The Battle of Rattlesnake Springs

On August 6, 1880 two companies of Colonel Benjamin Grierson’s African-American 10th Cavalry troopers from Fort Davis defeated a band of Apaches led by the Warm Springs chief Victorio and turned them back into Mexico, where Victorio was shortly afterward killed. Grierson himself directed the battle. The fight was at a place called Rattlesnake Springs, just west of the highway and about 40 miles north of Van Horn. Victorio’s band had left the Mescalero Apache reservation, near Ruidoso, New Mexico in September 1879 and for the next 11 months struck terror in the hearts of ranchers and settlers in New Mexico, Chihuahua, and West Texas as they raided back and forth across the region, crossing the border into Mexico when the army got too close. In June of 1880 Grierson got word that Victorio intended to cross the Rio Grande from Mexico and slip back to the Mescalero Reservation to replenish his ammunition and recruit more warriors. Grierson’s strategy for intercepting him was to place small detachments of troops at the water holes that he knew Vicrorio’s men would have to use on their journey. On July 29, 1880, Grierson was on his way from Fort Quitman with an escort of a lieutenant and six African-American soldiers to Eagle Springs, near Sierra Blanca, to personally direct part of this operation. He was accompanied by his 20-year old son, Robert, who had just graduated from high school (he was a late bloomer) and was spending the summer with his father at Fort Concho. In his official report of the incident, Grierson wrote that his son “was out in search of adventure and suddenly found it.” As his party reached the eastern end of Quitman Canyon he got word that a large group of Indians had crossed the Rio Grande and was headed north. Determined to intercept them, even though he had only 7 soldiers, he made his camp that evening in the rocks above an intermittent waterhole called Tinaja de las Palmas, where he knew Victorio would have to stop, and sent messages to both Fort Quitman and Eagle Springs asking for reinforcements...more