"My name is Eduvigen Navarette Hernandez. [I was born on October 21, 1918] in Eagle Creek, about seven miles from the pump going down from Morenci. It was seven miles from the pump but from Morenci to the pump, I do not know how many miles it was. Maybe another seven miles to the pumps which were on the river. We lived there until they took away the ranches and we came to live in Morenci. It was only when school was open that we used to come to Morenci at Newtown. Always, we lived in Newtown. There my grandparents lived and almost all my family lived in Newtown. [When I was a child], I lived on the ranch all the time and only when school was in session, did we live in Morenci. On Fridays, we went back to the ranch after school was out. We had a house in Newtown.

[My parents were named] Maximo Navarette and Josefa Marquez Navarette. My father came from Gila, New Mexico; my mother from Las Cruces, New Mexico. That is where she was born. They came by wagon train pulled by horses. They [my grandparents] brought my mother and all their children from Las Cruces. They came to Sanchez [Arizona]. In Sanchez, my mother started school. Then they went to Eagle Creek where they got that place and they stayed to live there at that ranch. Then my mother married my father. My father came from Gila to the ranches, to a ranch that had many horses. He used to train them because they were broncos. There is where they [mother and father] met and got married. He went to another ranch further below from my grandparents and he got a ranch that was the ranch that we had. It was the biggest ranch of all the ranches on Eagle Creek. He was the last one to leave when the company took their water away. The company took their water away and all of them started to sell their ranches and my father was the last one. He had lots of livestock, cows.

[In those days people] homesteaded. There was no one who had those places. My father jumped claim on that place and then he started putting livestock [on it]. My grandparents had sheep, but my father put cows, horses; he had everything. Cows, horse, and mules because that is what they used [for the mine.] He came to Safford to buy a wagon for horses so that he could start with alfalfa, to carry it for the animals. He got a large place. He had a fruit orchard and he planted and he had hogs. At that time we [the children] were older and when he had so much livestock, my mother would have us milk, my older brothers and I. I helped my mother make cheese. My father would come to Morenci to sell it and he sold firewood. He brought firewood because in those days everybody had wood stoves.

My father did not talk to us about his family, nothing. My father left his home when he was very young to seek work. He was carrying a rifle in his hand and he had it ready in case an animal came out. He was on a horse at night, traveling. He said that a branch on a tree grabbed his rifle and it went off and shot off his hand. He only had one hand. From there he returned [to the ranch] and they brought him to Morenci to the doctor. He had a stump, a small stump like a doll. It was his best hand. He was left with small pointy stump. But that is how he tamed horses. That was his job that he did on the ranches and then on his own ranch, he managed as he could. We grew up and helped him. Many from Morenci came to help, the Chacons, the Mendozas. They came and helped my father on the ranch. He called them “los peones” in those days (laughs).

There were nine of us. Now there are only five of us left. Eduardo, Sabino, and Max have died. My father was the first to die. He had an attack and did not survive it. He was in the hospital for three or four days. They told us that he would he have to have an injection in his spine. They turned him over to do it and he died that night. He never spoke after they took him to the hospital. He was about 49 when he died. He died in 1941. My oldest sister is named Martina, Martina Montoya. From there is Eduardo, then me, then Sabino, then Conrado, Concha, and Carmina, and Lencho and Max. Sabino died in an accident, he was the first to die. Max died in an accident too. Eduardo died of cancer."