page_title: Victorio's War
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: Victorio's War / Background
caption_attribution_description: English: Buffalo Soldier Memorial of El Paso, Fort Bliss, depicts 'The Errand of Corporal Ross', I Troop, 9th Cav
context_page_description: Victorio's War, or the Victorio Campaign, was an armed conflict between the Apache followers of Chief Victorio, the United States, and Mexico beginning in September 1879. Faced with arrest and forcible relocation from his homeland in New Mexico to San Carlos Indian Reservation in southeastern Arizona, Victorio led a guerrilla war across southern New Mexico, west Texas and northern Mexico. Victorio fought many battles and skirmishes with the United States Army and raided several settlements until the Mexican Army killed him and most of his warriors in October 1880 in the Battle of Tres Castillos. After Victorio's death, his lieutenant Nana led a raid in 1881.
  Scholar Dan Thrapp wrote of Victorio's War that "never again were [Apache] fighters in such numbers to roam and ravage that country, nor were they again to be so ably led and managed." Victorio, according to scholar Robert N. Watt, "is widely acknowledged as being one of the best guerrilla leaders of the Apache Wars."
context_section_description: In 1879, Victorio was about 55 years old. He was a veteran warrior and leader of the Warm Springs (Ojo Caliente in Spanish) or Chihenne band of Apaches. The homeland of the Warm Springs band was north of present-day Monticello, New Mexico, in the Cañada Alamosa. A reservation at Ojo Caliente was established for Victorio and his band, and a census in 1876 recorded 916 Apache men, women, and children in residence.
  In the late 1870s, the U.S. government pursued the policy of concentrating all Apache bands at the San Carlos Indian Reservation in the Arizona desert. Victorio and the Warm Springs Apache opposed the move, both peacefully and violently. Some of the Apaches at San Carlos were enemies of the Warm Springs band, the management of the reservation by government agents was corrupt, and San Carlos was characterized by overcrowding, little grass for livestock to graze or game to hunt, bad water, and hot temperatures. Deaths of Apaches at the reservation were numerous, especially from malaria, a disease previously almost unknown among them.
  The commander of the U.S. army in New Mexico, Colonel Edward Hatch, and the local commander at Ojo Caliente, Lt. Charles W. Merritt, of the 9th Cavalry (made up of African-Americans, the Buffalo Soldiers as they were called by the Apache) unsuccessfully petitioned the government in Washington, D.C. to allow Victorio a reservation at Ojo Caliente.
caption: A memorial to Victorio's opponents, the African-American Buffalo Soldiers
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