Yesterday at Baboquivari School

Sister Bourne and THE LITTLE COWPUNCHER

In 1940 a kid named Trini Padilla came up with a plan for achieving stardom at the Tucson rodeo: "I am practicing to rope on cottontail rabbits for the great day of Rodeo," he wrote. "I am wishing to win first prize on roping. If I can rope a rabbit, why not a calf that is bigger, but not swifter?" Trini was about 14 years old and living in the southern part of the state on a ranch near Red Rock in the far north end of Avra Valley, a place where rabbits outnumber cowboys about 6 million to one. A talented artist, Trini drew a picture of himself in batwing chaps and a white cowboy hat and submitted it with his rabbit-roping boast to The Little Cowpuncher, a unique school newspaper created by a teacher in a one-room school and written by students, young cowboys and cowgirls. Eulalia (Sister) Bourne, the teacher, knew there was no chance Trini would be allowed to compete in the rodeo - he was too young but she also knew that this was precisely the kind of "news" item she needed for her newspaper, a chronicle that mirrored the lives of children in places where the 20th century had not quite taken hold. Sister Bourne - she got her nickname from a younger sibling who couldn't pronounce Eulalia - was small - she probably didn't weigh much over 100 pounds - but she also was a strong-willed nononsense kind of woman who could make a burro snivel with just a glare from her steely eyes. She was a rancher as well as a teacher and had been in Arizona since 1912. Born in a dugout in West Texas, she was, as she always said, "a country person" who could relate to country kids and their parents.

She also saw that the life her pupils were leading in the Arizona countryside, like the life she was leading - trying to maintain a ranch while teaching school 100 miles away - was at once exhausting, exhilarating, and very appealing to read about, especially for horseless people living in cities.

Bourne started The Little Cowpuncher in 1930 while teaching at Redington, a tiny ranching community northeast of Tucson, and watched its popularity grow into the early 1940s. She took the paper with her each time she moved to a different ranch school. However, The Little Cowpuncher developed a circulation far beyond the ranching communities where it was produced. Bourne was not shy about sending it to prominent politicians and educators all over the country, many of whom responded with enthusiastic letters. The Little Cowpuncher provided them with glimpses of a world where the children, as Bourne put it, were "born to the saddle and spurs and ropes."

She took the paper with her each time she moved to a different ranch school. However, The Little Cowpuncher developed a circulation far beyond the ranching communities where it was produced. Bourne was not shy about sending it to prominent politicians and educators all over the country, many of whom responded with enthusiastic letters. The Little Cowpuncher provided them with glimpses of a world where the children, as Bourne put it, were "born to the saddle and spurs and ropes."

Ridin', Ropin', and Writin' in the '40s at Baboquivari School

Bourne herself was equally at home in the saddle and in the classroom, as long as the classroom was on a ranch. From 1930 to 1951, while teaching at schools in rural Arizona, she ran her own ranch in Peppersauce Canyon in the Santa Catalina Mountains near Oracle. In 1951 she swapped that ranch for another in the Galiuro Mountains, about 12 miles from Mammoth. During the week, she lived at the schools (usually a room in a ranch-hand's house), but on Friday afternoons she always made the long drive back to her spread and spent the weekends chasing cows on her faithful mount, Blackie. Usually she brought one or two of her pupils home to help with the ranch work. Victor Aros, now 66 years old, was one of those kids. For five years, Bourne lived with the Aros family there were 16 children at a ranch in Altar Valley near the Mexican border. One room of their house was the Baboquivari School, named for the prominent peak on the nearby Papago Indian Reservation. Aros, who still participates in calf-roping competitions, could brand cattle and shoe horses by the time he was eight years old; Bourne put those skills to good use.

with the Aros family there were 16 children at a ranch in Altar Valley near the Mexican border. One room of their house was the Baboquivari School, named for the prominent peak on the nearby Papago Indian Reservation. Aros, who still participates in calf-roping competitions, could brand cattle and shoe horses by the time he was eight years old; Bourne put those skills to good use.

"My dad was a ranch hand, so ranching was all we knew," Aros said. "Sister used to take me and my brother home with her on the weekends, and we'd help her with her cattle and horses. She kind of adopted me and my brother."

In 1968 Bourne wrote extensively about Aros and his family in Nine Months Is a Year at Baboquivari School, one of her three nonfiction books. She also published Woman in Levis in 1967 and Ranch School-teacher in 1974, and a novel, Blue Colt, in 1979.

