← Legends of the Old West
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The land around Carrizo Canyon in southern New Mexico was deceiving. The terrain was rough, with low ridges of volcanic rock and clusters of mesquite, pinyon and scrub oak. But the canyon itself was shallow, more of a winding draw than a towering gorge. Its sandy floor was carved by rains that had long since dried in the August sun. To the men of the 9th Cavalry, it looked like another stretch of hard country, but it was a fantastic place for an ambush. On the morning of August 12, 1881, Captain Charles Parker and 18 Buffalo Soldiers of K Troop of the 9th Cavalry had been riding for days and now they were in south central New Mexico near the Mescalero Reservation. According to the legend, Billy the Kid had been killed one month earlier about 150 miles away at Fort Sumner. That event was likely the furthest thing from the minds of the soldiers, and as they endured yet another long ride, the cavalry patrol was worn thin. The troopers and their horses were covered in dust, parched from the dry wind and soaked with sweat from the summer heat. They were on the trail of a white haired Apache leader called Nana. His age was impossible to determine, but most believed he was nearly 80 years old. He was leading one of the fiercest campaigns of his life and as usual, he and his warriors were hard to find. But the signs were there. A broken branch, a faint hoof print, the charred remnants of a small campfire. The Apache were close, fatally close, as the patrol was about to learn. Rifle fire exploded from the ridges as the patrol rode into the canyon. Bullets snapped past the troopers who and sent the soldiers horses into a panic. Shouts rang out as men scrambled for cover from the broken slopes above. Nana's warriors were invisible among the rocks and brush on the canyon floor. The troopers leapt out of their saddles. Some dragged their wounded clear while others fumbled with their rifles. Captain Parker tried to rally his men. He yelled orders into the chaos, but the fate of the patrol fell fell into the hands of two veteran sergeants. Sergeant George Jordan steadied the line. He was small in stature, but a giant in presence, and his voice rose above the panic. He sent men toward firing positions behind whatever cover they could find, and he directed measured volleys of return fire up at the slopes on the flank. Sergeant Thomas Shaw led a handful of men who were slowly clawing their way up a rocky rise. Under fire, bullets chipped the stone around them, but the group kept moving. If they didn't reach the ridgeline, the Apache could keep them pinned down indefinitely. It was slow going, and the fight stretched on through the morning. The sun climbed higher and the heat rose. Smoke and dust clouded the air, making it hard to see where the next shot would come from. Horses lay dead in the sand. Ammunition was running low, and there was no hope for reinforcement. If the patrol could survive the afternoon, maybe there was hope of escape after dark. But the situation was fraught. With so many variables, none of the soldiers knew how it would turn out. From Black Barrel Media, this is Legends of the Old West. I'm your host Chris Wimmer, and this season we're telling a collection of stories about the famous Buffalo Soldiers, the courageous black soldiers of the infantry and cavalry who served in the west after the Civil War. This is episode five, Ambush at Carrizo Canyon. George Jordan and Thomas Shaw were both career soldiers. Both were born into slavery, Jordan in Tennessee, Shaw in Kentucky, and they were nearly the same age. Shaw was one year older, and his entrance into the military is mysterious. He was 15 or 16 years old when the Civil War started. At some point during the war, he escaped his plantation, made it to a Union army recruiting center and signed up, and he stayed in the army for the next 30 years. Jordan joined the army in 1866 at the age of 19. Both young soldiers were assigned to the new 9th Cavalry Regiment and sent west to Texas and then New Mexico. Physically, the two men were opposites. George Jordan was 5ft 5 or 5ft 6 inches tall. His army photo seems to show a man of quiet countenance. Thomas Shaw was big and imposing. In his photo, he sports a thick beard, which makes him look like a modern Special Forces soldier. If Special Forces had existed in the 1870s, he probably would have been a good candidate. By the time Victorio's war started in 1879, Jordan and Shaw were veteran soldiers with more than a decade of service under their belts. They had both risen from private to corporal to sergeant, and their cavalry troops relied on their leadership. They would both be honored for their actions during the Ambush at Carrizo Canyon in 1881. But the army went deeper into history when it honored George Jordan. In the spring of 1880, Warm Springs Apache leader Victorio was at the peak of his campaign against US Soldiers and civilians