The Battle of Hembrillo Basin was fought April 5–8, 1880 between the United States Army against a combined band of Chiricahua and Mescalero Apaches led by Chief Victorio. Hembrillo Basin was the largest battle of Victorio's War, although casualties were light on both sides. Victorio held off an attack by superior numbers of army soldiers and Indian scouts, evacuated his women and children from the battlefield, and withdrew successfully. Hembrillo Basin is located on the White Sands Missile Range and access by the public is strictly regulated.
Forced out of one of his strongholds, Victorio engaged in a running battle with thousands of American and Mexico troops which would end with his defeat and death by the Mexican army a few months later.
Facing forced relocation to San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation in Arizona, Victorio, a veteran warrior and Mimbres Chiricahua Apache chief, fled the Mescalero Reservation in Otero County, New Mexico on 21 August 1879 with approximately 80 warriors and their wives and children. His band was soon augmented by additional followers from the Mescalero and other Apache bands. The U.S. army pursued Victorio and the army and the Apache fought a number of skirmishes and battles which proved indecisive with the Apaches escaping and continuing their flight over southern New Mexico and eventually into western Texas and Mexico.
In March 1880, Pueblo Indian scouts discovered that Victorio had taken refuge in Hembrillo Basin, located on the western slopes of the San Andres Mountains. To attack the Apache, the army commander Colonel Edward Hatch divided his force into four groups. The main assault would be carried out by Major Morrow and about 100 soldiers plus a few Indian scouts who would attack from the north and Captain McClellan who would attack with 85 soldiers and 40 Indian scouts (led by Lt. Charles B. Gatewood) from the south. Captain Carroll with more than 100 men of the 9th Cavalry, composed of African-American soldiers, would support the assault by advancing up the Hembrillo Valley from the west. Captain Hooker with more than 100 soldiers and some Navajo scouts would station themselves on the eastern side of the San Andres Mountains to block the escape route of the Apache. The attack on the Apache camp was scheduled to take place on April 8. Victorio would thus be surrounded by American troops.
The plans quickly went awry. Major Morrow's northern force was delayed because of a lack of water and he never reached the battlefield. Unaware of Morrow's problems, Captain Carroll and his Buffalo Soldiers advanced up the Hembrillo Valley on April 5. Carroll sent 29 soldiers and two Indian guides under Lt. John Conline ahead as scouts. Conline discovered a trail recently traveled by horses and cattle and advanced carefully.
The Indian Wars encompass more than three centuries of armed conflict between the United States government, American settlers, and Indigenous nations — from the Powhatan Wars of the 1620s through the final Plains campaigns of the late 19th century. The eastern conflicts — King Philip's War (1675–1676), the Tuscarora War (1711–1715), and the Creek and Seminole Wars — largely ended organized Indigenous resistance east of the Mississippi by the 1840s. On the Great Plains, the Sioux Wars (1854–1890), Red River War (1874–1875), and Nez Perce War (1877) followed the displacement wrought by the transcontinental railroad and the near-extinction of the American bison — an estimated 30 to 60 million animals reduced to fewer than 1,000 by 1890. The Ghost Dance religious movement and the massacre at Wounded Knee (December 29, 1890), in which US cavalry killed approximately 250 Lakota men, women, and children, marked the effective end of armed resistance. The Dawes Act (1887) allotted reservation land to individual families, opening millions of acres to white settlement and reducing Indigenous landholdings by about two-thirds over the following decades.
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