The Legend of the Black Rose

About the Book

M Avery (Marie Cosette Avery has retired to Durango Colorado) researched the story of the Cat Creek ranching family. By 2025, the Spanish American legacy of the San Juan La Plata Mountains was confirmed by Native American professionals, Spanish American and Mexican American Escalante Settlement 1776 families and 1860 Pagosa Springs homesteader descendants. The Rose stands for the 1964 flooded village of ROSA, NEW MEXICO and it's San Angel Church of 1800, designed by Miera y Pacheco. The Old Piedra River Ranch at Gato was built by Bobby's ancestors who were the Nieves Paymaster Dons. The trapper miners were among the sheep herders and were tasked to protect Natives from gold rush violence 1603 to 1983. They closed the seven most lucrative gold mines of the Southern Rockies with black powder blasting when massacres of Indians and "Mexicans" began. As a result, the gold rush was short-lived and deflected elsewhere. However, the KKK of Colorado suspected the truth and forced "meskins" out erasing much of their history for 70 years.

The Legend of the Black Rose

A TRUE STORY:

In the 1960s, star-crossed lovers fall in love on the Spanish Trail, too young to imagine the consequences...

Martinez had me looking straight down the barrel of his rifle before I could close my truck door and get to the garden gate. I froze just as I was, half-turned.

Rosa was screaming my name behind her Papa inside the front door, and I could hear her mother yelling at her and restraining her.

"Get off my land, Bobby, or I'll call the police!" Martinez commanded.

"It isn't her fault!" I shouted straight down the sidewalk because I had no other choice.

"Bobby!" she was screaming. "Papa don’t shoot Bobby!"

Martinez discharged the rifle where he stood, above my head. That settled it. Raising my hands, I slowly backed into the cab and got in. She screamed until she heard the GMC start up; then, realizing I was still alive, it stopped."

About the Author

Born in the Alaskan Territory in 1954, M Avery attended St. John’s College of Santa Fe (1972) on scholarship before graduating from University of New Mexico, 1980. After ranching and farming in Monticello Canyon, Quemado, Clines Corners, and along the San Juan River, Avery continued teaching in public, tribal and college programs. Eventually traveling the width and breadth of the Nuevo Mexico territory, Avery now lives and works in Taos, focusing on spiritual and political encounters between the New Mexican tri-cultural peoples. The author emphasizes the peoples’ unified response to the Nuevo Mexico vastness and our on-going struggle to become one community out of great diversity.