https://voicesofignacio.cvlcollections.org/files/original/d090cf0e649e1d5f565558f0c0ea6cb4.pdf 086e1682c965008ac72b124f0d4607d1 PDF Text Text EUTERPE TAYLOR The room was small and dusty and very dark. Some broken desks and piles of books were stacked near the rear wall. A small indistinct form sat very still on the floor. The little girl had cried hard for a long time. Now only an occasional soft sniff was heard. Euterpe was 8 years old. She had been enrolled in the Ute Agency Boarding School for a year and a half. Ordinarily "Terpe" was very shy, but this evening at supper when the little boy at the next table put 3 green peas in his spoon and neatly flipped them across the room to smack against another boy's face, "Terpe" couldn't resist the lure of a little deviltry. She was aiming her third spoon of peas when the matron grabbed her arm. Isolation in the dark room was only one of the punishments the matron had reserved for misbehaving children. Administering punishments for cause or often for no cause seemed to be the chief interest of the matron. Though the memories "Terpe" has of her experiences with the matron are unhappy ones, perhaps some good came of it. As the years passed something in the shy little girl stiffened and strengthened until she became outspoken and courageous, willing to stand up for her rights and for her family and friends. Though Terpe's parents lived nearby (their farm site is now the north part of Ignacio), they put her in the boarding school. They wanted her to get a good education, which at that time largely meant learning to speak English. On the first day of school Terpe couldn't speak one word of English or of Ute. Though Terpe's mother was a full-blood Ute, she talked Spanish at home and at the age of 6, Spanish was all Terpe knew. But children learn fast and soon she could speak three languages well. She still does. When Terpe was 8, her father, John Taylor, built a house on John Green's place north of town and moved his family there. Terpe got to attend the Allen Day School. She liked it much better than the boarding school partly because she got to live at home. The memory of the day the doctors came to Ellen Day School is still with her. A small pox vaccination in 1908 was no gentle pricking of the arm. The doctors of that time felt it necessary to make many crisscross slashing cuts on the upper arm to insure the vaccination took. "We were all whooping and hollering and screeching. I felt like I had been branded." Terpe went to school until she was 15, then she stayed at home to help with the work. Terpe had always had to work hard at home. At 6 she was cooking and sewing diapers for her little brothers on the treadle sewing machine. At the age of 11, she cooked her first Thanksgiving dinner - turkey, pies and everything. For entertainment Terpe liked nothing better than dancing. She enjoyed both the ceremonial dances of the Utes and the social dances of the Spanish and the Anglos. "When we had a dance, we didn't quit at midnight, it lasted all night." When Terpe married Joe Valdez, she had no idea she would get to raise 20 children, 7 of her own and 13 nieces, nephews and grand children. If it was needed, there was always room for one more. The whole group worked the gardens and shelled peas and snapped beans and cooked and canned. It took a lot of work to provide for so many for so long, but Terpe says, "We always had enough." 164 �r') r') "I "l ., 7 ) l 1 ' '' ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) ) When Terpe's father, John Taylor died in 1935, he lacked two weeks of being 100 years old. How he came to be a respected participant in the affairs of the Southern Ute Tribe is a fascinating story. John Taylor was a black man, born a slave in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1835. He was sold in the slave market to a Kentucky Plantation owner and worked there for many years. At the outbreak of the Civil War, John, who was 26, ran away to join the Yankee Army. Four years of horror followed. John was assigned to an artillery company to load the cannon. There were times when the dead and the suffering injured were all around, times when the Johnny Rebs were close, times when the Yanks would run in fear, but not John. "I didn't run," he told his children, "I didn't want to be a slave anymore." When the war was over, John traveled west. He lived in Raton for a while, then moved to Tierra Amarillo where he married a Spanish girl and had several children. A tragic epidemic of small pox killed all his family. Moving on west, John lived among the Navajo for a while before coming into Colorado. He quickly learned to speak Ute. Since he could already speak Navajo, Spanish, Apache, English, French and Italian, John Taylor soon proved to be a valuable translator for the Southern Utes. In 1895 John and Kitty Cloud decided to get married. John was 40 years older than Kitty and her family thought it was madness for her- to marry such an old man. Age, however, is a relative thing. John and Kitty were married for 40 years, and had 15 children, the last of whom was born when John was 81 years old. He told his children many stories of his experiences, some of which Terpe remembers. "He would often sit with a far away look in his eyes, singing "Marching Through Georgia" or other songs of the war. Sometimes he would cry when he would tell us of the death and horror of the war. And always he would say he didn't ever want any of us to have to fight in a war." Today Terpe is approaching 74 years of age. She looks and feels like a much younger person. Anything she could ever do, she can do today. She is just as able and willing to offer help, counsel and encouragement today as she was 40 years ago. _) ) .J _) .J _.J ..) ..J .J J J J J J ..J J J J ._) Terpe misses the wagon days and especially the train. "I like cars, but the wagon days were better. Life was calmer and more fun then. Anyone going to Durango rode the train and once there you could ride the street cars from one end of Main to the other for ten cents." A beautifully carved Love Calling Flute hangs on Terpe's wall. It was made by Herbert Coyote and is a treasured gift. In the days long past the young men of the Utes carved their own flutes. On the long summer evenings they would sit among the trees or on a hill above the home of the girl they loved and call to her with the haunting, compelling songs of the love flute. Terpe says the sound of the Love Calling Flute carried a long way on the still air of the evening. "They were the saddest songs I ever heard. When I was a little girl they always made me cry." The songs are. gone from the hills, but the memory of them and of the old way of life lingers on with Terpe and others of her generation. Shelby Smith - April, 1974 165 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Shelby Smith Interviews Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource https://rightsstatements.org/page/NoC-NC/1.0/?language=en Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 1973-1980 Subject The topic of the resource Ignacio; Southwest Colorado Description An account of the resource Collection of biographies, predominantly of residents from the Ignacio Senior Center, based on interviews conducted by Shelby Smith from approximately 1973 to 1980. The abridged interviews were originally published as individual entries in The Thoughtful Years newsletter, published by the Ignacio Senior Center, beginning in 1973. They were later published as a whole in Smith's book: Oral Histories of the Southern Pine River Valley, from which the original scans in this collection have been derived. Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smith, Shelby Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Euterpe Taylor Biography Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 1974-04 Subject The topic of the resource Taylor, Euterpe; Ignacio, Colorado; Southwest Colorado Description An account of the resource Biography of Euterpe Taylor based on an interview conducted by Shelby Smith. Originally included in the April, 1974 issue of "The Thoughtful Years" newsletter published by the Ignacio Senior Center. Later included in the book "Oral Histories of the Southern Pine River Valley" by Shelby Smith. Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Ignacio, Colorado; Southwest Colorado Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Taylor, Euterpe Extent The size or duration of the resource. 2 pages Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NKC/1.0/ Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smith, Shelby