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It is easy to think that the Lincoln County War, and the incredible
violence that accompanied it, ended with the “5-Day Battle” in Lincoln
in July of 1878. While the war was more or less officially over, the
violence was a long way from ended.
Bodies had piled up during the
war, and the fact is we will never know how many murders were
committed. To try and list the fatalities is an exercise in futility.
While we can certainly tally the murders that took place during the war,
we can only do that with the publicized homicides. But what of others?
One has to remember that it was extremely dangerous for, not just the
participants, but also for those residents of Lincoln County who were
neutral. Imagine that you are a farmer, out working in your fields, and
you look up to see a heavily armed group of men approaching you. You
cannot make out who they are, and the only thing that you know for
certain is that they will kill you for who your friends are – a decidedly dangerous situation…
For
example, on August 2, 1878, Jim Reese was killed by the Sanchez
brothers at Tularosa. The next day, at La Luz Canyon, a Navajo scout
named “Captain John” killed at least one Apache. On August 5th, there
was an incident near the Indian Agency (Blazer’s Mill) that left the
area reeling.
George Peppin’s posse had been scouring the county
searching for the remains of the late Alexander McSween’s “troops” –
known as “the Regulators”. While Peppin and his men were searching in
the vicinity of John Chisum’s ranch (Roswell), the Regulatos appeared at
the agency. They had been living somewhere in the mountains between San
Patricio and South Fork (a rather large area), and it had only been a
few weeks since “the big killing” (a phrase which the old-timers used
when speaking of the finale of the 5-Day Battle) that left McSween and a
number of others extremely dead. It is more than possible that some, if
not all, of the Regulators did not feel that the war was over… and it
turned out to be a very bad day for a young man named Morris Bernstein.
According
to Regulator Frank Coe, the Regulators were on their way to the agency
to visit Dick Brewer’s grave. Brewer had fallen there back in April,
along with Andrew L. “Buckshot” Roberts, the man the Regulators had
attempted to “arrest.” In the interest of history, it should be noted
that when reading Coe’s account, one can practically see the halos over
the Regulators’ heads. Also, the U.S. Army disagreed with Coe’s
recollections. According to the Army, the Regulators were fired on by
Apaches, who feared that the former McSween men were there to steal
horses, a scenario that sounds at least more probable. Whatever the
case, the Regulators were close to the agency when the gunfire erupted.
Issues of concern to people who live in the west: property rights, water rights, endangered species, livestock grazing, energy production, wilderness and western agriculture. Plus a few items on western history, western literature and the sport of rodeo... Frank DuBois served as the NM Secretary of Agriculture from 1988 to 2003. DuBois is a former legislative assistant to a U.S. Senator, a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Interior, and is the founder of the DuBois Rodeo Scholarship.
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