Black Range – Cuchilla Negra

Written by Garland Bills.

For some time I have been wondering about the name for the mountain range on the western side of Sierra County. The Jornada del Muerto from El Paso north was well-traveled by Mexicans since 1598, that is, for 250 years before the U.S. took over the region. Those Spanish speakers named all the prominent landmarks along the way. Their names for the mountains have come down to us today. A sampling from south to north up to Albuquerque: Órganos (anglicized to Organ), San Andrés, Oscura, Doña Ana, Caballo, Cuchillo, Fra Cristóbal, San Mateo, Chupadera, Magdalena, Ladrón, Manzano, and Sandía.

There are three important exceptions. Two were renamed for U. S. persons. It seems the Franklin Mountains at El Paso, previously known as Sierra de los Mansos, were renamed after a prominent citizen (see Julyan, p. 139). And Cooke’s Peak, previously Cerro de los Remedios (Julyan, p. 94), was given the name of a military leader.

The third exception is our Black Range. Where did that come from? Everyone “knows” the range gets its name, as Julyan says (p. 41) because it “is conspicuously dark and foreboding … and the mountainsides are densely covered with conifers.”

But what label was employed in Spanish? On the western side of the range the Spanish word Mimbres is often used not only for the mountains but also the river and the early Native American culture of the area. Some maps today use Mimbres Mountains for the southern part and Black Range for the northern part. Early maps used the Mimbres label, too, but that was probably due to the fact that the western side was better known than the eastern side.

Whatever the legitimacy of Mimbres for our mountains, I want to explore another idea that gets even messier. The term Cuchillo Negro now labels the small range east of Winston and Chloride as well as the creek along which both towns lie. In addition, the town of Cuchillo was called Cuchillo Negro in its early days. And we all know, of course, that Cuchillo Negro “Black Knife” was the name of an important Apache chief of the region. Moreover, we likely also believe as does Julyan (p. 103) that the range, the creek, and the town were named in his honor. But we might be wrong!

The Spanish word cuchillo is the general word for ‘knife.’ The feminine variant cuchilla also refers to a kind of knife. The latter, however, carries the additional meaning ‘ridge’ or ‘range.’ For example, a no-trespassing notice in the Santa Fe Gazette of 18 December 1958 refers to a “Cuchilla Negra” as the eastern boundary of the property south of Santa Fe near Los Cerrillos.

You can imagine then my surprise when I recently noted in his little booklet about Hermosa that F. Stanley stated that an acquaintance “loved the old mining town in the Black Ridge country” (p. 3). Black Ridge? Now Stanley’s 20-page reports on numerous New Mexico towns are not well documented, but he was knowledgeable and thoughtful. Was it just a slip to write Black Ridge instead of Black Range? Perhaps. But maybe not. Maybe he knew a little Spanish.

The earlier Spanish label for the creek, canyon, and a ridge appears to have been Cuchilla Negra, ‘black range,’ not Cuchillo Negro, ‘black knife.’ In 1863 a Captain A. L. Anderson led a military troop from Fort Craig to assess two possibilities for a wagon road down to intersect the Mesilla-Tucson road. The first leg took him west up to the edge of the San Augustin plains and south to the Gila River. On this initial foray, he did often refer to mountain range to his east as the Mimbres. (He also used Spanish names for all the other mountains on that side, e.g., Pinos Altos, Burro, Mogollon.)

The second part of Anderson’s survey went from Fort Craig in a southwesterly direction along the eastern flank of the Black Range. His journal reports regularly of travel “over a rolling country intercepted by deep cañadas with steep gravelly sides.” This geography led him to promptly reject road suitability on this stretch. But along the way his entry for September 29 says: “At 10 miles distance from camp crossed a large valley which the guides called the Cañada de la Cuchilla Negra.” The reference is to the canyon and creek, though in his week-long trek down the east side he never names a mountain or range. But the name Cuchilla Negra was certainly based on reference to a range or ridge as a geographical feature.

It’s significant to point out that Anderson’s several mentions of Cuchilla Negra takes place six years after the death of the Apache chief Cuchillo Negro. His nickname was indeed “Black Knife” but the creek and canyon were clearly Spanish “Black Ridge” in the 1863 excursion. It seems that with time the incoming miners and settlers decided to associate the name to the legendary Apache.

So maybe the standard Mexican name for our mountain range was la Cuchilla Negra. And this would have been translated literally to English as the Black Range, just as la Sierra de los Órganos became the Organ Mountains.

Or do you know of a different Spanish name used by the Mexican travelers along the Rio Grande?