There is a funny story regarding Daniel Skousen. During the Revolution there was a Carranzista general who was exhorting money from the townspeople of Colonia Juarez. For a few mornings in a row he would park his team of horses at Daniel Skousen’s gristmill. He would commandeer Daniel and his car in order to threaten President Bentley and other Colony leaders with death and laying waste to the colony if they didn’t pay him money. During one of these morning “shake downs” a man named Trinidad Quesada from a rival faction’s army slipped into town and happened to see the general sitting in Daniel Skousen’s car along with President Bentley.
Quesada started to pursue the car firing his pistol at the car. The general fell to the floorboards telling Daniel “Andale, amigo Daniel, por favor andale! Por amor de Dios Daniel, mi amigo,” as bullets whizzed past hitting the dust all around them.
The car roared up the street, across the wagon bridge and stopped in front of Daniel’s gristmill. The general pleaded with Daniel to keep the car moving towards safety. Daniel refused, letting the car engine sputter and die. The engine didn’t start again until after the general had jumped on his buckboard and was out of sight.
About the same time that the incident happened above, another much more sad story took place.
General Inez Salazar and his soldiers were occupying Colonia Juarez. Three Chinese merchants pulled into town on a wagon loaded with goods. General Salazar ordered their merchandized seized and the three Chinese shot.
Daniel Skousen and other Mormon men decried the General’s order. The Chinese prisoners offered the General $300 dollars, which he promptly took and then ordered the Chinese men marched to the river and shot.
As the Mormons stood in silence, Brigham Pierce walked up to the somber crowd, not knowing what had just taken place and complained to General Salazar that one of his soldiers entered his house, frightened his wife, had robbed her of money and then threatened Brigham and his wife because they had no more money to give.
General Salazar asked Brigham if he could identify the man. Brigham pointed to a man sitting with other soldiers near a campfire. The man was brought forth, searched, and the goods repossessed. The General ordered, “Take this man and shoot him!” The Mormon men again protested the execution saying that all the goods had been returned and the sentence surely does not fit the crime.
The angry General demanded that his second-in-command, Silvestre Quevado, shoot the man. The Mormons still protested. The General roared, “Go home everyone of you, get your guns and fight on one side or the other (the Mormons had taken a stance of neutrality during the Revolution). or leave the country!…” He went on, “Go back to the United States where you belong….Mexico for Mexicans, and los Estados Unidos for the gringos!”
President Bentley confronted the general, “No, we will not leave the country. Neither will we take up arms go fight you and your people. This is our country as well as yours. We’ve lived her many years; our sons and daughters have been born here and some of our wives and children have been buried her. This is our home and and the country is dear to us. We did not come here to fight, but to live in peace, to make homes and build up the country!”
The general changed his tone, apologized, and shook President Bentley’s hand saying, “Senor Bentley, you and your people may stay in this country as long as you wish…”
Later that night after the men had dispersed, a figure stepped out of the shadows and on to Daniel Skousen’s porch begging for water. It was one of the three Chinese men that had been shot earlier in the evening. He had laid for hours between his dead friends until he was certain that the general and his men had left. Daniel Skousen asked the town nurse, Mrs. Laura Ann Hardy Mecham, to clean and dress his wounds.
Excerpts taken from Colonia Juarez an intimate account of a Mormon Village by Nelle Spilsbury Hatch, 1954., revised by Madelyn Hatch Knudesen, 2012.
I enjoyed your story of Daniel Skousen. When I was a boy growing up in the Colonias, one day I was waiting for my Dad to come out of his office in Nuevo Casas Grandes. He came out with an elderly Chinese gentleman. When Dad got into his Volkswagon Bettle, he told me that the man was the survivor from the shooting at Skousen’s Mill. He would come in from time to time asking Dad to x-ray him to see if the bullet was still lodged in his skull. This was in the late 1960′s. The man lived a full life with a revolutionary’s bullet in his head!
Wow Paul! That’s a really great comment. It’s interesting to know that after all those years, that man was still alive and living around town. Thanks for sharing.