MRS. AMY McDONALD
Recorded by Helen M. Smith, Field Report

Although I  have been back and forth between Texas and Arizona twenty-nine times in a covered wagon, it was not until about 1887 that we made a real stop in Arizona. This was on the Gila River near Fort Thomas. And I was a wife and mother with two children at the time, about twenty-two or three years old.

Travel in covered wagons was not so romantic as it is considered today. We would stop in the heat of the day, unhitch and loose the team so that they might pick a few mouthfuls of food. We would cook a little for ourselves, as likely as not eating as much sand as food. The evening stops were much better, of course, although the whole thing grew quite monotonous. The teams hit a long, swinging walk which was itself tiresome after so long a time, as were also the long halts necessary for the animals to feed.

The fear of Indians was constantly with us. I think I may say that the first fifty years of my life were lived in that dread. Even after all danger of Indian attack was a thing of the past, it required many years for me to convince myself of the fact.

We had almost reached our stopping place on the Gila, being only one day out, when a party rode into our camp. There was a posse of men, accompanied by two women, both of whose husbands had just been murdered by the Apaches. That was my introduction to my new locality. There was a woman in the neighborhood who had had two husbands killed by Indians and had been a captive with her two daughters. During her captivity her baby was born. The three were afterward removed from the Indian encampment by a body of soldiers. We never knew when our turn would come.

One night we heard a rustling in the corn patch, which we knew was Indians stealing corn. We kept very quiet while my brother made preparations for defending us should the redskins attempt to molest us. We hoped that they would confine their depredations to the roasting ears. My brother had an old cap and ball six-shooter which he prepared as quickly as possible—it took about half an hour to load it, after which it would shoot six times before another half hour became needed for reloading. We remained up all night expecting attack, but none came. In the morning we discovered that the cows had broken into the corn!

My husband freighted from Globe to Willcox, and was away from home a good part of the time. At first we lived in the covered wagon, cooked on an open campfire, and raised what corn and vegetables we could. Another child was born to me there, and the children and I did what we could to raise green food while Mr. McDonald was away.

One day I was making bread. I had cooked one “batch” in the Dutch oven over a campfire. The wind was blowing strongly and I had been having a little trouble to keep my fire. I took out the cooked bread and stooped to place another batch in the oven. A strong gust of wind struck just then, scattering the fire until not so much as a coal remained, and filling the oven with sand, right on top of my nice dough. The children driven under the wagon as the sand hit. I stood there and the air was blue around me as I expressed my opinion of the place, the climate, the wind and particularly of any and all people who would live in such a place. I have never used such strong language before nor since.

About that time a stronger gust of wind struck me. I was carried twenty-five or thirty yards by its force. I had absolutely nothing more to say!

Sandstorms were certainly a trial in those days. We built a shack, half house, half dugout. The house came just enough above the ground to allow for a small window in one end. In the other we had a strong plank door. After a sandstorm coming from the direction of the door, we found that we could not get out. The shack was literally buried in sand. My husband was forced to tear out the window at the other end and dig out from that side, after which  he shoveled the sand away from the door so that it could again be opened.

For a while we lived in a tent. In this, too, the wind was a great bother. Anything anywhere near the sides of the tent would be knocked over when the wind came up. Ploughing or outside work was made difficult and uncomfortable by the sand. It was so sharp that it literally cut one’s face and hands, and it seemed that sandstorms always came up when work outside was a necessity.

People in that locality lived on what they raised, mostly. Wheat, corn, vegetables, hogs, and milk cows supplied the absolute necessities in most cases. Cloth was freighted in, but money was so scarce that few could buy any quantity. Most of the cloth was hand woven. People had few clothes, and practically none except what was absolutely required.

There was no recreation or pastime worthy of the name. My only pastime was an occasional visit with a neighbor, my knitting needles busy while I talked. I was fifty-one years old when I saw my first picture show.

Every fall I made a barrel of lye, which was afterward used for soap-making, hominy, etc. Mesquite or oak wood was the only thing we could use to produce an ash good for lye; and these woods were often hard to secure. I had an ash hopper, a hollow log above which were two posts with a plank across them, the plank supporting two others which slanted into the log. We dripped the water slowly down these slanting logs and over the ashes in the hopper to make the lye.

Our light was a small, twisted piece of cloth stuck into a tin plate of tallow. A small bowl with a spout in one end to support the "wick”  was hailed as a great invention, and was a prized possession among the women. The advent of coal oil lamps (and stoves) was another matter. No one in our neighborhood would consider using either, believing that they were dangerous and likely to blow up, and an “invention of the devil.” My first coal oil lamp was a small brass affair with a round wick and no chimney.

We moved to the Chiricahuas above the Sulphur Spring Valley sometime in the early ‘90’s. We lived in a little canyon called Rock Creek. My husband cut and hauled wood to the mining camps. We lived there when the railroad through the valley was surveyed; when the town of Douglas was laid out. We never bothered with Douglas—we considered it too small a town to be a possible market for our wood.

My brother-in-law, Mr. Hazelwood, came to live with us in the late ‘90’s. He hauled wood also, and met his fate at that occupation. He was accustomed to piling two cords of wood on the wagon bed, above which he placed his seat, one of the old time strong spring seats with no back. This made him ride high in the air with almost no way of securing himself in his seat. One of the wagon wheels struck a stump in the road, tilting the wagon to a considerable angle. Mr. Hazelwood tried to regain his balance as he was thrown violently out of his seat. He succeeded only in falling between the wagon and the mules, and one of the mules gave him such a severe kick in the head that he never recovered. He had a wife and two children in New Mexico, and it was six months before we could get word to them about the accident.

While we lived in the Chiricahuas an epidemic struck the locality. I imagine it was something on the order of influenza, but no one then knew much about it except that it seemed quite virulent in its attacks. We moved temporarily to a place near the New Mexico line called “Devil’s Sink Hole” to escape the contagion. We escaped.

We had little experience with outlaws. There was a regular outlaw den in the mountains above us, but they let us strictly alone and we reciprocated. Probably their only gesture of friendship was their presenting us with a watchdog. This dog was a queer one—he never barked. A low, throaty growl was the only sound he ever made, but he certainly knew how to attack. He was quite formidable as a watchdog.

I knew “Black Jack” Ketchum personally before he ever came to Arizona. His home as a boy was in Tom Greene County, Texas. He had no mother, which probably explains why he became wild. The cowboys who worked on his father’s place razzed him considerably. This did not help his disposition to improve. He was always rather overbearing, probably to cover up an inferiority complex. I believe that he would have turned out to be a good cowman but for his losing his mother when a baby.

I have seen quite a lot of this world, both the pioneer and the present time. As for hard times, no one now knows the meaning of the word. To have to “start from scratch”; to buy nothing of that which is required for a family; to shear and card and spin before one can obtain cloth; to be forced, not only to make soap, but to make the materials from which soap is made; to have nothing to eat except what one can grow; all these conditions may produce real hard times if things are not favorable.

Troubles seem to be about the same now as when I was young. As a young girl I was kicked on the side of the head by a horse. My cheek bone was simply splintered. I spent many days of suffering before I became well of that. I was in an automobile accident in my late fifties, in which I had both arms and both hands broken, a broken rib, a broken ankle, a shattered breast bone, and a deep gash out in my head. In my experience, a broken bone is a broken bone in any language, in pioneer days or now.

I never use the first name with which I was christened. The name Amy was given to me by neighbors and friends, taken from the brand on my livestock, AMY. No one in these days knows me by any other name.