Canada Alamosa, an Americanized version of the Spanish Cañada Alamosa (pronounced Cănyădă Ălămosă, translated as Glen or Valley of the Cottonwoods),[1] is a term historically applied to five geographical features, all in the same immediate area in southwest Socorro and northwest Sierra Counties, New Mexico.
[3] The federal government intermittently maintained a series of Apache Indian Agencies based on Ojo Caliente and the Canada Alamosa area from 1852 to 1877.
In a sudden reversal of policy, this agency was then abolished after 1877 and the Warm Springs band was moved to the San Carlos Reservation.
At the end of which they either became casualties in scattered conflicts, or were forced to surrender and went into captivity or onto reservations far from the Canada Alamosa area.
[7] The adobe ruins of the old Ojo Caliente agency, about a half mile to the east of the upstream opening of the canyon, have melted into the ground.
Alamosa Creek enters the western entrance to the canyon in a desert area about 30 miles downstream from its source in the San Mateo Mountains, and about 37 miles upstream from the mouth of the creek where it empties into the Rio Grande near the upper end of Elephant Butte Reservoir.
However, after drilling in 2011 the corrected data indicated that the deposits of beryllium and other rare earth minerals were not present in payable quantities,[10] and BE Resources, Inc. decided to cease exploration work at the site, and focus elsewhere on other mining options,[11] leaving the Red Paint Canyon area relatively unchanged.
The Indians lived by hunting and by raiding over a vast area and needed a safe place to sell their stolen goods and livestock, while the people of the town made a healthy profit on the deals.
Ammunition that fitted the guns of the Indians was particularly necessary to allow the Apaches to continue to hunt, and also to raid, which involved plundering and killing other Anglo and Hispanic settlers.
The presence of the canyon on Alamosa Creek buffered the Hispanic community from the comings and goings of the Apache band.
This precipitated a guerrilla war in which the Warm Springs Apaches were either killed or forced to surrender and accept imprisonment or removal to distant agencies where they were overseen by the U.S. Army.
Today Monticello and nearby Las Placitas are home to several organic farms that use the irrigation system fed from the springs of Alamosa Creek.
Cañada Alamosa is the term used by historians to refer to the ancestral homeland of the Warm Springs Band (Chihenne, or Red Paint People) of the Chiricahua Apache.
[3] Their homeland centered on the Cañada Alamosa area, and they considered a spring, Ojo Caliente, the heart of this ancestral base.
[4] Over the years the agency was located at various places in the vicinity of Ojo Caliente (Hot Springs) at the Cañada Alamosa in New Mexico.
During this period a set of adobe buildings for the agency were built about half a mile east of the upstream mouth of the canyon.
Besides Loco, during the time while the community of Cañada Alamosa was flourishing as a trade center for the spoils from Apache raiding parties, the Chihenne were also led by Victorio a famous war chief, and noted for Lozen, Victorio's sister and a skilled warrior and prophetess, and Nana, a noted warrior/chief who raided and fought fiercely through his 80s.
Forest Road 140 emerges from the north-western end of the canyon, passes the coulee down which Ojo Caliente flows and meets New Mexico State Highway 52 (see route noted above).
The Article by Virginia T. McLemore on the Geology of the area that includes Red Paint Canyon, refers to the Tcihene Apache.