do was to can the vegetables and she always tried to wait as long as possible. When cans became more available in the local stores, IMA gladly gave up that chore. She was proud to have managed her home in a very organized fashion at such a young age. At first, one of the only amenities they had in the house was running water. Later, IMA made sure that whenever possible new machines were bought. The Fairleys were the first to have electricity in their home. They were the talk of the town because the electric company had to run a new line to their house. It was worth it to IMA to have an electric stove. With time, she also got a telephone, a washing machine, and a refrigerator. When she was 25 in 1930, IMA was able to buy herself a used car.

All the time she was caring for the family, IMA also went to school. She was able to finish high school and even a year and a half of college. IMA decided she wanted to be a school teacher and did that for the rest of her life. IMA fairly never married, always keeping her independence. She always lived close to where she had been born in the mining town of Lord'sburg, New Mexico. Coming of age in New Mexico was written by members of the Women's Studies Program at New Mexico State University, produced by Tammy Shore, with original music composed and performed by Kodina and Kristina. Narrator for this segment was Lisa Deener. Coming of age in New Mexico was made possible by a grant from the New Mexico Endowment for the Humanities. The Women's voices are resonating across time, this wage, we celebrate the one name.

For a long time, teaching was one of the few professions opened to women in New Mexico and elsewhere. Often young girls were sent out to newly established schools without specialized training. They had to teach all grade levels at the same time and often without teaching aids. Many times students were as old or even older than the teacher. One of those teachers was Bernice Mengas, who was born in 1906 on a ranch near Magdalena, just west of Sakura. She was still young when her mother died and her father remarried. Bernice's father asked his new wife to treat the children as if they were her own. Bernice was very grateful for her loving stepmother. Her stepmother taught all the children at home on the ranch, up to the first year of high school, and then worked hard to send the children to high school and on to college.

Bernice recalled she was sent to a boarding school in Texas, so she would not grow up a hick. She graduated from high school in Magdalena. When Bernice was 18, she was hired as a teacher at the new school on a big ranch near Magdalena. She had 14 students ranging from 3 to 18 years of age, all Hispanic. At 19, Bernice transferred to a school in Valencia, where she was expected to teach 52 children. She protested and demanded another teacher for the students up to third grade. Age groups were still not evenly distributed, and children could not regularly attend school, since they had to work on the farms and ranches. Bernice had students in third grade, who were 17, 18, and 21. Sometimes students would cause problems, but Bernice was never intimidated.

In one case, she threw a boy out of the school. Later, the director came to find out whether she had any trouble. She told him no. He then asked why she had not sent for him. She told him she didn't need him. Most of her students only spoke Spanish, but Bernice could get by with a little she knew until her students learned English. In many of the school districts, superintendents ordered teachers to speak only English. She was not in favor of this practice. She thought that everyone in New Mexico should be bilingual. The majority of the children in Bernice's school were poor. They had to walk to school, often a mile or more. For lunch, they brought beans or chili in a tortilla. One warm spring day, Bernice had punished a girl for leaving school in the middle of the day. Later, she found out that the girl had gone home to change into a better dress so she could take off her coat. Bernice was very embarrassed about her insensitivity. Often, she became friends with her families. One family was even very protective of the young teacher, making sure no man tried anything funny.

Still, Bernice maintained she could always take care of herself. Schools were often simple in the 1920s in New Mexico. The school was a one-room building. Bernice lived in the back part with only a curtain separating her quarters from the classroom. At first, she did not have a stove and had to go to the nearby ranch house to cook and bake. She prepared her beans in an old coffee can that she surrounded with coals in her heater. Luckily, Bernice did not have to pay rent, and wood and water were free too. Still, salaries were often small and irregular, and paid in state warrants instead of cash. $80 a month, I distinctly remember it, magnificent sum of $80. During the second year, I got $100. After two years, Bernice went to the Teachers Institute in Sacoro to get her teaching certificate. She got it barely in time to start a new job in Berlin.

Eventually, Bernice married and had children of her own. Bernice Mingus then gave up teaching with a plan to go back as soon as her children were grown up. Coming of age in New Mexico was written by members of the Women's Studies program at New Mexico State University, produced by Tammy Shore, with original music composed and performed by Kodina and Christina. Narrator for this segment was Lisa Deener. Coming of age in New Mexico was made possible by a grant from the New Mexico Endowment for the Humanities. In earlier times, women provided most of the health care in New Mexico.

As Medicas, doctors, Guadanderas, healers, and Parteras, midwives, women cared for most of the people. Even when Anglos introduced a different medical system into Hispanic villages in the early 20th century, a high proportion of healthcare givers was female. Among the Hispanic population, Parteras birthed most babies until the 1950s. One of these women continued to practice into the 70s. Her name was Hesosita Aragon. Coming of age for Hesosita, meant growing up at Story Lake near Las Vegas in Northeast New Mexico, where she was born in 1908.

The Aragon family homesteaded land and established the village of Trujillo when Hesosita was three. In this village, Hesosita's mother, they called her Mama Tonita, birthed the last of her eight daughters in 1918. That year, influenza struck the Hispanic communities of Northern New Mexico, and during the epidemic, Hesosita's mother and infant sister died. Hesosita, who was 10 at the time, helped care for sick relatives. She was the third daughter, and normally would not have carried such responsibility. But her older sisters also died. Hesosita's father wanted a son. He called Hesosita Miyamigo, and she became like a son. She helped him in the fields, raising sheep, goats, pigs, and cattle. Yes, she remembered. I worked outside like a boy back then. I was raised like a boy. I did many things like a boy. I went all day on my horse with my dogs to watch the sheep. When I was just a little older, I helped share the sheep. Hesosita knew her life was different from that of other girls, and she liked the freedom that she achieved by being raised like a boy.

It's easy to be raised for a boy, she said. People are stricter with a girl. I can't try as many things if I'm a girl. Hesosita went to school and studied in Spanish until she was 11. Then she learned English from a bilingual reader that her uncle gave her. She was proud to be the first in her family to speak English, and she wanted to go to high school. Instead, she went to live and study with a grandmother who was a midwife. As a child, Hesosita had helped birth animals on the ranch, and she learned midwifery skills easily. At 14, when her grandmother was absent and a relative gave birth prematurely, Hesosita delivered her first baby. During the next 50 years, she delivered nearly 12,000 babies for women in the surrounding villages. Hesosita's grandmother had learned midwifery from her mother. That was the traditional way to learn health care, from someone who was practicing medicine. There were three other midwives in Turhio when Hesosita began to birth children, but the others were old.

Each taught Hesosita what she knew. That training plus experience and dedication to caring for women made her a noted and respected midwife for the entire area. In the 1930s, when the federal government sponsored training schools for midwives, Hesosita attended to learn the latest Anglo methods. She and other midwives in the Las Vegas area formed a midwife club. A 1941 picture shows 18 members. Hesosita had her own children, but she continued to help women at birth. In 1952, she moved to Las Vegas, built a maternity center, and continued to birth babies. In 1977, then almost 70, Hesosita delivered 55 of the 600 babies born in Las Vegas. That year, Hesosita Aragoan also spent long hours talking to Fran Leeper Bus, who published this Barthera's oral history in 1980, under the name La Barthera, story of a midwife. Coming of age in New Mexico was written by members of the Women's Studies Program at New Mexico State University, produced by Tammy Shore,

with original music composed and performed by Corina and Cristina. Narrator for this segment was Monica Torres. Coming of age in New Mexico was made possible by a grant from the New Mexico Endowment for the Humanities. This year, the Women's Studies Program was made possible by a grant from the New Mexico Endowment for the Humanities. Women have made their mark on New Mexico politics.

Most who have held political office worked with a strong backing of family, friends, and husbands. Konsha Ortizipino had the support of her family when she ran for the state legislature in 1935 at the age of 25. She held office for six years. Coming of age for Konsha Ortiz meant growing up under the strong influence of her grandmother, Thonia Hosefa Ortizi Ortiz. Konsha was born in 1910 at the Family Hosienda in Galasteo, New Mexico, north of Santa Fe. Konsha remembered her grandmother managing an enormous house, filled with colonial art, and staffed by many servants. Sometimes as many as 65 people lived in their house. In the long sala, Thonia Hosefa presided over dances and entertainment by traveling shows. The Ortiz family proudly traced its descent from Captain Nicolas Ortiz and Maria Ana Garcia de Coronado, who came from Spain in the 17th century. At one time, the family owned more than 100,000 acres of land.