Most of the kids Bourne taught were Mexican-Americans, and all of them learned to write through The Little Cowpuncher. Seventh-grader Ramon Aros, Victor's brother, explained this fact to his readers in the personable style that characterized every-thing written in The Little Cowpuncher: "This little paper is written once a month by the Baboquivari School. We call it 'Little Cowpuncher' because we all live on ranches, including our teacher, and we are all born of cowboys. It is written by Mexican boys and girls, and that is why the English is so original."

Bourne seldom edited the stories. Often the children would write sentences that were half English and half Spanish, and words were frequently misused, sometimes with amusing results.

In 1941 an eighth-grader named Jean Hackett wrote an article about a lake on the historic Sopori Ranch. It ended this way: "The laguna [lake] is surrounded by great willow trees and many fish live in it, too. People used to come to the Sopori to fish, but a millionaire has bought the rancho and the public is not omitted." Bourne undoubtedly enjoyed the innocent humor in the youngsters' stumbling prose and fractured syntax and saw no point in ruining a story that had intrinsic charm and a unique voice.

That voice came through clearly in 1933, for example, when Redington fourth-grader Garth Bingham described "How to Break a Young Horse:"

"First you hobble the horse by all four feet and then pull the long hairs and cockleburrs out of his tail and put a sack on his back. And then one day put on the saddle and don't sinch it too tight. Then lead him around and learn him to guide and then get on. If he tries to buck don't let him and don't try to make him buck. Use a snapper bit and don't whip him till he learns to go."

In 1940, while Bourne was teaching at Baboquivari School, 20 miles from the Mexican border, she took the children on a class outing to the international boundary to watch a herd of cattle being brought into Arizona. The cattle had to be dipped before they were brought across. Amalia Ortiz, a seventhgrader, filed a report for The Little Cowpuncher that may be the first bilingual news story published in Arizona: "I felt very sorry for the poor cattle being dipped. If their cabeza [head] didn't get wet they pushed it down with a big hook so the garapatas [ticks] and piojos [lice] would die. It was fun for us to see the poor cattle dipped, but for them it wasn't fun. I had pity for the poor cattle taken from their homes and dipped in the dirty water. But the cattle traders didn't care a bit, because they felt the dinero [money] in their pockets."

In their time, the little cowpunchers who attended Bourne's schools became celebrities in Tucson, the nearest big city. People looked forward to seeing them at rodeo time in February, especially since The Arizona Daily Star, the morning paper in Tucson, started dedicating a full page to excerpts from The Little Cowpuncher in its rodeo edition.

During that week of celebration, they also became regular performers at the Santa Rita Hotel, once the most prominent accommodation in downtown Tucson.

The children would sing for the tourists, who rewarded them with coins.

Bourne seldom missed an opportunity to teach her students practical lessons, and rodeo week was no exception. When the children returned to their remote ranch schools from Tucson, they would combine mathematics and writing skills, preparing articles for The Little Cowpuncher on the amount of money they had been given and how they spent it.

One sixth-grader, identified only as T.M., wrote: "What I did With My Money:" "At the Santa Rita many kind people threw us money many times. The little children picked the money up. We got enough money to pay our lunch all together the Rodeo Day, and Mrs. Bourne gave each one 56 cents left to spend. I rode the Ferris Wheel for 10 cents and the Merry-go-round for 10 cents and the candy bar for 10 cents. The money I had left on my pocket I gave to my mother to help paid the trousers for my two sisters."

The hopeful rabbit roper, Trini Padilla, eventually exchanged his spurs for a career in the auto-parts business, but he said he'd never forget those rodeo outings or Sister Bourne.

"I remember her always as a great lady and a good schoolteacher who treated everybody pretty much the same way. I never heard her raise her voice. She could be tough, but I never saw her hit anybody. And those times when I went with her to work on her ranch, she'd buy me clothes and feed me and even give me some spending money. Is she still alive?"

No, Trini, she died in 1984, on a ranch six miles down a hard-packed dirt road in the tangled breast of the Galiuro Mountains. She probably was in her late 80s, but she never would say.

There were two things, Sister Bourne said, that no one needed to know: her age and how many cows she had.

Tucson-based Sam Negri stumbled across copies of The Little Cowpuncher and decided to look up the people who created it 50 years ago. He also wrote about Eagle Creek in this issue.