Scanned by Dick Chenault
Edited by Dick Chenault
A 70—YEAR-OLD WELCH WOMAN TALKS ABOUT HER GRANDMOTHER'S FIRST WINTER IN COLORADO, SHARING THE LAND WITH A BAND OF UTE INDIANS.
This story is about Frances Davis Rogers Birth June 9, 1847 in Wales, England
Death Apr 24, 1910 in Spanish Peaks. She is buried in the Rogers cemetery and was Thomas Rogers wife.
This Ute tribe stayed up on top, on this little Mesa, and grandma was down there. They'd never seen bread rise. These squaws were interested in grandma kneading the bread and letting it rise, and then, of course, when she made the loaves, they just loved the loaves of bread. They had never tasted baked bread before. She made quite a hit with them. She had an oven of some kind. . . it wasn't an outdoor stove. It was an indoor oven because she put the bread on it to rise. They'd want to see how high it would go. They didn't want her to knead it down. She did. And then she gave them loaves of bread, and they killed turkeys and rabbits and stuff that whole winter.
That was the way they got by, these Ute women and my grandmother. They made my grandmother a squaw dress. A dress made out of deer skin. Grandma had a kind of sewing machine that she had brought from England, real old, but it would sew. So, she made the chief's squaw, the chief's wife, a dress out of gingham, calico, I think they said. In the Spring, the Utes had a track meet. My grandmother wore this squaw's dress and the squaw wore the dress my grandma made. They got along fine.
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Ute Indians