Thonia Hosefa carried on a tradition of service to the villagers who lived near the Family Hosienda. She served as a village doctor. She had learned medicine from a Santa Fe railway doctor. She also saw that medication, clothing, and food was distributed to those in need. She even served as a counselor in legal matters. Women did not have the right to vote until 1920, but Konsha remembered her grandmother saying that she would have made a good jury member. The local judge consulted Thonia Hosefa, and she represented villagers on legal matters. Village women would also ask Hosefa to loan them shawls, dresses, jewelry, and combs for the dances. Such generosity was expected of wealthy Hispanic people. Konsha remembered that she had to assist her grandmother, even as a small child, by delivering medicines to villagers. Konsha grew up in a Spanish-speaking household and did not learn English until she went to Loretto Academy in Santa Fe at age 9. She would become fluently bilingual, a great political advantage when she later ran for office.

Konsha's father, Jose Ortizipino, had served in the state legislature, has had one other male member of the family since the Anglo-Conquest of the mid-19th century. In the 1920s, reluctant to lose the assistance of his only son in managing the family estate, Konsha chose 12-year-old Konsha to carry on the political tradition. He began to groom her for political office. Konsha graduated from Loretto Academy in 1925, too young to run for office, but too wealthy to need to work. During the next decade, Konsha worked to preserve early New Mexico culture. She started a school in Galasteo to teach colonial New Mexican arts, where rural people produced weaving, leatherwork, and furniture. To sell the products of the school, Konsha convinced Santa fans to open a market outlet for Hispanic crafts. She collected New Mexico folk songs, encouraged traditional folk dancing, and was a patron of other New Mexico arts. After her election to the New Mexico legislature, Konsha championed bilingual education, arguing that everyone should have the opportunity to learn more than one language and culture.

She also sponsored a bill in 1939 to allow women to serve on juries. Only seven women served in the New Mexico legislature in that year, not enough to convince representatives of the justice of the bill. New Mexico women, in fact, did not gain jury rights until 1969. She retired from the legislature in 1941, but remained active in politics and reform. In this way, Konsha or Thisi Pino carried on her grandmother's sense of obligation and service to the larger community. Coming of age in New Mexico was written by members of the Women's Studies program at New Mexico State University, produced by Tammy Shore, with original music composed and performed by Corina and Christina. Narrative for this segment was Monica Torres. Coming of age in New Mexico was made possible by a grant from the New Mexico Endowment for the Humanities. Pueblo women have a tradition of making pottery, a tradition that reaches back long before Europeans arrived in New Mexico.

In each generation, women have learned and taught the skills of making pottery. In each generation, great potters such as Helen Corvedo of Cochite Pueblo have drawn on old traditions to create new designs. Corvedo became famous for her storytellers, little people who have become well known among collectors of pottery. In the late 19th century, many Pueblo women began to make figurative pottery, resuming an old tradition in erupted after the Spanish conquest. As Anglo-Turis began to visit the southwest, and archaeologists unearthed examples of earlier figurative pottery, Pueblo women began to recreate animals and people in their work. At Cochite and Tassuke in particular, potters prepared and sold small figures in bulk to dealers all over the country. Many women fashioned pottery mothers singing to their children.

By the 1950s, however, only a few potters still made these small singing mothers with children, the tradition almost died out. Growing up in New Mexico for Helen Corvedo meant living on the Cochite Pueblo southwest of Santa Fe, where women had a strong tradition of pottery making. Helen was born in 1915. Her grandfather, Santiago Quintana, worked hard to preserve the Pueblo culture. He used to tell stories to all his grandchildren. Helen did not learn to make pottery as a young woman, others carried that tradition, selling their wares during the hard times of the 1930s, as Helen grew to womanhood. Helen married and raised six children before she turned to craftwork to supplement the family income in the late 1950s. A kid's woman urged Helen to begin making pottery, but she could not get the bowls on the jars right. Finally, her teacher suggested she try figures. Helen's little people sold well almost immediately. Remembering her storytelling grandfather, Helen made her figures male, rather than female, and placed a large number of children around them.

Her storytellers received first prizes in 1964 and 1965 at the New Mexico State Fair and at the Santa Fe Indian Market. As her fame as a potter grew, museums exhibited her storytellers, and these figures began to appear on magazine covers. Helen Gordetto had launched a new tradition. By the mid-1980s, more than 50 co-chity potters were making figurines. Helen always insisted on making her pieces the traditional way, with respect for grandmother clay. To make good pottery, you have to do it the right way, the old way, and you have to have a special happy feeling inside, she once said. Helen talks to her storytellers. When I make a big piece that I know is going to a show, and lots of people are going to see him, I talk to him and tell him that. I tell him he has to come out real pretty, that he's going to go far away and be famous. If he doesn't come out, I'm sad, but I take him back into my heart and I make him again.

