The Ballad of Placida Romero: A Woman's Captivity Redemption [Hardcover]

Early on the morning of August 8, 1881, seven Apache warriors and twelve Navajo raiders made their way on horseback down a pi?on-and-ponderosashrouded plateau in west central New Mexico Territory to the rock and terrones La Cebolla Ranch house of Domingo and Pl?cida Romero Gallegos. The raiders were led by sixty-six-year-old Nana (Kas-tziden) who was determined to avenge the death of his nephew Victorio, the legendary Mimbre?o Apache leader, who had been killed ten months earlier along with most of his warriors at Cerro Tres Castillos in the Chihuahuan desert, seventy miles south of El Paso, by Mexican troops under the command of colonel Joaqu?n Terrazas. At La Cebolla Ranch the raiders killed Domingo Gallegos along with a ranch hand, Jos? Mar?a Vargas, carried off Pl?cida Romero, and rode off into the timbered high country to the east. Near Blue Water Vega, not far from La Cebolla Ranch, Pl?cida was forced to hand over her nine-month-old daughter to a group of Navajos. Eventually carried into the deserts of Chihuahua, Pl?cida made an amazing escape in September 1881, and returned to New Mexico, where she was reunited with her family at the small rock-and-adobe outpost of Cubero. This is the story of Pl?cida Romeros capture, heartbreaking agony, and miraculous escape passed from generation to generation and became the subject of one of the most fascinating and captivating traditional (Hispanic) native ballads in New Mexico history. Jerry D. Thompson from the Introduction

Aulton E. Bob Roland has spent most of his life in New Mexicohis family arrived in Albuquerque from the Midwest in 1949 when Bob was eight years old. A retired Lead Engineer with the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), he has had a long and consuming interest in New Mexicos history which led him to writing this first book. Roland divides his time between his home in Grants and his ranch house located twenty five miles south.