in New Mexico territory. He and his warriors, whose numbers ranged from the 20s to a maximum of 150, had raided settlements and battled the army for nine months. The Apache seemed unstoppable, which was illustrated by the event known as the Alma Massacre, in which Victorio and his warriors were believed to have killed 41 civilians in a single day, April 28, in western New Mexico. But Victorio's fortunes started to change after those raids. Two weeks later, he and his warriors were still in western New Mexico, about 40 miles from the heart of the Alma raids, when they targeted a crude army outpost called Fort Tularosa. It was situated next to the hamlet of Tularosa on the edge of the Sacramento Mountains. The fort was just a tiny adobe structure which was guarded by 25 men of K Troop of the 9th Cavalry. On May 14, 1880, the troopers and the townspeople found themselves under attack. With little warning, roughly 100 Apache warriors advanced toward the fort. They had been spotted with enough time for Sergeant Jordan to organize a hasty defense. Townspeople rushed to the fort, and Jordan ordered the soldiers and civilians to throw up makeshift barricades. They overturned wagons and and reinforced the adobe walls with anything that might help stop a bullet. Jordan placed men at intervals where their rifles could sweep the approaches, and he reminded them to fire coordinated volleys, not panicked, haphazard shots. The defenders were outnumbered, and discipline would be their only salvation. The first assault came hard. Apache warriors surged toward the fort and the clustered homes of the settlement. They fired into the barricades and darted from COVID to cover. Bullets smashed into the adobe walls and sent chips of plaster flying. The civilians, some of whom had never been under fire, looked ready to bolt. As American settlers had experienced for 60 years on the western frontier, there was nothing more terrifying than a Native American war party. The sight of the warriors, the speed of the attack, the screaming and the gunfire. It was enough to paralyze the mind or push people into frenzied flight which would get them killed. Sergeant Jordan steadied the settlers, urging them to stand fast and fire deliberately. Behind the walls of the little fort, the defenders followed Jordan's orders. They sent back volley after volley of at least partially coordinated rifle fire. Each round forced Victorio's men to recoil and regroup, but not retreat. The Apache seemed determined to wipe out the defenders and steal the town's cattle.
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The Apache continued to charge the town and its fort and then back off and search for weak points. Their numbers should have overwhelmed the defenders, but Jordan's insistence on order paid off. Each time the Apache pressed close, they were met with a wall of lead as soldiers and civilians fired in unison. When the defenders ammunition began to run short, Jordan carefully rationed the shots, and while the firefight dragged on, Jordan turned his attention to the town's cattle herd. The Apache had counted on seizing the cattle for food, but Jordan had quickly ordered the animals to be driven inside the defensive lines. With the barricades holding, the soldiers and civilians managed to keep the herd safe behind the adobe walls. What could have been a crippling loss became a turning point. The cattle were what the Apache really wanted, and the fight stretched on for hours as the warriors didn't want to give up on what could have been an easy seizure. By afternoon, the the momentum had shifted. The Apache were frustrated by the stubborn resistance and their mounting casualties. They began to pull back and eventually they disappeared altogether. It should have been an easy victory with a herd of cattle as the prize. But Fort Tularosa held and every soldier and civilian survived. It was an astonishing outcome, especially in light of the nine months of attacks before it, which had all gone in favor of the Apache. The Battle of Fort Tularosa was the first full defeat for Victorio's warriors. It didn't stop the war, but it signaled a shift in momentum. Ten days later, a force of Apache scouts who worked for the US army inflicted heavy losses on Victorio's force at Palomas Creek, north of the 9th Cavalry base at Fort Baird. The scouts hit Victorio's force again 10 days after that, right before the warriors fled to Mexico. When Victorio emerged from Mexico a month and a half later, at the end of July 1880, he went into Texas instead of New Mexico. In the space of one week, the Buffalo Soldiers of the 10th Cavalry, under the command of Colonel Benjamin Grierson, won two fights against the Apache at water holes in the West Texas desert. The first was at Tanaja de Las Palmas and the second was at Rattlesnake Springs. The twin victories for the army and twin defeats for Victorio forced the Apache back to Mexico. Two months later, in mid October 1880, Mexican