The Battle of Cookes Canyon was a military engagement fought between settlers from Confederate Arizona and Chiricahua Apaches in August 1861. It occurred about 40 miles (64 km) northwest of Mesilla, in Cookes Canyon. The exact date of the battle is unknown. The battle occurred in the larger context of both the Apache Wars and the American Civil War.
In early August, a group of Arizonan refugees from the Tubac area abandoned their village after the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Fort Buchanan and the Siege of Tubac which left their homes burned. The bunch was known as the Ake Party, and their destination was the Rio Grande near Mesilla.
The wagon train consisted of six double wagons, two buggies, and one single wagon when it reached Tucson from the surrounding region. At Tucson, several other people joined the procession, which including Moses Carson, the half-brother of the famous scout and soldier Kit Carson.
The party was composed of 24 men, 16 women, and 7 children, along with 400 head of cattle and 900 head of sheep, as well as horses and goats. The settlers, who were mostly miners and ranchers, left Tucson around August 15, 1861. The large number of livestock would present an irresistible temptation to the Chiricahua Apache warriors under Cochise and Mangas Coloradas. The journey was uneventful until the party crossed the Mimbres River and made for the springs at Cooke's Canyon within Traditional Arizona and the present day New Mexico.
It is unknown whether or not Cochise and Mangas Coloradas were leading the Apache warriors. Most likely they were, as the commanders of the combined Apache force that operated primarily in present-day southwestern New Mexico where Cooke's Canyon is located.
When the last wagon had entered the canyon, the Apaches, estimated to number about 100, sprang their ambush by attacking and scattering the large group of livestock. They then charged the wagons and were stopped from reaching them after a series of mounted countercharges by several men of the party. The wagons were maneuvered into a circle, and the settlers withstood a siege that lasted the remainder of the day. Eventually the Apaches took to the surrounding slopes, firing both arrows and bullets at long range. The settlers responded from their wagon positions, killing several of the attackers who approached them on horseback and foot. Finally, toward the end of the day the Apaches retreated, taking their plunder of 400 cattle and 900 sheep with them. The settlers withdrew to the Mimbres. They had suffered a loss of four men killed and eight wounded.
The last wagon in the party, carrying most of the women and children, had turned about after the first shots were fired and fled back toward the Mimbres River. Unmolested by the Apaches, this wagon reached the settlement on the Mimbres safely and sent a plea for help to Pinos Altos, where the Arizona Guards were stationed. The Confederate troops responded to the report, leading to the Battle of the Florida Mountains two days later.
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.
This page covers Cooke's Canyon — Repeated Apache Ambushes (1860–1870). A full Aubrey report for the area pulls together this battle alongside historic sites, land records, and everything else the record holds within a few miles:
Every location is different. Not every section appears for every place, only what the historical record actually holds turns up in a report.
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