Mesquites and Quelites Revamped by Brett Garrett
“This is the story of me,” writes Brett Garrett, author of the ebook Mesquites and Quelites Revamped. But this is no ordinary memoir.
In fact, it’s not a memoir at all. In this fascinating work, Garrett has traced 13 generations of mother-daughter relationships in her ancestry dating back to 1598. She used mtDNA and a paper trail including the U.S. census, Roman Catholic archives, land grants by the U.S. government and other Spanish and Mexican public records.
“When mtDNA revealed me to be of native American descent, I thought I would go to New Mexico and hunt up the full-blooded matriarch who must have once lived there,” she says. “I figured after four generations, I would find her a Pueblo or Navaho.”
HISTORY OF IMMIGRATION AND CULTURE
Garrett cleverly and logically divides her narrative into four parts, characterizing the 13 women in chapters entitled “The Four Closest,” “The Four Next,” “The Four Further” and “The Last One Known for Now.” You get the idea.
She tells the story of each woman as best she can, naturally having more data — and firsthand recollection — on the more current generations. The further back she goes, the more intriguing it becomes to follow her investigation and intuitive logic in trying to piece together evidence into the lives and images of the women.
But the book is far more than genealogy and a complex family tree. As Garrett jumps from woman to woman and period to period, she describes societal and worldly clashes between “cultures and ideologies, battle and truce, cooperation and hostility. It is the story of the United States.”
The women represent the daughters of European fathers and native American mothers. Through the centuries, she says, they remained rooted to the earth, planting crops, bearing children and defying the hostile climate. Their stories range from the mundane (memories of Christmas) to the morbid (husbands losing their heads, literally).
FASCINATING AND WELL RESEARCHED
Readers will delight in Garrett’s telling of the stories and sharing her findings, whether they are insights into the people and their times or the grueling research conducted to uncover their stories. It’s a little bit of everything – an enterprising initiative, a slice of history, and one person’s elaborate journey to uncover her heritage and better understand her past. “I am proud of my heritage,” she writes, “even though I have had to tease it out of musty pages.”
“We were pioneers in an arid country with no seaports. I think we did all right, but you have to decide for yourself.”
Mesquites and Quelites Revamped is available for purchase as an ebook.
About Brett Garrett:
Brett Garrett is a Texan. She didn’t know that was bragging until her husband from Denmark told her so. She is the mother of two daughters and justly proud of the fact. She is a 14th-generation American, which is also bragging. She has a Bachelor of Arts degree with a major in sociology from Texas Technological College (now University). Six years of research in the New Mexico State Archives led to the publication of her ebook. Two other contributing factors were a lifetime of living with a mother who told her very little of her heritage and four years of enduring high school history teachers who didn’t really like to talk about the past. The past is important. Knowing who we are is important. Her ebook is written with that outlook.
