Apache Campaigns - Fort Huachuca - U.S. Army

old, would sound the final battle cry of the Warm Springs people. Others filtered back to the
Mescalero Reservation in New Mexico. Nana and at least fifteen warriors gathered their strength
in the Sierra Madre Mountains of Chihuahua. After making plans and establishing rendezvous
points and food caches, Nana led his fifteen men, and about twenty-five Mescaleros who joined
up, on a raid in southwestern New Mexico and Mexico in July and August 1881 that would tax
the experienced black cavalrymen of the Ninth Cavalry.
Apache Jason Betzinez claimed to be well informed about Nana, his father’s first cousin,
and here describes him:
In his youth Nanay was a tall, well-built man, so strong that he could shoot an arrow
clear through a steer. I have seen him do it on the Warm Springs reservation even after he
was old. He had been a proud, fearless warrior under Mangas and Victorio, a fighter who
was able to stand up against anyone who tried to overpower him. He also had a friendly
nature being well liked by our Mexican neighbors near Warm Springs as well as by his own
people. Like most of the Warm Springs band he was inclined by nature to be peaceful. This
all changed when he went on the warpath with Victorio in 1879. He was filled with a bitter
hatred of his enemies which transformed him into a perfect tiger, overcoming his infirmities of
age and muscular stiffness. 52
A fellow tribesman said of Nana that “no one could have believed him to be the fiercest
and most implacable of all Apaches, but that was the verdict of my people. Certainly he was
considered the shrewdest in military strategy, surpassing Victorio himself. ...No young warrior
excelled him in endurance, and at that time neither his age nor his broken foot seemed to handicap
him.” 53 Kaytennae was his second in command.
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John F. Guilfoyle. Photo courtesy U.S. Military Academy.
On 17 July Nana’s force ran upon a small detachment of Indian Scouts led by 28-year-old 2d
Lieut. John F. Guilfoyle and Chief of Scouts Frank Bennett. The NCO of Company B of Scouts
was a Chiricahua named Chihuahua. Chief Packer Burgess was wounded in the hip in the Alamo
Canyon ambush. This had a tripwire effect, and Guilfoyle and Nana’s paths would cross many
more times in the washes and heights of New Mexico.
HUACHUCA ILLUSTRATED