All my pottery comes out of my heart. They're my little people. I talk to them in their singing. If you're listening, you can hear them too. Helen's storytellers helped spark an art revival among the Pueblo that was increasingly respected by the Anglo community as well. Forcordetto, however, the little people have been more than art. They have been a way to continue telling about the Pueblo culture, and like her grandfather, preserving and handing on that culture. The Pueblo storyteller, published in 1989 by Barbara A. Babcock and Guy and Doris Manthan, tell Helen Cordetto's story, and the history of the figurative, ceramic tradition among the Pueblo. Coming of age in New Mexico was written by members of the Women's Studies Program at New Mexico State University, produced by Tammy Shore, with original music composed and performed by Kodina and Christina. Narrative for this segment was Monica Torres. Coming of age in New Mexico was made possible by a grant from the New Mexico Endowment for the Humanities.

Forcordetto, however, was written by Barbara A. Babcock and Guy and Doris Manthan, tell Helen Cordetto's story, and the history of the Pueblo. Many Pueblo women became famous for the fine craftsmanship and the painted designs of their pottery. Few, however, painted on paper or canvas before the 1940s.

Publita Villartha carried the artistic tradition among Pueblo women in new directions by learning to paint in new ways. By the 1950s, she was a successful artist, known throughout the country for her paintings of Pueblo life. Coming of age for Publita Villartha meant growing up at Santa Clara Pueblo north of Santa Fe in the 1920s. Her mother died when Publita was three and her father sent her and the older children to a Catholic mission school during the winters. Publita remembered the nuns there as kind and poor, like the Indians, but very strict. Every summer she was home at Santa Clara where the children automatically absorbed Pueblo culture. You hear it, you see it, you feel it, and you do it. Publita said of learning her culture. She first became interested in painting when she went to the Santa Fe Indian School in 1932. The school at the time was very regimented and students were drilled and marched constantly when they were not getting book learning. They had only one hour before supper to do what they liked. It seemed wonderful to Publita that during this hour she could paint with Dorothy Dunn, an art teacher who encouraged her interest in painting and showed her how to mix colors.

At the Indian School, girls learned to cook, serve, clean, and so. They were expected to practice those tasks as well. I was a horrible failure in the kitchen, Publita recalled. A terrible waitress. Even in the laundry, I was miserable. I scorched everybody's clothes. Painting was the only thing that I liked about the whole school. To avoid the hated household work, Publita transferred to Espanola High School and learned typing so that she could make a living doing clerical work. But no one would hire an Indian typist so she sat around the reservation for a few weeks, painting tiny watercolors of her favorite dancers or women carrying water jars on their heads. Publita was following old Pueblo artistic traditions but working in a new medium, not pottery. She painted women baking bread, women husking corn, girls winnowing wheat, women firing pottery. Of her paintings of women, Publita said, I just made a form and then put a pot on her head and tried to make her look graceful enough so she would carry the jar home.

I just made a figure and let it appear. Her first exhibited paintings centered on the nurturing daily life of women. Publita sold a few of these early paintings but could not earn enough to support herself and so for a period of time she had to work as a maid. She also returned to Santa Clara and taught art to children for two years. Her annual puppet shows were a big hit, both with the children she helped make the puppets and the adults who came to watch the show. Following that, she got a job with the Civilian Conservation Corps, painting at Banderler National Monument. There, Publita painted all day and saved her money. She eventually returned to Santa Clara where she built her own Adobe house. Later, she worked for the Park Service again, this time selling her work. By the late 1940s, she was winning prizes for her painting. While continuing to paint, she married and raised a family.

Her daughter, Helen Harden, also became a well-known artist. In 1972, Publita Villartha, Santa Clara painter, told the story of her early life to Margaret's size for the Doors Duke World History Collection at the University of New Mexico. Coming of Age in New Mexico was written by members of the Women's Studies Program at New Mexico State University, produced by Tammy Shore, with original music composed and performed by Corina and Christina. Narrator for this segment was Monica Torres. Coming of Age in New Mexico was made possible by a grant from the New Mexico Endowment for the Humanities. Music