soldiers attacked Victorio's camp at Tres Castillos. The soldiers killed approximately 85 people, including Victorio. Victorio's war was done, but the Apache raids were not. When the dust settled at tres Castillos in October 1880, the Warm Springs Apache were shattered. Two parties of warriors had been out raiding when the attack happened, and a lucky few who were in camp survived and escaped. From the wreckage of Tres Castillos. An unlikely figure emerged to lead those who remained. He was known as Nana. He was nearly 80 years old, but some of his followers and friends believed he was closer to 90. White haired, stooped from arthritis and half blind, he seemed at first glance to be no threat. Yet appearances were deceiving. Nana had been fighting for more than 50 years. He had served as a trusted lieutenant to two of the most formidable Apache leaders of the mid 19th century, Cuchi O Negro and Mangus Coloradus. Like Nana, those were Spanish nicknames for the leaders. They meant Black Knife and Red Sleeves, respectively. Under their command, Nana had raided settlements, fought Mexican and American soldiers, and learned the hit and run guerrilla tactics that defined Apache warfare. By the 1850s and 1860s, his name was already well known to soldiers and civilians. In the late 1870s and early 1880s, even at his advanced age, he stayed in the saddle for all of Victorio's war. With Victorio dead, it became Nana's War. Nana was about as entwined in the leadership of the Apache as he could be. He had fought with three famous leaders, and he was married to a sister of Geronimo. By 1880, Nana was considered an elder statesman of the Warm Springs Apache. Those who saw him in camp described him as a stooped old man who was half blind and limping from arthritis. But when he climbed into the saddle, he seemed transformed. He, quote, rode like the devil and pushed himself and his warriors with a stamina that stunned his opponents. When Victorio fell, Nana stepped forward to rally the remaining warriors. In the summer of 1881, he launched his own campaign of raids with a fighting force that was much smaller than Victorio's. Most reports say the original group, which rode up from Mexico at the end of June, was no larger than 15 warriors, some of whom were just boys. Nana's force never numbered more than 50 fighters, but that was enough to spend the second half of the summer scaring the daylights out of people in southern New Mexico. The raid started on June 28, 1881. Nana and no more than 15 fighters rode out of the Sierra Madre Mountains in northern Mexico and attacked a survey crew about 40 miles south of El Paso. They killed five men, and then later that day, they attacked a stagecoach and killed the driver. They reportedly captured a passenger, and that person probably suffered a far worse fate than being shot during an ambush. After that, the warriors slipped into Texas. On July 13, Nana's group followed the same trails across the Rio Grande and into the area of Fort Quitman that Victorio's much larger force had used a year earlier. But this time, likely because Nana's band was so small, the warriors were not detected by Colonel Benjamin Grierson and the 10th Cavalry. Nana's group crossed the Rio Grande and moved stealthily up through Texas to southern New Mexico. The month of terror in New Mexico started on July 17, 1881, when the warriors wounded a civilian during an attack on a small convoy of army wagons near Alamo Canyon outside the present day town of Alamo Gordo. The three men who were operating the convoy survived, and they reported the attack to the army at the Mescalero reservation. Company l of the 9th Cavalry went in pursuit, but it wasn't fast enough to stop the butchery that happened two days later. On July 19th, the Apache killed and mutilated two men and a 16 year old girl. Over the next 11 days they killed nine more civilians in and around the mountainous areas of south central New Mexico. On August 1st, the only thing that changed was the month of the calendar. The warriors killed three more civilians and wounded six in the deadliest attack thus far. But that one would be dwarfed by an attack five days later. On August 6, the warriors hit at least three places and killed 13 people. Two days later they killed two civilians and the following day, August 9, they killed three more. That was 21 civilians dead in just four days, and the collective bloodletting drew Captain Charles Parker's detachment of K Troop of the 9th Cavalry into the field. K Troop, including Sergeants George Jordan and Thomas Shaw, chased Nana's warriors for days. By some estimates, the Apache were riding an average of 50 miles per day, day after day in the summer heat. On August 12, three days after six people died in Nana's most recent attack, the trail of the Apache led Parker's company into a narrow defile called Carrizo Canyon. And as the soldiers were about to learn, the Apache were not in the canyon. They were above it.
