The Apache Campaign of 1896 was the final United States Army operation against Apaches who were raiding and not living in a reservation. It began in April after Apache raiders killed three white American settlers in the Arizona Territory. The Apaches were pursued by the army, which caught up with them in the Four Corners region of Arizona, New Mexico, Sonora and Chihuahua. There were only two important encounters during the campaign and, because both of them occurred in the remote Four Corners region, it is unknown if they took place on American or Mexican soil.
Background
Though the Apache Wars ended at Skeleton Canyon, Arizona in September 1886, when Geronimo surrendered, small bands of Chiricahuas continued to fight against the United States and Mexico from their strongholds in the Sierra Madre. There were two well known Apaches leading small groups: the Apache Kid and Massai. Both leaders were former Indian scouts who had served on opposing sides during Geronimo's War.
The Apache Kid left the reservation in 1887, but he surrendered to the army in June of the same year. He remained in the civilian legal system until November 1889, when he escaped police custody during an incident known as the Kelvin Grade Massacre.
Massai had been on the run since 1882, when he heard of the Apache exodus from San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation. After Geronimo's surrender, Massai became famous for escaping the army in Missouri, while traveling on a train to Florida with other Apache prisoners. Massai then found his way back to Arizona alone and on foot. Contemporary accounts say that Massai and the Apache Kid occasionally cooperated with each other and that most of Massai's raids into the United States may have been attributed to the Kid. According to an article by Britt W. Wilson, in the October 2001 issue of Wild West, by the mid-1890s, hostile Apache activity in southern Arizona increased.
On December 3, 1895, the settlers Elizabeth Merrill and her father, Horatio Merrill, were murdered by Apache raiders near Solomonville and on March 28, 1896, Alfred Hands was killed at his cabin on the eastern side of the Chiricahua Mountains, near the present day town of Portal. Accounts differ: some say that the Apache Kid killed the Merrills and Hands, but Britt Wilson says that Massai killed them. Either way, the newspapers and Arizona citizens pressured the local authorities into doing something about the "renegades".
Campaign
After Hands' death, the army launched an "aggressive campaign" to catch those responsible. Civilian posses also formed to assist the army in the search. There were only two important encounters during the campaign. The first was on May 8, 1896, when a combined scouting expedition under Second Lieutenant Nathan King Averill, 7th Cavalry, found the hostiles encamped in the Peloncillo Mountains, near Lang's Ranch, southwest of Cloverdale, New Mexico. However, other accounts say the skirmish occurred in the Guadalupe Mountains of Mexico, about fifty miles south of the border. Averill reported that his men killed or wounded one Apache man and wounded a woman while the rest fled. One of the Apaches fired a few shots from behind a tree before getting away. The Americans also captured a little girl who was left behind at the camp. She was later taken in by a member of the expedition, John Horton Slaughter, who claimed that he was the one who killed the Apache and that the man he shot was the Apache Kid.
Two or three days after that, Captain James M. Bell, 7th Cavalry, sent Lieutenant Sedgwick Rice out from Fort Grant, Arizona with three Apache Scouts and four soldiers. They first headed for San Simon Station, a town in San Simon Valley, and then south through the Peloncillos. On the next day, May 12, the Apache scouts detected the hostiles' trail and determined that it was made by five horses, one of which had iron horseshoes and the other four were "shod with rawhide." The scouts said that two of the horses were ridden by woman and that only one had a man on its back. It was getting dark by that time so Lieutenant Rice decided to make camp for the night. Early the next morning, on May 13, Rice and his men continued following the trail south until, on May 14, it turned east towards the Animas Valley of New Mexico.