Greenhorn Creek, Named for a Fallen Chief
Colorado
Greenhorn Creek carries a story in its name. The creek, the mountain above it, and the valley below all bear an English translation of Cuerno Verde, which means Green Horn, the name Spanish settlers gave to a Comanche war leader who wore a headdress fitted with green-painted horns. Cuerno Verde raided Spanish settlements in New Mexico for years, and in the summer of seventeen seventy-nine, New Mexico's Governor Juan Bautista de Anza led an army north to find him.
They met somewhere near these foothills on September third, and in the fight that followed, Cuerno Verde was killed. Anza recorded the battle in detail. The creek and the valley took his name, first in Spanish, then in English as Anglo settlers arrived in the eighteen hundreds.
It is an unusual honor for a defeated enemy: a landscape permanently marked by the man who made the Spanish afraid enough to march an army hundreds of miles to stop him.
