The Battle of Tres Castillos, October 14–15, 1880, in Chihuahua State, Mexico resulted in the death of the Chiricahua Apache chieftain Victorio and the death or capture of most of his followers. The battle ended Victorio's War, a 14-month long odyssey of fight and flight by the Apaches in southern New Mexico, western Texas, and Chihuahua. Mexican Colonel Joaquin Terrazas and 260 men surrounded the Apache and killed 62 men, including Victorio, and 16 women and children, and captured 68 women and children. Three Mexicans were killed. Victorio had little ammunition to resist the attack.
In 1879, the veteran Chiricahua war chief, Victorio, and his followers were facing forcible removal from their homeland and reservation at Ojo Caliente, New Mexico, 20 kilometres (12 mi) north of present-day Monticello, and transfer to San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation in Arizona. On August 21, 1879, Victorio, 80 warriors, and their women and children fled the reservation. Victorio was joined by other Apache, especially Mescalero, and his force may have reached a maximum of 200 warriors, an unusually large force of Apache warriors assembled under a single leader.
For 14 months, Victorio led a guerrilla war against the U.S. and Mexican armies and civilians in southern New Mexico, western Texas, and northern Mexico. He fought more than a dozen battles and skirmishes and raided several civilian settlements. Several thousand American and Mexican soldiers and Indian scouts pursued him, as he fled from one stronghold to another. Although he won most of the battles, the manpower and resources arrayed against his band became overwhelming.
Victorio's Achilles heel was that he needed to resupply himself regularly with ammunition and to get it he had to trade stolen cattle and horses or steal it from Americans and Mexicans. A source of supply for him was the Mescalero Apache Reservation near Fort Stanton, New Mexico, but after the Battle of Hembrillo Basin in April 1880 the U.S. army cracked down hard on the Mescaleros and occupied their reservation.
In May 1880, Victorio suffered his first defeat and it was at the hands of his fellow Apaches at the Palomas River in the Black Range of New Mexico near the hamlet of Chloride. He led his band into Mexico for a respite, collected a large herd of livestock, and appeared in west Texas in July, attempting to drive the livestock to the Mescalero Reservation where he could trade them for ammunition. However, in Texas he faced off against another veteran warrior, Colonel Benjamin Grierson, commander of the 10th Cavalry consisting of African-American soldiers. Grierson adopted a new strategy to combat Victorio. Rather than chasing him, as previous army commanders had done, Grierson adopted a defensive strategy, guarding springs, river crossings, and mountain passes. His strategy was to block Victorio's access to New Mexico and supplies of ammunition and prevent him from accessing the widely scattered waterholes in the desert. Plus, Grierson cooperated with Mexican troops who had crossed the Rio Grande River into Texas to join the hunt for Victorio. Grierson was unable to defeat Victorio in battle, but prevented him from getting to New Mexico and replenishing his supply of ammunition.
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 Palomas River Fight — Victorio (October 1879). 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:
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