Apache Campaigns - Fort Huachuca - U.S. Army

Maj. Morrow’s force twice made contact with the fleeing Apaches, once on 5 June when
four troops of the 9th Cavalry hit the Indians at Cook’s Canyon, killing ten and wounding three.
The son of Victorio was said to be one of those killed. But they escaped across the border,
estimated to be 160-strong.
Now the theater of battle would shift from New Mexico to West Texas, the area along the
Rio Grande guarded by Forts Quitman, Davis and Stockton, and manned by eight troops of
Grierson’s Tenth Cavalry and four companies of the black Twenty-fourth Infantry. Grierson had
convinced his chain of command that, rather than send his men to New Mexico to reinforce Hatch
there, it would be wiser to keep them in Texas, not only to protect the border, but to interdict
Victorio as he attempted to cross into Texas and regain the Mescalero reservation.
This he did by spreading his troops along the border at water holes frequented by the
Apaches. Grierson had foreseen the Apache intentions. When the pressure by 500 Mexican
troops became too much, they did cross the border into Texas in late July 1880, only to find
themselves the quarry on the American side.
It was at one of the crucial waterholes that the ablest Apache war leader would meet one
of the U.S. Army’s best commanders. Grierson had staked out a spring at Tenaja de los Palmos
in Quitman Canyon with a small detachment numbering two officers and twenty-one men. Also
along was his 20-year-old son Robert. When he became aware of the approach of Victorio and
his 150 warriors on 30 July, he sent a messenger to Quitman and Eagle Springs for reinforcements.
Meanwhile, a charge led by Lieut. Leighton Finley, a romantic Virginian who called
himself “The Stroller,” knocked the Indians off balance long enough for reinforcements to gain
the field. Victorio, seeing his numerical advantage, attacked Grierson’s position and would have
overrun it in time, but the reinforcements came upon the field dramatically and drove off the
Apaches.
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HUACHUCA ILLUSTRATED