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The ambush at Carrizo Canyon began as chaos. The 19 men of the army patrol quickly found themselves pinned beneath rifle fire from unseen enemies on the ridges above them. Captain Parker shouted orders, but in the collective yelling, gunfire and braying of the horses, the orders were nearly impossible to hear. Sergeant Jordan's actions on the canyon floor gave the fight its backbone. Jordan ordered the men to dismount and take positions behind rocks and fallen timber. Instead of firing wildly, Jordan directed volleys short, disciplined bursts. Ammunition was precious, and every round had to count. His control bought the unit time, and while Jordan held the center, another veteran sergeant fought to save the flank. The Apache had chosen their ground carefully, and one prong of their attack moved down a ridge that overlooked the patrol. If the Apache could get around the patrol and fire into the soldiers from above and from the side, the soldiers would be in terrible shape. Sergeant Thomas Shaw took a handful of men and they fought their way up the slope under a storm of gunfire. Chips of stone flew through the air like razor sharp shrapnel as Apache bullets ricocheted off the boulders. Shaw found a low shelf of rock near the top of the ridge and and threw his men behind it. From that perch they returned fire and disrupted the Apache flanking maneuver. But of course, they were now essentially stuck there as the fight dragged on in fits and starts for hours. Like many fights against Native American warriors, the only thing that ended the action was darkness. When the sun went down, Nana's warriors chose to withdraw rather than press a night attack or resume the fighting the next day. Few Native American groups were willing to participate in prolonged battles, and certainly not the Apache. They were quintessential strike hard, strike fast, and then disappear. As the warriors slipped away from Carrizo Canyon that night, Captain Parker's Patrol was bloodied, battered and exhausted. They had suffered two men killed and four injured. But the ambush could have been worse. Four days later, a troop out of Fort Craig, near modern day Elephant Butte State park, was on patrol when they crossed the path of a Mexican civilian. The man told the troopers a horrible yet familiar story. The Apache had killed and mutilated his family at a nearby ranch. The troopers found the bodies and the story was six more people were dead two days later. The army followed fought its second serious battle with nana's band. On August 16th at Cuchillo Negro Creek, a combined force of buffalo soldiers and Mexican volunteers battled Nana's force, which may have hit its peak of about 50 warriors, similar to the action at Carrizo Canyon. The fight dragged on throughout the day with relatively little damage done to Nana's group, and after dark, the warriors slipped away to continue the raid. The next battle, the final fight for the army, would be the worst. On August 19, three days after the battle at Cuchillo, Negro Creek, B troop of the 9th Cavalry out of Fort Cummings was ambushed in a canyon by NADA's Raiders. Lieutenant George Smith, who led the patrol, and three troopers were killed in the opening seconds of the fight. In the leaderless confusion, while the Apache continued firing, Sergeant Brent woods took command and led a charge that was similar to the action of Sergeant Thomas Shaw during the ambush at Carrizo Canyon a week earlier. Sergeant woods and a small group of soldiers fought their way up a slope to attack the Apache in their concealed positions. The daring attack helped push the Apache back and the warriors were ultimately retreated from the canyon. They rode south toward their sanctuary in Mexico. But they committed two more attacks and killed eight more people near Las Cruces before they finally slipped across the border and ended a murderous month which would go down in history as Nana's Raid. For 34 days in the summer of 1881, from July 17 to August 20, Nana's raiding party covered at least 1,000 miles of territory. They killed at least 72 people, eight of whom were soldiers of the 9th Cavalry. They wounded at least 25 and captured at least 14. Given the speed at which the warriors traveled and the ground they covered, it's unlikely