“I am the mother of fourteen children. Ten dead and four living. . . . I have twenty-five grandchildren and thirteen great grandchildren. . .” Juana Josefina Cavasos Bernard. Latinas in the United States: A Historical Encyclopedia.

Juana Josefina Cavasos Barnard’s experiences ranged from Indian captive to African American slave owner in Texas. Born in Mexico she was reportedly of Spanish, Italian, and Canary Island descent. In 1900 she related her life in an oral testimony to her granddaughter, titled “My Life with the Indians.” According to her narrative, in 1840 a group of Comanches raided southern Texas and took the eighteen-year-old Juana captive. She testified that they held her for about a month. When her captors visited the Tehuacana Creek Trading House, they sold her to George Barnard for $300 in horses and merchandise. Eventually, Juana married his brother, Charles Barnard and she worked with her husband and brother-in-law operating the trading post known as the Comanche Peak Trading House in an area considered remote for white settlers. In her oral narrative Juana saw herself as a mother, grandmother, gardener, pioneer settler, slave owner, trader with Indians, and wife. Juana Josefina Cavasos Barnard developed a reputation as a gifted healer, no doubt learning about the medicinal qualities of local herbs from the Indians with whom she traded.