them lived and worked in and
around Terlingua. Far from the
cemetery being filled with min-
ers who died in accidents or
from mercury poisoning, there
are only about 40 recorded
acci dents at the mine, not all of
them fatal. There was only one
case of mercury inhalation in
the entire area, and it came from
a small, privately owned mine.
One event that did add
many graves, however, was the
influenza pandemic of 1918.
This was a world-wide infec-
tion which killed an estimated
675,000 Americans alone, 20
times the number of Ameri -
cans killed in the Great War. By
mid-October the epidemic was
in Fort Stockton, but the Alpine
Avalanche reported in its Oct. 31
edition that no cases had been
found as yet in Terlingua.
That had already changed,
though the Avalanche didn’t
know it. Robert L. Arthur, the
Chisos Hotel’s cook and a man
with a reputation for imbibing,
got to feeling under the weath-
er. His illness went unre-
marked, assumed to be the
effects of drink, until he fell into
a coma several days after hav-
ing been taken ill. He died sev-
eral hours later, on Oct. 30,
1918 – the first Terlingua vic-
tim of the epidemic.
Arthur’s body was removed
immediately to Alpine in the
hopes that this would prevent a
spread of the infection, but
within two weeks the entire
community was in the throes of
influenza. Robert Cartledge,
who with his brother Wayne
managed the mining company
for Perry, noted that there had
been few graves in the Ter -
lingua Cemetery prior to the
epidemic, but that, “They sure
filled that damned graveyard
up.” The toll was highest a -
mong the Mexican workers. It
is estimated that over 2.8 per-
cent of the Hispanic popula-
tion of the Big Bend died from
the disease, as opposed to less
than 1 percent of the white
pop ulation. There are reports
of mass graves for victims of
the in flu enza, but these have
never been found to date in
Terlingua.
Willeford reports in his book
another interview with a Ter -
lingua resident, Maria Bermu -
dez, whose father was a mine
worker. She tells of the pre-bur-
ial practices in the south Big
Bend:
“My daddy die about four
or five…in the afternoon. The
next day you have to bury…
and they put an iron (on his
stomach), so it wouldn’t swell
up, you know…the one they
used to put on the stove, to heat
and do ironing.”
Bermudez also tells of how
the funeral director in Alpine, a
Mr. Livingston, would never
come down to Terlingua for a
death. She says that Mr. Cart -
ledge or the manager of the
Chisos Mining Store, Mr. G.E.
Babbs, as well as the mining
company doctor, would come
to see the body.
By 1947, Terlingua was
empty and the mines shut
down, but its repopulation in
the years that followed keeps
the cemetery part of the living
history of the region. The Ter -
lingua Cemetery is still used by
residents of the town and sur-
rounding area, so that new
graves are added and old
graves are maintained. The
town turns out on Nov. 2, the
Day of the Dead, for the annu-
al ritual of cleaning, maintain-
ing and decorating the graves
in the traditional manner, with
colorful silk flowers, bright
stones, bottles and candles.
Most of the new graves are
similar in style to the old ones,
with stone mounds or circles
and handmade markers. The
Ter lingua Cemetery, unlike
most of the other Big Bend
cemeteries, was never segregat-
ed, so the graves of Anglos
mingle with those of Hispanic
mine workers and settlers.
Unusually for the Big Bend,
the graves face east rather than
west, perhaps so the departed
can, like the living, enjoy the
nightly display of sunset colors
on the Chisos Basin in the dis-
tance.
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