Cuchillo, New Mexico

The agent believed they were planting crops of corn for supplying the Southern Apache being rationed at Canada Alamosa and in anticipation of a reservation being formed in that vicinity.

[2]: 56  On September 19 of that year, Gen. O. O. Howard wrote from a New Mexican hamlet he called Cuchillo, that he had bought 30 days' rations at a general store there for the Apache band of Ponce, in return for his help in finding and getting Cochise to meet with Howard to make peace.

[2]: 55–56  The town first appears as the Plaza Cuchillo Negro on a 1875 Diagram of Southern Apache Indian Reservation.

They were often located around a central plaza forming a defensive wall around it on the outside, as protection from the raids of hostile Apache or Navajo.

Three private ditches below the town, diverted any flood waters to irrigate hay fields and pasture.