that the captured lived for very long. There's a good chance the dead numbered at least 86. No one knows how many warriors died in Nana's raid, but it would have been comparatively few. They eluded upwards of a thousand soldiers throughout southern New Mexico and hundreds of scouts and civilian volunteers. And they did it while being led by a white Haired, half blind, stoop shouldered man in his 80s. The slaughter was terrible, but the feat of stamina became legendary. Two years later, in 1883, Nana was captured by General George Crook in probably the only attack that took the old Apache by surprise. Nana was sent to the San Carlos reservation, but he escaped a couple years later to join Geronimo's campaign. He surrendered with Geronimo in 1886 and he lived for another 10 years. He died in 1896 at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. His tombstone lists his birth year as 1800, which means he died at 96 years old and he probably spent at least 75 years in the saddle as a warrior. The same year Nana died, one of his one time enemies, Sergeant George Jordan, retired from the army after 30 years in the 9th Cavalry. Jordan became a landowner in Crawford, Nebraska, a community of former Buffalo soldiers near Fort Robinson. For a man born into slavery in Tennessee, it was no small thing to hold property in his own name. By that time, he and his fellow sergeant from the Carrizo Canyon Ambush, Thomas Shaw, had received the Medal of Honor. Both men received the medal in 1890, nine years after the battle. George Jordan's citation is unique. It went back in time and included his leadership during the Apache attack on Fort Tularosa. In 1880, while commanding a detachment of 25 men at Fort Tularosa, New Mexico repulsed a force of more than 100 Indians at Carrizo Canyon, New Mexico while commanding the right of a detachment of 19 men 12 August 1881. He stubbornly held his ground in an extremely exposed position and gallantly forced back a much superior number of the enemy, preventing them from surrounding the command. Sergeant Jordan and Sergeant Shaw were two of the six soldiers who received the Medal of Honor for their actions during the final week of battles with Nana's Warriors. In August of 1881, Lieutenant George Burnett, First Sergeant Moses Williams and Private Augustus Wally were honored for their actions at the Battle of Cuchillo Negro Creek. And Sergeant Brent woods received the medal for taking charge of his unit after his commander was killed in the final battle with Nana's Apache during the month long raid. Geronimo's surrender in 1886 ended the Apache wars and with the conclusion of the Apache wars, the wider Indian wars in the west, as they were usually called, were done. By 1886, every sizable tribe was on a reservation and the Buffalo Soldiers had been involved in fighting many of those tribes at one time or another, from the Kickapoo, Comanche and Kiowa in Texas to the Ute in Colorado to the Apache in Texas, Arizona and New Mexico, and many more. The close of the Indian wars the may have brought relief in the form of not needing to worry about raiding parties which marauded through the countryside and killed at will. But it didn't mean the west was suddenly free of violence and crime. There were still plenty of bandits on the prowl, as a new generation of Buffalo soldiers would learn in the closing days of the old. Foreign. Next time on Legends of the Old West. In southeastern Arizona, a column of Buffalo soldiers was transporting a shipment of $28,000 worth of gold and silver coins to Fort Thomas on the doorstep of the San Carlos Reservation. The money was army payroll, and it was a juicy target at a place called Bloody Run. The army rolls into an ambush and the fierce gun battle over the payroll ends up revealing a deeper motive for robbery than simple greed. That's next week on Legends of the Old West. Members of our Black Barrel plus program received the entire season to binge all at once with no commercial, and they also receive exclusive bonus episodes. Sign up now through the link in the show notes or on our website blackberrymedia.com initial research and story by Matthew Kearns Additional research and writing by me, Chris Wimmer Original music by Rob Valiere thanks for listening.
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