Kinney County, TX - Bios:  Johanna July

TX BIOS:  Johanna July
   Selected and converted.American Memory, Library of Congress.
   
   Washington, 1994.
   
   Preceding element provides place and date of transcription only.
   
   This transcription intended to be 99.95% accurate.
   
   For more information about this text and this American Memory
   collection, refer to accompanying matter.
   
   U.S. Work Projects Administration, Federal Writers' Project (Folklore
   Project, Life Histories, 1936-39); Manuscript Division, Library of
   Congress.Copyright status not determined.
   
   00011
   
   [???]
   
   1,530 words
   
   EDITORIAL FIELD COPY
   
   by
   
   Mrs. Florence Angermiller, P.W.
   
   Page 1
   
   Indians - Tribal remnants 223 KINNEY COUNTY, DISTRICT #15
   
   JOHANNA JULY -- INDIAN WOMAN HORSEBREAKER
   
   One of the most interesting characters of the so-called Seminole tribe
   to ever cross the border from Mexico was Johanna July, a horsebreaker.
   She came across to Eagle Pass with her family as members of the band
   who signed a contract in '71 with Major Perry of the U. S. Army to
   help clear the Texas side of the Rio Grande of depredating Indians.
   
   This tribe of Seminole Indians was a mixture of the Seminole Indians
   with the Negro. Fleeing from Florida after the Seminole War, a number
   of Negro slaves came with the Indians into Mexico. After crossing into
   Mexico they became so thorough in clearing their territory of the
   marauders, their fame spread into the U.S. which prompted the
   invitation from the army. They were first brought across the Rio
   Grande to Fort Duncan at Eagle Pass, then to Fort Clark at
   Brackettville, where a tract of land was assigned them to live on
   adjoining the post.
   
   Johanna was a colorful girl, whose Indian blood was dominant. Her love
   of horses, her wily and daring ways, her bright dresses and ornaments
   were that of an Indian. Her quick, darting eyes, aquiline nose, thin
   lips and high cheek bones showed more Indian blood than Negro.
   
   00022
   
   Her horsemanship was her pride. Being practically forced into the job
   of breaking horses after her father died and her brother "runned
   away," Johanna lived the life of a carefree Indian boy. She scorned a
   saddle, preferring to ride bareback and sideways.
   
   "I couldn't ride a hoss like dey do dese days," she said. "I couldn't
   straddle 'em. I didn't use no bridle either, just a rope around deir
   necks and looped over de nose. We called it a 'nosin.' -- same as a
   half-hitch. Old man Adam Wilson learned me how to ride. He was an old
   scout. Right today I don't like a saddle an' I don't like shoes. I can
   sure get over de ground barefooted."
   
   As a girl, Johanna was not required to do a woman's work about the
   place. Her meals were always ready for her and her clothes were
   washed. Her job was to break horses, take them to water, cut grass for
   them, look after the other stock and ride, ride, ride.
   
   Dressed in a bright homespun dress, ropes of beads around her slender
   neck, long gold earrings nearly touching her shoulders, her hair in
   thick, black braids and her feet bare, she flashed among her horses
   like a bright bird, soothing them with a masterful hand and soft
   words. A shuck cigarette of Black Horse tobacco between her lips,
   Johanna rode as well as a boy, her eye always quick and her senses
   alert.
   
   The horses were there to break and Johanna, being dextrous and nimble,
   was quite able to accomplish the task, though she devised her own
   means of doing so.
   
   "I could break a hoss myself, me and my Lawd," she declared
   00033soberly. "Many a narrow scrape I've been through wid hosses and
   mules. I'll tell you how I broke my hosses. I would pull off my
   clothes and get into de clothes I intended to bathe in and I would
   lead 'em right into de Rio Grande and keep 'en in dere till dey got
   pretty well worried. When dey was wild, wild, I would lead 'im down to
   de river and get 'im out in water where he couldn't stan' up and I
   would swim up and get 'im by de mane an' ease up on 'im. He couldn't
   pitch and when I did let 'im out of dat deep water he didn't want to
   pitch. Sometimes dey wasn't so wore out an' would take a runnin' spree
   wid me when dey got out in shallow water where dey could get deir feet
   on de ground, and dey would run clear up into de corral. But I was
   young and I was havin' a good time.
   
