Hood
County Texas Genealogical Society
JOSEPHINE CAVASAS BARNARD
1824 – 1906
Contributed by Robert D. Walton,
Great-Great-Great-Grandson
HER OWN WORDS
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The following is an autobiography written by Josephine
Cavasas Barnard about 1904 as dictated to her granddaughter, Mrs. Verdie
Barnard Allison. A copy was sent to
Josephine’s daughter, Mrs. Marie Tomassa Bernard Page. Marie’s grandson, Robert D. Walton, typed
this accounting when he was ten years old in 1957. |
Charles E. Barnard and Josephine Cavasas Barnard
I
will write a small sketch of my grandmother’s life with the Indians. This is what she says:
I
was born in Mexico and lived there until I was 18 years old. I went to visit a friend across the Rio
Grande River and stayed several days. I
got uneasy and told the woman that I felt like something was going to happen
and I wanted to go home, but I didn’t get to go. So on Aug. 15 at 11 a.m. o’clock in the year 1844 the Indians
surrounded the house before we knew it.
There were six of us women at the house, two were washing, the rest were
cooking dinner. One woman was combing
her hair. The Indians cut her hair off
and left her. I ran for my life and hid
in some weeds. Another girl was
captured. She saw me and told them
where I was, so they took me. Another
girl ran out into a pond of water and they went out and got her. They killed the husband of the woman whose
hair they cut off. He was n the woods
burning coal.
The
Indians started with us and went about five miles down the river, where they
made a raid on a house. Then they took
a six year old girl. Her mother had a
baby in her arms about a year old and they gave it a sling into the river. Oh, they were such mean things! They tied the mother to a horse’s tail and
dragged her some distance then sent her home.
They tore up everything in the house they could not take with them.
We
traveled for four days. On Sunday
morning, Aug. 19, we came to where a boy about 14 years old and a man were
herding sheep. They scalped the boy and
he bled to death. They stabbed the man
and left him for dead. They went to a
nearby creek to water the ponies and came back by. The man was gone and they followed him and found him about half a
mile from where they first stabbed him.
He was dying, but they stabbed him several times more.
We
started on the trail from the Rio Grande River into Texas. That evening about three o’clock they killed
one of the girls they had taken with me.
They killed her with the same knife they had killed the man with. She begged dearly for her life but it did no
good. They stabbed her in the breast
and after killing her they got clubs and beat her like beating a cow. The old chief came up to me with a knife and
asked me if I wanted him to kill me. I
told him yes, I wanted to die, and he made like he was going to kill me. But I never moved for I wanted to die and I
wanted to die with her, so when my folks came to him for us they would find us
together. He never hit me with the
knife. He put his hand to my heart to
see if I was scared, but I was not.
Then he said, “Brave, brave, you go with us.”
So
we started from there and met another man herding sheep. I did not see them kill him but I know they
did for they had his clothes and mule.
They took knives and just stabbed the sheep and left them. They told me they were not going to kill
me. They said they were going to take
me to San Antonio and trade me for bread and sugar, but they didn’t. They went on to an Indian village. We were nineteen days going. We did without water for two days. The old chief got mad because he couldn’t
find water and whipped me. My mule gave
out and I had to walk for one day. That
night we camped and I had to hunt for water.
I found the water and wished the Lord would drop me a bottle of
poison. I would poison the last one of
them. That evening the chief whipped me
and his squaw said something to him about whipping me for nothing and he
whipped her too. The next day we got to
the Indian village. I was tied nearly
all the time with my hands behind me till we got there, then they turned me
loose. There my squaw died and they cut
off my hair for mourning.
They
took me to the old trading house ten miles below Waco, where they sold me to
George Barnard for three hundred dollars in horses and merchandise. Then his brother, Charles E. Barnard came
from the north and we got married.
My
husband and myself then moved to Hood Co. Texas, where we lived till now. He has been dead four years the twenty-third
day of June, 1900. He was 77 years old
when he died. I am 78, will be the
twenty-fourth of June.
I
am the mother of 14 children, 10 dead, 4 living. Those living are:
John Barnard, the girl’s father who is writing this
for me.
Henry Barnard, who lives in Okla.
Eliza Thomas, she and John live close to me.
Mrs. Tomassa Page, she lives in Okla.
I
have 24 grandchildren and 13 great-grand children. I am living most of the time by myself. I raise chickens, hogs and cattle. I raise a big garden every year.
After
Mr. Barnard and I married we kept a trading house here where I now live. We were the first settlers in Hood Co.,
Texas. For months and months I never
saw a white woman. We had plenty of
Negro slaves. We kept the trading house
for the Indians for fifteen or twenty years.
My maiden name was Josephine Cavasas.
Well, that is enough. I could
tell enough to print a newspaper.
I
am the wife of Charles E. Barnard.
Grandmother says she has said enough so I will close.
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Mrs.
Verdie Barnard Allison Georges
Creek, Texas |
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Josephine
Cavasas Barnard was born June 24, 1824 and died February 1, 1906. She was buried in the Barnard Cemetery in
Hood County, Texas. |
~ Web Page by
Virginia Hale ~
2002 HOOD COUNTY TEXAS GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY