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Excerpts from Abe Peña's  Memories of Cibola

All material used with the kind permission of the author, given to me personally.

from Navajoland

"Majestic Mount Taylor dominates the spectacular landscape of west-central New Mexico.  The 11,301-foot peak, an extinct volcano, is known as [tsoodził] the Turquoise Mountain or the Sacred Mountain of the South by Navajos who live to the west and northwest of it.  At one time, according to one study, they lived by the thousands on the slopes of Mount Taylor, near San Mateo above El Rito and at San Lucas Canyon.  The mountain is also sacred to Laguna and Acoma Pueblos, to the south and southwest.  The Spanish call it La Sierra de San Mateo.  La Mosca is the north rim of the volcanic crater, and Los Cerros Pelones the south rim, highest point on the mountain. 
After the Mexican War, the United States claimed New Mexico.  In 1849 Lt. James Simpson, a topographic engineer assigned to the U.S. Geologic Survey, used the name Mount Taylor on his maps, in honor of President Zachary Taylor, the twelfth president of the United States.  General Taylor had commanded the U.S. forces that led the country to victory against Mexico and was elected president in 1848. 
In the Tertiary period, some four million years ago, the volcano first erupted, sending rivers of lava to the valleys below.  The lava flows created Black Mesa, to the east of Grants, and G Mesa, to the north of Grants and Milan, as well as miles and miles of mesa toward Cabezón to the north and Seboyeta to the southeast.  The story of that unimaginably ancient eruption is best told by a moving Navajo legend narrated by Emma Begay, which goes something like this:

For many many moons, the tall mountain puffed white smoke from its very top.  After many many more moons, the mountain exploded with a monumental bang.  From its fiery bowels spewed red hot embers, turning into black rivers cascading to the valleys below.

After many more moons, the mountain suddenly closed and swallowed a beautiful Navajo maiden.  The mountain is holding her captive in its bosom to this very day.  Those who climb to the top can close their eyes and hear her in one of her many moods, sometimes laughing, sometimes singing, sometimes humming, sometimes whistling, sometimes crying, and sometimes eerily silent.

Through the centuries, the mountain has provided many resources to human and beast.  It has been the area's primary source of water, with its many springs radiating in all directions, allowing villages to be built.  It has had an abundance of wildlife, especially deer, the principal source of meat and hides for early Native Americans.  The mountain also yielded many roots and herbs, used for cooking and medicinal purposes.  It provided the large ponderosa vigas for San Estevan Mission, at Acoma Sky City.  The church was started in 1629, under the direction of noted Franciscan Fray Juan Ramírez.  Today Acoma is recognized as the oldest continuously inhabited village in the United States. 
With the Spanish settlers came domesticated livestock--horses, sheep, goats, cattle, and pigs.  The mountain provided excellent summer grazing for large herds of sheep and later cattle, which were the basis for the first commercial industry in the land of Cíbola.  Wool was nonperishable and could be transported long distances by oxcarts to the textile plants in Mexico and later by wagons and trucks and trains to the American mills on the East Coast.  Don José Jaramillo, who passed away in his nineties, remembered the story of Eduardo Chávez, a sheepherder from Seboyeta, taking lunch to another herder on the mountain and running into a bear cub.  The little cub cried out in fright, and the mama bear coming up from drinking water in El Dado Canyon attacked and mauled him.  His sheepdog kept charging and nipping at the heels of the enraged beast and cub, until they ran away and his master was saved. 
In San Mateo Nazario Sandoval, Prajeres Candelaria, and Reymundo Barela had Forest Service grazing permits for their cattle on Mount Taylor.  Other cattlemen and sheepmen, including my father, had permits farther north, in the El Dado and Los Indios country.  The Fernandez Company had private lands on which it ran sheep and cattle, and Mark Elkins ran cattle on his ranch.  Livestock thrived in the high country and came out fat in the fall.  Over the years logging operations brought logs out of the mountain to mills in Grants.  Stan Hayton, still living in Grants with his Louisiana [actually Wisconsin] bride Jackie, whom he married sixty years ago, says, 'We logged for a mill on Mount Taylor operated by Jim Childers.  We milled the timber on the mountain and brought the lumber to the railhead and railed it east and west to help build a growing America.'  I remember lumber trucks coming through San Mateo with their heavy loads in the 1930s. 
Recreation has also been important on the mountain. Deer and turkeys, and in recent times, elk, have provided excellent hunting.  In 1984 a new and exciting race started on the slopes of the mountain--the Mount Taylor Winter Quadrathlon.  It's the ultimate challenge for over six hundred athletes, who come from all over the world to bicycle, run, cross-country ski, and snowshoe to the top of the mountain and back to Grants, on President's Day weekend, in February.  Triathlete Magazine calls the race 'One of the toughest endurance races in the world.' 
My suggestion to competitors, when I was race director, was to pause at the top and listen for the Navajo maiden--then raise their hands to touch the hand of God!"