   "I was used to hard ridin'. I've been chased by de Indians. One day it
   was cloudy and I went out to cut hey for de hosses, and as de Lawd
   should have it, I got so sleepy I said, 'Suppose I lay down here an'
   take myself a nap an' den finish cuttin, my hay,' but I thought 'No, I
   better go on and cut my hay,' an' about den, I seen de hosses gettin'
   nervous an' dey had deir ears up lookin' at somet'ing an' actin'
   scared. I had a big bay an' I could call 'im up to me so I hollered to
   'im, 'Come Bill, come Bill!' An' all de hosses come runnin'. I jumped
   on a little gray hoss named Charley, an' when I cut my eye aroun' here
   come a Indian in full gallop, leanin' over on his hoss, en' I started
   runnin' an' run clear by de army post, me and all dem hosses. The post
   sent the scout out and dey took up de trail. Dey was two Indians an'
   dey followed 'em clear into Mexico and brought 'em back. But dat
   didn't break me. I was always out wid dem hosses."
   
   00044
   
   Johanna knew nothing of housekeeping, sewing or cooking, when, at
   eighteen, she married a Seminole scout named Lesley. Her life had been
   as free and untamed as a bird's. She could judge a horse's age,
   endurance and speed, she knew where the eagles nested and the coyote
   kept her whelps and she could point out the dark pools where the
   yellow cat fed in the Rio Grande.
   
   But that wasn't the knowledge she needed when she married the scout
   who brought her to live at Fort Clark away from the Rio Grande and her
   horses. However, she tried hard to be a dutiful wife. There were days
   when she attempted to sew and the thread knotted, the material was cut
   wrong and the whole garment wouldn't fit. She scorched her beans and
   rice, got the stew too dry and forgot to put the corn to soak. The
   husband came in with harsh words, and a hard fist. Instead of the
   kindness she had known, she was introduced to a life that seemed more
   like a prisoner's. At length, her tears dried and her cunning brain
   began to deliberate on escape. She was not capricious for life in the
   open had prepared her to face facts with an open mind, and her grief
   was genuine.
   
   Thus, her fearlessness and endurance were to be put to the test. After
   a particularly stormy encounter with her husband one day, in which she
   felt that his cruelty had passed the limit of her endurance, she
   slipped quietly from the house and stole into a neighbor's field where
   a work horse was kept. Having no rope, she took a small, worn
   pocketknife she carried and cut strips of pite (Spanish dagger) into
   strings and made a rope. As she rode out from the post toward Eagle
   Pass where her mother was living, 00055she heard the [DEL: canon :DEL]
   cannon fire at sunset.
   
   "I couldn't get dat old pony out of a trot," she remembers, "and I
   rode dat forty-five miles dat night. As I got to Fort Duncan I heard
   de sentry call out, 'Four o'clock an' all is well!' I know I said to
   myself, 'All may be well, but I don't feel so well after dis ride!' I
   met two batches of men an' I guess day tole I was a woman 'cause dey
   heard me talk. Dey tole me, 'Who comes dere?' and I said, 'Frien!' Den
   dey said, 'Whar you headed for?' and I tole 'em, 'Fort Duncan,' an'
   dey let me pass an' didn't offer to hurt me. I guess dey was rangers.
   De next bunch I met was about a mile from de fort. Dey didn't speak
   an' I didn't either.
   
   "I never did go back to 'im. He come down dere three or four times to
   get me but I wouldn't go. He shot at me two different times but he
   missed me, den he tried to rope me, but de Lawd fixed it so my head
   was too low and de rope went over. I got to de brush an' he never
   could find me. He would have killed me, an' I knowed it!
   
   "After he died I married twice mo'. I helped my last husband break
   hosses an' mules. I 'member one bad mule. He was the meanest one I
   ever had any dealin's wid. He was 'hip-shotten.' I had to tie his good
   front leg to his good back leg an', don't you know, he'd catch me by
   de clothes and toss me and shake me if he could get hold of me. I
   never did break 'im, I got 'fraid of 'im. I've had some awful scrapes.
   I hunted and trapped wid my las' husband and sold many a hide. I could
   get out and cut a cord and a half of wood, easy. Down here on de
   Fadillas ranch I've had mules run away 00066wid me an' sometimes tear
   de wagon to pieces.
   
   "My last husband has been dead eight years now. My first husband was
   so mean to me I suppose dat was why de Lawd fixed it so I didn't
   divo'ce 'im an' he didn't divo'ce me, an' now what little bread I'm
   gettin', I'm gettin' it right off of him."
   
   Johanna lives on a hill in the northeast part of Brackettville. She,
   like the others who were moved from the post, resents the government's
   having moved them from Fort Clark. With only two of the original
   scouts who signed the contract still living, and only three of the
   oldest woman who were wives or sisters of the first scouts, it would
   seem that the government had fulfilled its contract with them long and
   well.
   
   Active and nimble at 77, Johanna moves about her small place on the
   hill, tending a garden, keeping house, gliding over the rocks
   barefooted and rolling her cigarettes with a steady hand.
   
   -30-

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