The Autobiography was prepared by Florence Shipek, anthropologist at the University of California, San Diego, assisted by Margaret Langdon, linguist at the university working extensively in Diegueño (Kumeyay) dialects, and Rosalie Pinto Robertson of the Campo (Diegueño) Indian Reservation. Using the words of Delfina Cuero, it is an attempt to recapture the facts about dispersal of non-reservation, free Dieguenos from San Diego County into a last refuge, the northern part of the Baja California Peninsula.
In this process, the culture of the Dieguenos was necessarily modified, and also their rights as natives of the United States were lost. Delfina, though born at Jamacha, east of San Diego, in 1900, found she could not reenter the United States to end her years because of an international boundary which had never been a factor of Diegueño life until the last twenty years. This autobiography, representing years of most careful effort by all collaborators, is a treasure to be cherished by anthropologists, historians, and others concerned with the poorly recorded accounts of the border-straddling Diegueños.
